The Samaritans. The rejected stone. The lions. The well. The I am. And why the pictures were always for us, not for him.
The covenant text is full of rejections that produce something more than what the rejecting party was trying to build without the rejected element. The stone the builders rejected became the rosh pinnah, the head cornerstone, the foundation stone, the one the entire building rests on. Psalm 118:22. Yeshua quoted it and applied it to himself in Matthew 21:42. The rejected stone. The cornerstone. The pattern runs through the covenant testimony because it is the pattern of one YHWH, the one who holds both sides, who passes between the pieces alone, who enters his own absence to seal it from the inside, who is lifted up between heaven and earth drawing all people to himself. The rejected one becoming the foundation of everything the rejectors were trying to build without him.
This document examines a specific rejection in the covenant history that has been largely overlooked, and what that rejection preserved, protected, and ultimately produced. The rejection of the Samaritans from the building project of the second temple. The stone the builders rejected. And the Lion of Judah who came to the well of the rejected people and said I am.
Who the Samaritans Were
The standard account of the Samaritans, the account the scribal tradition preserved and transmitted, is that they are a mixed people, half-breed descendants of the foreign peoples the Assyrian king resettled in the land of the northern kingdom after the fall of Israel in 722 BCE. Corrupted. Not genuinely covenant people. Their worship of YHWH a syncretistic mixture of covenant faith and foreign religion. Their Torah a corrupted version of the genuine text. Their claim to covenant standing illegitimate.
The actual historical record is more complex, and more significant.
2 Kings 17:24-28 records that when the Assyrian king resettled foreign peoples in Samaria the new inhabitants did not fear YHWH and YHWH sent lions among them. The lions were not final judgment. The lions were the covenant summons, YHWH drawing the attention of a people who did not yet know him toward the Torah that speaks of him. The Assyrian king responded by sending back one of the Israelite priests who had been carried away, a Levitical priest from the northern Israelite tradition, to teach them how they should fear YHWH. The priest came and lived in Bethel and taught them the Torah of YHWH.
The Samaritans received the Torah from a genuine Levitical priest of the northern Israelite tradition. Not from a corrupted source. From a priest. And they kept what they received. The Samaritan Pentateuch, the five books of Moshe in the Paleo-Hebrew (the pictographic script Moshe used when he first wrote the Torah, where every letter was a drawn image declaring identity directly) script, is the text the Samaritan community has maintained continuously from that reception to the present day.
The northern kingdom of Israel, whose surviving population and mixed descendants became the Samaritan community, was never in Babylon. The Babylonian exile that produced the Ezra reforms, the Aramaic square script, the fence laws, and the institutional management system of the post-exilic scribal tradition was specifically the experience of the southern kingdom of Judah. The Samaritans were never part of the Babylonian exile. They never came back from Babylon with Ezra. And they never accepted the authority of the institutional framework Ezra built, not because they rejected the covenant but because they pre-dated the formation of that institutional framework and were never under its jurisdiction.
The Samaritans kept the Torah in the Paleo-Hebrew script Moshe wrote it in, without the fence laws, without the oral tradition, without the Aramaic square script that covered the pictures. Not because they were superior. Because they were never in Babylon when the covering happened.
The Rejection
Ezra 4:1-3. When the people of the land heard that the returned exiles were rebuilding the temple they came to Zerubbabel and the heads of the fathers’ houses and said, let us build with you for we worship your God as you do and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here. They were claiming covenant standing. They were appealing to their worship of YHWH. They were saying, we are with you. Let us build.
Zerubbabel and Yeshua the high priest and the rest of the heads of the fathers’ houses said, you have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God. But we alone will build to YHWH the God of Israel as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.
The rejection was institutional. Based not on whether the Samaritans worshipped YHWH, the builders acknowledged they did, but on the authority structure of the Persian imperial decree. The authorization to build came from Cyrus. The Samaritans were not part of the community the imperial authorization covered. The builders’ authority was Persian imperial authority. And the Samaritans were outside it.
