as the only begotten Son of God sent in love to redeem the world (John
iii. 16-21).

120. John's record suggests that Jesus left Jerusalem shortly after the
conversation with Nicodemus. His work there was not without success, for
Nicodemus seems to have been henceforth his loyal advocate (compare John
vii. 50-52; xix. 39); and it may be that at the time of this sojourn he
won the hearts of his friends in Bethany, for the first picture the
gospels give of this household seems to presuppose a somewhat intimate
relation of Jesus to the family (Luke x. 38-42). It would be idle to
speculate whether it was at this time or later that he became acquainted
with Joseph of Arimathea, or the friends who during the last week of his
life showed him hospitality (Mark xi. 2-6; xiv. 12-16).

121. For a time after his withdrawal from Jerusalem he lingered in Judea,
carrying on a simple ministry of preparation like that of John the
Baptist. In this way the summer and early autumn seem to have passed,
Jesus growing more popular as a prophet than John himself had been. The
fact that Jesus' disciples administered baptism in connection with his
work roused the jealousy of some of John's followers, and attracted again
the attention of Jerusalem to the new activity of the bold disturber of
the temple market. John's disciples complained to him of Jesus' rivalry,
and received his self-effacing confession, "He must increase, I must
decrease." The Pharisees, on the other hand, made Jesus feel that further
work in Judea was for the time unwise, and he withdrew into Galilee for
retirement, since "a prophet has no honor in his own country" (John iv.
1-3, 44). Baffled in his first effort to win his people, this journey back
from the region of the holy city must have been one of no little sadness
for Jesus. Some urgency for haste led him by the direct road through
despised Samaria. A seemingly chance conversation with a woman at Jacob's
well, where he was resting at noonday, gave him an opportunity for
ministry which was more ingenuously received than any which he had been
able to render in Judea; and to this woman he declared himself even more
plainly than to Nicodemus, and preached to her that spiritual idea of
worship which he had sought to enforce by cleansing Jerusalem's temple.
Samaria was so isolated from all Jewish interest that Jesus felt no need
for reserve in this "strange" land. The few days spent there must have
been peculiarly welcome to