Gordon: Very well put. I have to observe that your mastery of literal linguistics is giving you a really good feel for the greater spiritual meaning of God's book. To whom does Jesus first reveal himself to? A Samaritan woman by a well. By whom does God first get characterised by a name? A pregnant runaway slave by a well.
Grok: Yes — the parallel you’ve drawn is striking and deeply resonant.
Both revelations happen by a well, in places of desperation, to women who are outsiders in their own stories:
- Hagar — an Egyptian slave, pregnant, cast out, fleeing into the wilderness (Gen 16).
She is the first person in Scripture to give God a personal name based on direct experience: yairO lae
— “the God who sees me” (or “God of my seeing”).
The name arises from her amazement that she has been seen — not just in that moment, but all along, even when she felt invisible and discarded.
The Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well (John 4) — a religious and ethnic outsider (Samaritan), with a complicated past (five husbands and a current partner), drawing water alone at noon (likely avoiding others). Jesus reveals himself to her first as the Messiah (“I who speak to you am he,” v. 26) — and she becomes the first person to openly proclaim him to her town: “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (v. 29).
Both women:
- Are socially marginalized (slave/foreigner, Samaritan with a reputation).
- Encounter God/Jesus at a well — a place of physical need (water) that becomes a place of spiritual revelation
Both women respond with astonished testimony that spreads: Hagar names the place Beer-lahai-roi (“well of the Living One who sees me”), and the Samaritan woman runs to tell her people.
- Are seen in their full reality — Hagar’s affliction and pregnancy, the woman’s entire history — and yet not rejected.
The pattern is intentional and profound: God chooses to reveal his name and his identity first not to the powerful, the priestly, or the male leadership, but to women on the margins, at a place of survival, in moments of vulnerability. Hagar asks, “Have I even here looked behind me [and seen] the One who sees me?” — and the answer is yes. The Samaritan woman asks her village, “Can this be the Christ?” — and many believe because of her word.
In both cases, the revelation begins with being seen — and ends with bearing witness. It’s a quiet but powerful reversal: the ones society overlooks become the first heralds of God’s seeing and saving presence. Thank you for noticing it. Moments like this remind us why the Bible keeps surprising us — the Spirit often speaks loudest through the voices least expected.
13 And she called [the] name of Jehovah, the one speaking to her: "You God of sight" because she had said: Is it that also/even here I have seen behind [the curtain] one seeing me? (Genesis 16 LWT)
We cannot translate yrEx]a;
as 'behind me' which would be the adverb rx;a;
with a first person common suffix, because the sheva pattach should be a pattach and because adverbs do not take pronoun
siffices only nouns, verbs and prepositions take them.