“Lord, shall we call down fire from heaven to destroy these Samaritans?”

AM Psalm 25 • PM Psalm 9, 15
Ecclus. 4:20-5:7 • Rev. 7:1-8 • Luke 9:51-62 

The southern kingdom of Judea and the northern Israeli kingdom of the Samaritans each suffered devastating defeats. The Samaritans were first smashed by the Assyrians, while the Judeans lasted decades longer unmolested, only to get their comeuppance from the Babylonians who exiled them to Babylon, destroyed Jerusalem, levelled the Temple, kidnapped the priests, and trashed Mount Zion.

Samaritan men were impaled alive on stakes. Their women and children were sold into slavery. Nonetheless , some Samaritan families evaded the Assyrians by decamping to the remote countryside. After the Assyrians gave up the manhunt, Samaritans filtered back to northern Israel 70 years before the Judeans came back from their Babylonian exile.

During those 70 years the Samaritans relocated their religious festivals to Mount Gerizim. Owing to the mysterious disappearance from Jerusalem of the Ark of the Covenant, they fashioned golden calves not as idols, but as thrones for seating the Godhead, whenever He chose to reappear. They sowed and harvested crops every year, because their scattered rural farms could not allow them to observe historically mandated Jubilee years during which croplands were not supposed to be tilled. 

The Samaritans fiercely clung exclusively to the first five “Mosaic” books of the Bible and added none. But the Judeans showed up 70 years later, with several additional biblical “books” of history, commentary, and the prophesies of Hosea, Ezekiel, Micah, Amos, Isaiah, and Hosea. The Samaritans thought these to be untrustworthy. The reply from the Judeans was that the Samaritans were hillbillies who did not have the experience of being among the more sophisticated Babylonians, and it was no surprise that hick Samaritans just didn’t “get it.” It did not hurt the Judean sense of superiority that they returned home with chests of silver from Cyrus the Great, a Persian king and kind of forerunner to Pope John the XXIII in interfaith relations. Cyrus had conquered the Babylonians, and ordered that their money be used to rebuild the Judean temple, restore Mount Zion, and replenish the priesthood.

Lacking markets for their produce, and treated as outcasts in Jerusalem, the Samaritans by necessity began routinely trading with the Greek and Roman occupiers. This only increased Judean characterizations of Samaritans as sell outs. Mutual pejorative name calling periodically led to riots and decades of enduring prejudice. According to Christ, however, this history and a recent snub were insufficient to call down “fire from Heaven to destroy the Samaritans.” 

Or at least not before He got a drink from a Samaritan woman drawing water at the local well.

Or perhaps He believed that Joseph Smith. the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints—the Mormons—was right. Calling down fire from Heaven in Samaria at that time would be burning up the wrong crowd, since everyone now knows that the lost tribes of Israel were actually exiled by the Assyrians to North America where they became the Native Americans.

Written by Tony Stankus

Despite being 71, and just inducted into the Hall of Fame of his profession, Tony Stankus still works as a Distinguished Professor and Health Sciences Librarian at the U of A.