At the Feast of Tabernacles

162:0.1When Je­sus started up to Je­ru­sa­lem with the ten apos­tles, he planned to go through Samaria, that be­ing the shorter route. Ac­cord­ingly, they passed down the east­ern shore of the lake and, by way of Scythopo­lis, en­tered the bor­ders of Samaria. Near night­fall Je­sus sent Philip and Mat­thew over to a vil­lage on the east­ern slopes of Mount Gil­boa to se­cure lodg­ing for the com­pany. It so hap­pened that these vil­lagers were greatly prej­u­diced against the Jews, even more so than the av­er­age Samar­i­tans, and these feel­ings were height­ened at this par­tic­u­lar time as so many were on their way to the feast of taber­na­cles. These peo­ple knew very lit­tle about Je­sus, and they re­fused him lodg­ing be­cause he and his as­so­ciates were Jews. When Mat­thew and Philip man­i­fested in­dig­na­tion and in­formed these Samar­i­tans that they were de­clin­ing to en­ter­tain the Holy One of Is­rael, the in­fu­ri­ated vil­lagers chased them out of the lit­tle town with sticks and stones.

162:0.2Af­ter Philip and Mat­thew had re­turned to their fel­lows and re­ported how they had been driven out of the vil­lage, James and John stepped up to Je­sus and said: “Mas­ter, we pray you to give us per­mis­sion to bid fire come down from heaven to de­vour these in­so­lent and im­pen­i­tent Samar­i­tans.” But when Je­sus heard these words of vengeance, he turned upon the sons of Zeb­e­dee and severely re­buked them: “You know not what man­ner of at­ti­tude you man­i­fest. Vengeance sa­vors not of the out­look of the king­dom of heaven. Rather than dis­pute, let us jour­ney over to the lit­tle vil­lage by the Jor­dan ford.” Thus be­cause of sec­tar­ian prej­u­dice these Samar­i­tans de­nied them­selves the honor of show­ing hos­pi­tal­ity to the Cre­ator Son of a uni­verse.

162:0.3Je­sus and the ten stopped for the night at the vil­lage near the Jor­dan ford. Early the next day they crossed the river and con­tin­ued on to Je­ru­sa­lem by way of the east Jor­dan high­way, ar­riv­ing at Beth­any late Wednes­day evening. Thomas and Na­than­iel ar­rived on Fri­day, hav­ing been de­layed by their con­fer­ences with Ro­dan.

162:0.4Je­sus and the twelve re­mained in the vicin­ity of Je­ru­sa­lem un­til the end of the fol­low­ing month (Oc­to­ber), about four and one-half weeks. Je­sus him­self went into the city only a few times, and these brief vis­its were made dur­ing the days of the feast of taber­na­cles. He spent a con­sid­er­able por­tion of Oc­to­ber with Ab­ner and his as­so­ciates at Beth­le­hem.