This choice of Ænon on account of there being “much water there” points to water having already become somewhat scarce elsewhere. There are in the North-eastern part of Judæa only a few springs which never fail. These are much valued, and one such spring at least was found at Ænon; its site is doubtful (see Bishop Westcott, “St John’s Gospel”). If, as some have supposed, it was late in the Autumn when our Lord made this journey, water would be abundant enough in many places, as the streams become full in November. I speak of this because it bears out my view that our Lord’s journey through Samaria took place in the May and not in the December of A.D. 28. In the latter half of the former month, I suppose that our Lord left Judæa and passed, with only a few disciples, through Samaria into Galilee (see pp. 171, 174, 176, 179). The verse— “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, that they are white already unto harvest,” John iv. 35, is important in determining the dates. Some regard the above saying as having been spoken soon after seed time; and think that the first sentence refers to the state of the corn at that moment, when it would have been just coming up, it being then four months from harvest: this would agree with the view that the journey was taken at the end of December,(348) and that the “whiteness to harvest” referred metaphorically to the harvest of conversions the Apostles were to reap. Others, among whom is Dr Edersheim, regard the country as being _at the time of speaking_ white (that is _bright_) with harvest, and consider the words to have been spoken in May and to bear a literal sense. This latter view seems to me to agree best with the incidents of the journey, many of which—our Lord’s weariness, His resting at the fountain(349) and His asking for drink—wear, to my mind, an aspect of summer; moreover, the words “Say ye not” apply better to a maxim of husbandry lying in the minds of the people, than to such an indisputable fact as the time of year when they were spoken. It would have seemed more natural to say “Are we not four months now from harvest?” It was a fact which was in every husbandman’s mouth, that the interval between seed time (December), and barley harvest (April) was four months, and our Lord’s meaning is, “The husbandman has to wait four months for his harvest, you begin at once to reap; law-givers and prophets and agencies unseen have sown for you.” A.D. 28. _June._