John Chapter 4 verse 12 Holy Bible
Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his sons, and his cattle?
read chapter 4 in ASV
Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the fountain and took the water of it himself, with his children and his cattle?
read chapter 4 in BBE
Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?
read chapter 4 in DARBY
Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?
read chapter 4 in KJV
read chapter 4 in WBT
Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, as did his children, and his cattle?"
read chapter 4 in WEB
Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who did give us the well, and himself out of it did drink, and his sons, and his cattle?'
read chapter 4 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 12. - Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his sons, and his cattle? We observe here the Samaritaness's claim to be a descendant of Ephraim, of Joseph, of Jacob himself who dug the well. By rising up behind the family of Ephraim to the father of Judah as well as of Joseph, the woman claims a kind of kinship with Jesus. The "our" in this case is not a monopoly of the honours of Jacob for herself and her people. Her national pride is softening under the glance of the great Son of David, and she has a growing sense of the claims and dignity of the Person she is addressing, though her thought is couched in words that may be ironical. This was the kind of challenge which our Lord never refused to honour. Just as on other occasions he claimed to be "greater than the temple," and "Lord of the sabbath," and "before Abraham," and "greater than Moses, Solomon," or "Jonas," so here he quietly admits that he is indeed greater than "our father Jacob." The lifelike reality of the scene is evidenced in the alertness and feminine loquacity of the final clause (θρέμματα are "cattle," not "servants," as seen in passages quoted by Meyer from Xenophon, Plato, Josephus, etc.). The nomadic condition of the first fathers of this race is brilliantly touched off by the sentence.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(12) Art thou greater . . .?--Again, the pronoun is the emphatic word, "Thou surely art not greater." "The well used to satisfy the wants of the patriarch, and his household, and his flocks, and has come down from him to us. It is surely sufficient for all our wants." This claim of Jacob as their father was through Ephraim and Joseph, and the well was part of "the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his .son Joseph" (John 4:5). There was abundance of water near to it, but a patriarchal household could not depend for a necessity of life upon neighbours who may be hostile, and Jacob had dug this well in his own purchased plot. It was sacred, then, as the very spot where their asserted ancestor had digged his well and built his altar. There was an unbroken continuity in the history of the place, and it was prized the more because it was not so in the history of the people.