The stone the builders rejected. Psalm 118:22. The same pattern. The builders excluding the element they did not recognize as belonging to their building project. And the rejected element becoming something the building project could not produce without it.
You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God. The institutional rejection. On the authority of a Persian imperial decree. The builders could not see that the stone they were rejecting was the foundation the building needed, and that the empty room they built without it would stand empty for 586 years.
What the Rejection Protected
The rejection had a consequence the builders did not intend. By excluding the Samaritans from the institutional building project they protected the Samaritan community from the institutional management system the building project was constructing around itself.
If the builders had accepted the Samaritans, if Zerubbabel and the high priest Yeshua had said yes, come build with us, the Samaritans would have been absorbed into the scribal tradition. The Aramaic square script would have been imposed on them. The fence laws would have been applied to them. The oral tradition would have been taught to them. The numerical system that filled the space the pictures vacated would have replaced the Paleo-Hebrew pictographic declarations they had been keeping. The institutional management of the covenant testimony would have surrounded them and eventually covered what they had been maintaining.
The rejection kept them outside the institution. Outside the Aramaic square script. Outside the fence laws. Outside the oral tradition. Outside the numerical system. Outside the migdal etz (the wooden platform Ezra stood on to place the authorized interpreter above the people and between them and the text). And therefore inside the Paleo-Hebrew pictures. Inside the five books of Moshe in the form Moshe wrote them. Inside the text that marturousin — bears witness, testifies as a legal covenant witness, about the one the pictures had always been declaring.
The builders built the empty room. The rejected community kept the text that pointed toward the living room. The builders covered the pictures with the Aramaic square script. The rejected community maintained the pictures in the Paleo-Hebrew script the Levitical priest had taught them from. The builders constructed the institutional management system the cross abolished. The rejected community was never inside the institutional management system. The stone they rejected kept the pictures of the cornerstone.
The rejection protected what the rejected community was keeping. The builders inadvertently preserved the Paleo-Hebrew pictures by refusing to bring the people who kept them inside the institution that was covering them.
The Lions and the Lion
YHWH sent lions to the resettled peoples in Samaria because they did not know the Torah of the god of the land. The lions were the summons. The covenant calling a people who did not yet know YHWH toward the text that speaks of him. And the people came. They received the Levitical priest. They received the Torah. They feared YHWH.
The lions pointed toward the Torah. The Torah, in the Paleo-Hebrew pictures the Samaritan community maintained, pointed toward the one the Torah was about. And centuries after the lions summoned the Samaritan community to the Torah, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, Revelation 5:5, the covenant title for Yeshua drawn from Genesis 49:9, the blessing of Ya’akov (Jacob) over Judah, the lion who crouches and rises, came to the area the lions had summoned.
Not to Jerusalem first. Not to the builders of the empty room. Not to the scribal tradition that had managed the covering of the pictures. To the well of Ya’akov (Jacob) in Samaria. To the people the lions had called. To the community that had kept the Torah the lions had summoned them to. To the ones who had been excluded from the building project. To the stone the builders had rejected.
The Lion of Judah coming to the people the lions had first called. The one the Torah testifies about coming to the people who had kept the Torah in the form that testifies about him most directly. The marturing, the witness-bearing, of the Paleo-Hebrew Pentateuch leading the people who had kept it to the well where the one the Pentateuch had always been witnessing about was sitting and waiting.
The lions summoned the Samaritans to the Torah. The Torah bore witness about him. He came to the well of the people who had kept the witness. The summons. The testimony. The arrival. One sequence. From the lions to the Lion of Judah at the well of Ya’akov.
The Woman and the Well
Yochanan (John) 4. Yeshua sat at the well of Ya’akov in Samaria at the sixth hour, noon, the middle of the day, the same hour the darkness would later cover the land at Golgotha, the time of maximum light, the hour of full visibility. A Samaritan woman came to draw water.
