The five husbands are commonly taken to be an
allegory of the gods worshipped by the five nations settled in Samaria by the
Assyrians, and the sixth man either of the God of Israel, whom the Samaritans
did not worship properly, or of some deity whose cult had recently been
introduced into Samaria, as, for instance, by Simon Magus (Acts viii. 9 f.).
But lawful wedlock is not an apt allegory for idolatrous worship which figures
in the Old Testament as adultery (cf. Ezek. vi. 9, etc.). And in any case
allegory is not John’s method but symbolism. The Samarian woman is a symbol of
mankind outside the covenant which God has made with his people (as Nicomedus is
of those within it), and the parallel between Jesus’ encounter with her and that
of Jacob with Rachel may suggest the symbolism which (if any) was in the mind
of the evangelist, namely that of the Saviour seeking the Church, his Bride (cf.
Rev. xxi. 9), among those outside the old covenant—and in the event the woman
proves to be more responsive to Jesus than Nicodemus had been. The five
husbands then are no more allegorical than the six stone water-pots of ii.
6. The point of mentioning the exact number five is to emphasise Jesus’
supernatural knowledge of the woman’s affairs. (J. N. Sanders, A Commentary
on the Gospel According to St John, ed. B. A. Mastin [London: Adam &
Charles Black, 1968], 144)
