The Samaritans lived in a region between Galilee and Judea. They were originally from the tribes of Ephraim and half of Manasseh. Long ago, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and took many Israelites away as prisoners. He brought people from other nations to live there as well (2 Kings 17:24; Ezra 4:2-11).
These new people worshipped their own gods, but when wild animals, like lions, started attacking them, they thought it was because they weren’t worshipping the God of the land. So they asked the king of Assyria for help. He sent an Israelite priest to teach them how to worship the Lord. However, they still worshipped both their own gods and the Lord (2 Kings 17:26-28). This mixed worship continued even in Jesus’ time.
The Samaritans were seen as “mixed” people because they married the remaining Israelites in Samaria. The Jews didn’t like them and considered them different. The Samaritans also did a few things that made the Jews upset:
They tried to stop the rebuilding of the temple and the city walls (Nehemiah 6:1-14). They built their own temple on Mount Gerizim, claiming it was the true place of worship.
They only believed in the first five books of Moses and ignored the other prophetic books and Jewish traditions.
The Jews and Samaritans didn’t get along at all. The Jews even thought of Samaritans as the worst kind of people (John 8:48) and avoided them (John 4:9). But Jesus changed this by sharing the Gospel with the Samaritans (John 4:6-26), and later, the apostles continued to follow Jesus’ example (Acts 8:25).