The exchange that followed is the longest recorded conversation between Yeshua and any individual in the gospel accounts. And at the center of it she made an appeal that carries the full weight of what this document has been establishing. She said, our fathers worshipped on this mountain but you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.
Our fathers. The patriarchal covenant. The five books of Moshe. The Paleo-Hebrew Pentateuch the Samaritan community had received from the Levitical priest and maintained in the script Moshe wrote it in. The worship on Mount Gerizim which the Torah itself commanded, Deuteronomy 11:29, as the mountain of blessing when Israel entered the land. She was not appealing to rabbinic tradition. Not to the oral law. Not to the fence laws. Not to the institutional management of the post-exilic scribal tradition. She was appealing to the Paleo-Hebrew Torah. The text. In the form the Samaritan community had kept it.
And Yeshua did not correct her scripture. He did not say your text is corrupted or your tradition is wrong. He said, woman believe me the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know, we worship what we know for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.
Spirit and truth. The living temple. The body of Mashiach. The house YHWH built for his own habitation now open for all flesh. Neither the stone structure on Mount Gerizim nor the empty room in Jerusalem. The living room. The second temple. Raised in three days. Open for all flesh. For the Samaritan woman at the well as for all who slept. For the community the builders had rejected as for all flesh from Adam. For the people who had kept the pictures as for everyone the pictures had always been declaring.
Then verse 25-26. The woman said, I know that Mashiach (Messiah, the anointed one, the covenant title for the one the entire Torah testimony was pointing toward) is coming. When he comes he will tell us all things. And Yeshua said to her, ego eimi, I am, the one speaking to you.
Ego eimi. I am. The declaration of the divine name in the first person. The same declaration that knocked soldiers backward in the garden of Gethsemane. The same I am that YHWH declared to Moshe at the burning bush, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, I am what I am. The same declaration written in the Paleo-Hebrew pictures of the name YHWH, Yod, hand; Heh, behold; Vav, nail; Heh, behold, that the Samaritan community had been maintaining in their Pentateuch for centuries.
The I am declared at the well to the woman who had kept the pictures that had always been declaring the I am.
Ego eimi. I am. Declared at the well of Ya’akov to the woman from the community that had kept the Paleo-Hebrew pictures of the divine name. The pictures had been saying I am the hand, I am the nail, I am the behold for centuries. And now the I am was sitting at the well saying it directly.
The Pictures Were Always for Us
Not for Him
Here is the most important thing this document has been building toward.
When the soldiers came to arrest Yeshua in the garden of Gethsemane, John 18:4-6, Yeshua asked who are you seeking. They said Yeshua of Nazareth. He said ego eimi, I am. And they drew back and fell to the ground.
The soldiers were not scribes. They were not Pharisees. They were not readers of the Hebrew text in any script. They were armed men, Roman soldiers and temple officers, sent on an arrest mission in the middle of the night. They did not fall backward because they recognized the Paleo-Hebrew pictographic identity declaration of the divine name. They did not fall backward because they had studied the gematria. They did not fall backward because of any script or any system or any institutional tradition.
They fell backward because of the one saying the words. YHWH declaring himself. I am. The identity that the Paleo-Hebrew pictures had been drawing for anyone who could see them since Moshe first drew them in the wilderness. The identity that the Torah had been marturing, bearing witness to, across three thousand years of covenant history. The identity that the Samaritan community had kept in the Paleo-Hebrew pictures through centuries of institutional rejection. That identity was standing in the garden saying I am and armed men fell backward without a single Paleo-Hebrew letter in sight.
Because when I am is present he does not need to carry a picture of himself.
The pictures were always for us. Not for him. The Paleo-Hebrew name YHWH, behold the hand, behold the nail, was drawn so that the text could declare his identity to anyone who could see a drawing. Before he arrived in the incarnate register. Before the Word moved in. Before ego eimi was spoken in the garden or at the well. The pictures were the marturing, the testimony, the witness, of three witnesses pointing at the one who had not yet walked through the door in the fullness of the divine nature.
