Weeve Ministry

Beginning of Jesus' public ministry

Judea to Galilee through Samaria

John 3:22 to 4:54; Luke 4:16-31 · 6 stops · 7 readings

The road north that most Judeans went out of their way to avoid: through Samaria to a well at noon, then home to a rejection at Nazareth and a new home at Capernaum.

For a while Jesus and John are baptizing in parallel in the Judean countryside, until the attention of the Pharisees makes staying there unwise. The direct road north to Galilee runs through Samaria, which observant Judeans commonly avoided by crossing the Jordan and coming back over further north. This journey takes the direct road. It stops at Jacob's well outside Sychar in the heat of the day, where a conversation with a Samaritan woman about water turns into the plainest claim Jesus has yet made about himself, and he stays two days in her town on the strength of her word. In Galilee he heals a royal official's son at Cana without going to the boy's bedside in Capernaum, twenty miles off. Then Nazareth, where he reads Isaiah in the synagogue he grew up in and the congregation tries to throw him from the brow of the hill. He leaves and settles at Capernaum on the lakeshore, the base for everything that follows.

Walk it on the map

The stops

  1. Judea

    DebatedRepresentative point in central Judea · Judea

  2. by way of Samaria

    Jacob's Well

    ProbableJacob's Well traditional site · Nablus area, West Bank

  3. Galilee

    DebatedRepresentative point in Lower Galilee · Northern Israel

  4. Cana of Galilee

    ProbableHorbat Qana / Khirbet Qana · Lower Galilee

  5. Nazareth

    High confidenceNazareth · Northern Israel

  6. Capernaum

    High confidenceTell Hum / Kfar Nahum · Sea of Galilee, north shore

The line drawn on the map connects these stops in narrative order. It is schematic: it does not claim to trace the exact road between them, and each place carries its own confidence rating.

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