Samaria/Samaritans

The name of a city and an area in Israel. It is not always clear in the Old Testament whether a verse refers to the area or to the city. During most of the 210-year history of the northern kingdom (Israel), the city of Samaria was its capital. For this reason, the name Samaria often refers to the whole northern kingdom. King Omri made Samaria the capital city of Israel about 880 BC. Later his son, King Ahab, built an elaborate palace there, decorated with so much ivory that it was called “the ivory house.” Ahab and his wife, Jezebel, made it a place of luxury and idol worship. The city was finally destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 BC after a three-year siege. Most of it was burned, but it was later rebuilt.

In the New Testament, Samaria refers to an area about forty miles wide and thirty-five miles long right in the middle of Israel. Judea was south of it and Galilee was north. The people who lived in Samaria did not follow the same rules of Judaism as the people in Judea and Galilee. Terrible hatred existed between Samaritans and the Jews of Israel during the time of Jesus. For this reason, most Jews would not travel through Samaria; they would take a much longer route so they wouldn’t have to go through this province. Jesus, however, traveled through Samaria, and on one such trip He had an important conversation with a woman at a well.