=19, 20. The woman saith unto him.= Her sentence is incomplete, either in the utterance or in the report. It is the basis of a question, implied, or perhaps expressed, but not given by John, in which place should worship be offered; which were right, Jew or Samaritan. The question was one fiercely debated between them (See on verse 5).--=I perceive that thou art a prophet.= It was a hasty conclusion; Christ might have known her character and life by other than supernatural means. Bigotry and vice are apt to be credulous and superstitious. Observe, however, the difference in tone between this declaration and the language of verse 9: “How is it that thou being a Jew.”--=Our fathers worshipped.= “The argument of ‘our fathers’ has always proved strong. Opinions, like electricity, are supposed to descend more safely along an unbroken chain. That which ‘our fathers’ or our ancestors believed, is apt to seem necessarily true; and the larger the roots of any belief, the more flourishing, it is supposed, will be its top.”--(_Beecher._) Calvin’s comments are admirable though too long to quote. He suggests four errors into which men are apt to fall, from blindly following the “_fathers_,” all illustrated by the Samaritans: (1) When pride has created a false custom or religion, the history of the fathers is ransacked to find justification for it; (2) when men imitate the example of the evil-doers, because they are ancient, forgetful that they only are worthy to be reckoned as fathers who are true sons of God; (3) when we imitate the conduct but not the spirit of the fathers, as if one should defend human sacrifice from the example of Abraham in Gen. 22:1-10; (4) when we imitate the conduct of the fathers without considering the change of circumstances, as when the Christian church attempts to copy the ceremonials of the Jewish. “None of these are true imitators of the fathers; most of them are apes.”--=In this mount=, Gerizim. According to the Samaritan tradition it was here that Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac; and here, not on Ebal, as according to our Scripture (Josh. 8:30; Deut. 27:4), that the altar was erected by Joshua on which the words of the law were inscribed. The first view is sanctioned by some Christian scholars, prominent among whom is Dean Stanley. A temple was built on Gerizim by the Samaritans, according to Josephus, during the reign of Alexander, though the date is doubtful. The two temples intensified the bitterness of the feud between the Jews and the Samaritans, and the Samaritan temple was deserted and destroyed, B. C. 129, by John Hyrcanus (Josephus’ Antiquities 13:9, 11); but the Samaritans at Sechem (Nablus) still call Gerizim the holy mountain, and turn their faces toward it in prayer.--=Ye say.= She still treats Christ as a Jew.