When he moved in, when the Word eskenosed, when the builder entered the house, the pictures were no longer the primary declaration. The one the pictures had been pointing at was standing there. You do not need a picture of a nail when the one whose name is the nail is standing in front of you showing Thomas the nail marks in his hands as the confirmation of the identity the pictures had always been declaring.
The Samaritan woman kept the pictures. The pictures led her to the well. At the well the one the pictures were about was sitting. And he said I am, and the pictures became almost beside the point. Because the one the pictures had always been right about was there. Saying it himself. In two words. To a woman from the rejected community. At the well of the patriarch. In the land the builders had walked around. At noon. In full light. With nothing hidden.
She left her water jar. She went into the city. She said, come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Mashiach? The woman who had kept the pictures recognized the one the pictures had always been about the moment he said I am. Not because of the pictures. Because the I am is what the pictures had always been about. And the I am had declared itself.
The pictures were for us. The Paleo-Hebrew letters were drawn so the text could declare his identity to anyone who could see them, before he arrived. When he arrived he did not need the pictures. He was what the pictures were pointing at. And he said so. In two words. At a well. To a woman from the people who had kept the pictures.
The Testimony Confirmed
Yeshua said in John 5:39, the scriptures marturousin peri emou, bear witness concerning me. The marturing, the legal covenant witness-bearing, of the Torah and the Prophets and the Psalms. Three witnesses. The testimony of three witnesses establishes a matter, Deuteronomy 19:15. The Torah bearing witness. The Prophets bearing witness. The Psalms bearing witness. All three concerning him.
The Samaritan community kept one of the three witnesses, the Torah, in the Paleo-Hebrew script, without the institutional additions that covered what the witness was saying. They kept the testimony that bore witness about him in the form closest to the form it was given in. Not because they were more righteous than the Jerusalem community. Because the rejection protected them from the institutional management that had been covering the witness in Jerusalem since Ezra stood on the migdal etz and the Aramaic square script replaced the Paleo-Hebrew pictures.
And the one the testimony bore witness about came to the well of the testimony-keepers and confirmed what the testimony had always been saying. Ego eimi. I am. The I am the Paleo-Hebrew name YHWH had been declaring in pictures since Moshe drew them. The I am the Samaritan Pentateuch had been marturing about for centuries in the community the builders had rejected. The I am that the soldiers fell backward from in the garden without a Paleo-Hebrew letter in sight, because the I am does not need the pictures to be what the pictures declare it to be.
The pictures bore witness. The witness was kept by the rejected community. The one the witness bore witness about came to the rejected community’s well. He declared himself. The witness was confirmed. And the woman left her water jar and told the city, come see. The behold, the Heh in the Paleo-Hebrew name, the letter YHWH had placed in Avraham’s name and in Sarah’s name, the command to look, fulfilled at the well of Ya’akov in Samaria by the woman from the community that had kept the behold in the pictures of the divine name since the Levitical priest first taught them the Torah of the god of the land.
Behold. The hand. Behold. The nail. I am. At the well. To the woman who kept the pictures. Confirmed by the one who did not need the pictures to be what the pictures had always declared him to be.
The pictures were for us, not for him. When I am is present he does not need to carry a picture of himself. The testimony was kept by the rejected. The one the testimony was about came to their well. And said so.
The lions summoned the Samaritans to the Torah.
The builders rejected the Samaritans from the empty room.
The rejection protected the pictures from the institutional covering.
The pictures bore witness about him for centuries.
The Lion of Judah came to the well of the people the lions had first called.
Ego eimi.
I am.
The pictures had been saying this since Moshe drew the first nail.
He said it himself at the well. In two words.
To the woman who had kept the pictures.
When I am is present he does not need to carry a picture of himself.
She left her water jar.
Come see.
Behold.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams