📖 Biblical Definition
Samaria served as the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel after the division under Rehoboam. It was built by Omri and became the seat of Ahab and Jezebel's idolatrous reign, a center of Baal worship and apostasy. The Assyrians conquered Samaria in 722 BC (2 Kings 17), deported the Israelites, and resettled the land with foreign peoples who intermarried with the remaining Israelites -- producing the Samaritans, whom the Jews despised as half-breeds and heretics. The Samaritans built a rival temple on Mount Gerizim and accepted only the Pentateuch. By Jesus' time, Jews and Samaritans had no dealings with each other (John 4:9). Yet Jesus deliberately traveled through Samaria, spoke with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well (John 4), made a Samaritan the hero of His most famous parable (Luke 10:25-37), and specifically included Samaria in the Great Commission pattern: "Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). The gospel broke through every ethnic and religious barrier that human religion had erected.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
The capital city of the kingdom of Israel, and the region surrounding it.
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SAMA'RIA, n. [Heb. watch-mountain.] The capital of the ten tribes of Israel after the division; also the district or region of central Palestine between Judea and Galilee, inhabited by a mixed population of Jews and Gentiles called Samaritans.
📖 Key Scripture
• John 4:9 — "The Samaritan woman said to him, 'How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?' (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)"
• Acts 1:8 — "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth."
• Luke 10:33 — "But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion."
• 2 Kings 17:6 — "In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Samaria is either ignored entirely or reduced to a lesson about "tolerance" without theological substance.
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The Good Samaritan parable is universally reduced to "be nice to people who are different from you" -- a moral lesson about tolerance. This completely misses the point. Jesus made the Samaritan the hero precisely because Samaritans were the most hated, despised, theologically suspect group in Jewish culture. The parable is not about generic kindness; it is about the gospel shattering every human category of who is "in" and who is "out." The priest and the Levite -- the religiously credentialed -- failed. The heretic showed mercy. This is the gospel itself: the one you reject might be the one through whom God acts. Similarly, Acts 1:8 is not merely a missions strategy but a theological earthquake -- the gospel must go through Samaria, the place of ancient enmity, before it reaches the ends of the earth.
Usage
• "Jesus did not avoid Samaria -- He walked straight through it, because the gospel is for the people the religious establishment despises."
• "The Samaritan woman at the well received the deepest theological teaching in the Gospels on worship in spirit and truth -- God gave His best revelation to the person everyone else rejected."