The parable of the Prodigal Son is found in Luke 15:11-32. There, Jesus tells of a son who departed from his father's house with his share of his inheritance from his father. He ultimately returned after finding ruin. Once home, he was welcomed and restored by his father but rejected and resented by his older brother. The Gospel of John doesn't include this parable, but Jesus delivers the context for it in a conversation John recounts for us in John 4:4-43. During the time of Christ, the Jews were primarily compromised of Israelites from the returning exiles of the Babylonian captivity 400 years earlier. The Babylonians had conquered Jerusalem, (the capital of the then Southern Kingdom of Judah). These Judeans were compromised of members of the two Israeli tribes of Judah and Benjamin. In 930 BC, when King Solomon died, the other 10 tribes out of the original 12 had separated from Judah to form the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The Northern Kingdom fell in 722 BC when the Neo-Assyrian Empire overran their capital of Samaria. Since that time, the remnant of the destroyed Northern Kingdom of the 10 tribes survived as a people who came to be known by the name of their former capital – “Samaritans.” Their form of faith in God took hold as Samaritanism, which was a closely related but altered version of Judaism, (which the Jews returning from the Babylonian captivity in 538 BC brought back with them). The Samaritans consider Mount Gerizim, (near Nablus and referred to as Shechem in the Bible), to be “the holiest place.” This contrasts with the Judean Jewish “holiest place,” the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Jews of today still reject Samaritans unless they renounce Mount Gerizim as the historical Israelite holiest place. The temple and walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt by the returning Babylonian exiles in only 52 days when Nehemiah journeyed from Babylon with permission from King Artaxerxes in 444 BC. The completion of the walls fulfilled Biblical prophecy, and began a period of silence, (when God stopped communicating to the Jews through prophets), for the next 400 years until John the Baptist began to prophesy of the coming Messiah.

Before continuing with the rest of this written conversation, I suggest you quickly go re-read Luke 15:11-32. Once you've done this, then read what John wrote about Christ’s conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well In John 4:4-43. Here are the parallels you need to see:

· Christ intended the Jews to understand that the lost younger brother from the parable in Luke, represented the Samaritans (the lost tribes of the Northern Kingdom).

· The Jews of that day needed to see themselves as the older brother who was rejecting their younger brother(s).

· Both peoples knew of God the Father as their Redeemer (John 4:12).

· Both knew the source of their Salvation (John 4:25).

· The younger brother would have known of having been rejected by the older (John 4:9), but still loved and received by the father (John 4:25, again).

· Both would have a different concept of what was holy and righteous before God (John 4:19-20), but both would be wrong (John 4:22-24).

· Even the servant from the parable is represented here in John (John 4:28-29)

· In Luke 15 we don't get to hear what happened after the elder was confronted by his father, (i.e., How did the older brother respond?) but this is revealed to us in John’s writing (John 4:29-30; 40-42).

· The most important and exciting element for us to understand from both passages is plain to see in John 4:25-26. 25 “The woman said to Him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming (who is called Christ). When He comes, He will explain everything to us.’ 26 ‘I am He, Jesus told her, the One speaking to you’.”