Genesis 29:2-3
A great stone upon the well’s mouth
The custom is explained before it is broken: they waited until all the flocks were gathered, then rolled the stone and watered, then put it back.
Objects of the Bible
The well of Jacob
A hole in the ground with a stone on it, and two of the most consequential conversations in the Bible held beside it.
Wells are where this family meets people. Abraham’s servant finds Rebekah at one, Moses meets Zipporah at one, and Jacob arrives at Haran to find three flocks lying by a well with a great stone on its mouth, waiting for enough men to gather to roll it away. He rolls it alone when he sees Rachel coming, waters the flock, kisses her and lifts up his voice and weeps, all before anybody has explained who he is.
Scroll down to the story
The movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The well of Jacob
- 01
- 02
Genesis 29:10
He rolled the stone from the well’s mouth
He does the work of a crowd on his own the moment Rachel appears. The text gives no comment and no explanation.
- 03
Genesis 29:11-12
He wept
The kiss and the weeping come before the introduction. Twenty years of his life are decided at this well within a few verses.
- 04
John 4:5-9
Jesus therefore, being wearied, sat thus on the well
John locates the well by the ground Jacob gave Joseph, notes the hour, and lets the request for a drink carry the scandal.
- 05
John 4:13-15
A well of water springing up
The offer is of water that ends the coming back. She asks for it in practical terms and the practical request is not corrected.
Why it matters
Two thousand years later a well near Sychar, which John says was Jacob’s well and the parcel of ground Jacob gave to his son Joseph, is where a tired man sits down at noon and asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. The object is the same kind of thing in both scenes: a fixed point in the ground that people have to come to, where a stranger and a local end up talking longer than either intended. The second conversation turns on water that would make the well unnecessary.
3 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
