8. The Leaven
Figurative Like the Water Spoken of by Jesus to the Woman of
Samaria.
But I wonder if the disciples thought, before the saying
was explained to them by Jesus, that their Teacher and Lord was
forbidding them to beware of the sensible leaven of the Pharisees or
the Sadducees as impure, and on this account forbidden, lest they might
use that leaven because they had not taken loaves. And we might
make a like inquiry in regard to other things; but by-way of
illustration the narrative about the woman of Samaria sufficeth,
“Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but
whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never
thirst.”
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For there,
also, so far as the mere form of ex
pression is concerned, the Samaritan woman
would seem to have thought that the Saviour was giving a promise about
sensible water, when He said, “Whosoever drinketh of the water
that I shall give him shall never thirst.” And those things
then must be figuratively interpreted, and we must examine and compare
the water of the spring of Jacob from which the woman of Samaria drew
water with the water of Jesus; and here the like must be done; for
perhaps the loaves were not baked, but a kind of raw leaven solely, the
teaching, namely, of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
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John xiv. 13, 14
.