Then answered the Jews, and said to him, Say we not well that you are a Samaritan, and have a devil?
Say.
John 8:52 Then said the Jews unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, If a man keep my saying, he shall never taste of death.
John 13:13 Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.
Matthew 15:7 Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,
thou.
John 4:9 Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.
John 7:20 The people answered and said, Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee?
John 10:20 And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him?
“Are we not right to say that You are a Samaritan
The accusation of being a Samaritan was a significant insult in the Jewish context. Samaritans were considered heretical and ethnically impure by the Jews due to their mixed heritage and differing religious practices. This reflects the deep-seated animosity between Jews and Samaritans, which dates back to the Assyrian conquest and the subsequent intermarriage of Israelites with foreign settlers. By calling Jesus a Samaritan, the Jewish leaders are attempting to discredit Him and His teachings, associating Him with a group they viewed as outside the covenant community.
and You have a demon?”
Accusing Jesus of having a demon was a way to dismiss His authority and the divine nature of His mission. In the cultural and religious context of the time, attributing someone's actions or words to demonic influence was a serious charge, implying that they were not only wrong but spiritually corrupt. This accusation is a continuation of the theme in the Gospels where Jesus is misunderstood and rejected by the religious leaders. It also echoes earlier instances in the Gospels where Jesus is accused of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul (e.g., Matthew 12:24). This reflects the spiritual blindness and hardness of heart that Jesus often confronted in His ministry.
• The response comes after Jesus’ bold claim, “Truly, truly, I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8:58). His declaration of eternal existence provokes an immediate confrontation.
• Earlier in the chapter they had already challenged His identity (John 8:25, 33, 41). Now the tension reaches a climax as they speak collectively, displaying unified resistance similar to the council in John 11:47-48.
• Their answer illustrates the pattern that light exposes darkness and brings opposition (John 3:19-20; Acts 7:54-57).
• They frame their accusation as obvious truth, revealing self-righteous certainty. Proverbs 26:12 warns, “Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.”
• Isaiah 5:20 describes the danger of calling evil good and good evil; here they call the sinless Son of God evil.
• 1 Corinthians 8:2 reminds that “the one who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.” Their confidence exposes their ignorance.
• In first-century Judea, calling someone a Samaritan was a slur questioning lineage, orthodoxy, and loyalty (John 4:9).
• They imply Jesus is an outsider, unclean, and heretical—dismissing His authority by labeling Him with a despised group (Luke 9:52-54).
• Ironically, Jesus had already shown compassion to Samaritans (John 4:4-42; Luke 17:11-19), revealing God’s heart for the marginalized, while His accusers cling to prejudice.
• Accusing Jesus of being demon-possessed repeats earlier charges (John 7:20) and anticipates later mockery (John 10:20). The pattern traces back to those who called righteousness “sorcery” (Matthew 12:24; Mark 3:22).
• By attributing His words to demonic influence, they reject the witness of His miracles (John 5:36), His teaching (John 7:46), and the Father’s testimony (John 8:18).
• This blasphemous claim fulfills prophecy that the Messiah would be “despised and rejected by men” (Isaiah 53:3).
John 8:48 captures hardened hearts responding to Christ’s self-revelation with insults instead of faith. Their collective certainty (“Are we not right”) masks spiritual blindness, leading them to smear Him as both a Samaritan outsider and a demon-possessed deceiver. The verse exposes the tragic reality that when confronted with undeniable truth, unrepentant hearts may choose slander over surrender.
(48) Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?--The words imply that the saying was customary among the Pharisees. The knowledge of this, and the simple way in which the fact is told, is one of many instances of the writer's minute acquaintance with what was said and done by the leaders of the Jerusalem party. There is no instance given of the term "Samaritan" being applied to our Lord, but the term itself is frequently used by the Rabbis as one of opprobrium. The history of the fourth chapter is at once suggested to our minds, and was probably not absent from theirs. (Comp. Note on John 7:35.) There may have been facts more immediately connected with this very Feast of Tabernacles present to their minds, which are unknown to us. The going up secretly of John 7:10, must almost certainly have been through Samaria. He had kept the last Passover in the despised Galilee (John 6:4). Had He kept Tabernacles in the hated Samaria? It is worth noting that the word Samaritan, in the singular, as applied to an individual, occurs but twice, except here and in John 4. One instance is in the parable spoken at no long interval after the present discourse (Luke 10:25-37). The other tells us that the only one of the ten lepers who turned back to glorify God "was a Samaritan" (Luke 17:16).The rendering, "and hast a devil," is one which, probably, cannot now be improved. Wiclif's word here is "fiend," which in this sense is obsolete. But every reader of the Greek must feel how little our English word can represent the two distinct ideas, represented by two distinct words here and in John 8:44. "Demon," used originally for the lower divinities, and not unfrequently for the gods, passed in the Scriptures, which taught the knowledge of the true God, into the sense of an evil spirit. Thus the word which could represent the attendant genius of Socrates came to express what we speak of as demoniacal possession, and the supposed power of witchcraft and sorcery. Socrates is made to say, "For this reason, therefore, rather than for any other, he calls them demons, because they were prudent and knowing" (da?mones, Plato, Cratylus, xxiii.). The history of Simon Magus reminds us that the people of Samaria, from the least to the greatest, had been for a long time under the influence of his sorceries (Acts 8:9 et seq.), and it is probable that there is a special connection in the words here, "Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a demon." (Comp. Excursus III. on Notes to St. Matthew's Gospel, p. 185.) . . .
Verse 48. - But it brought from them a shout of derision and a burst of scornful mockery. The Jews answered and said unto him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a daemon? They imagine that the bare charge that they, the leaders of Israel, are "not of God," and that they reveal the fact by their inability to hear the words of God then sounding in their ears, was flat heresy, a gross lack of patriotism, and proved that, in his lofty self-assertion, he was no better than a Samaritan - the most hated of their neighbours. They return a harsh tu-quoque to our Lord's refusal to admit their Abrahamic descent, and his condemnation of their utter moral dissimilarity from their putative father. The sentence, "a Samaritan art thou!" is singularly insulting in its tone and form. We cannot measure the exact amount of insult they condensed into this word, whether it be of heresy, or alienation from Israel, or accusation of impure descent. It is remarkable that our Lord had shown special kindness to Samaritans (ch. 4.), and had made in his parable "the good Samaritan" the type of neighbourly love; but these very Jews had, in the height of this controversy, accused him of being a "Galilaean," and it is not probable that they used the term otherwise than as a soubriquet of scorn. Edersheim (loc. cit., 2:174, 175) would translate into Aramaic the language here cited, and finds in its form Shomroni the real interpretation of its meaning. Shomron is, according to him, used in rabbinical writing for Ashmedai, and in the cabbalists is used for Sammael or Satan. Arabian traditions are brought in to confirm this interpretation of the speech, which he regards as equivalent to "Thou art a child of the devil," thus retorting upon Jesus the charge that they were doing the works of their father, the devil. The one expression is thought by Edersheim equivalent to that which follows, thou hast a daemon; and his explanation is thought to cover our Lord's silence respecting it. In our opinion this is far-fetched and unnatural. Christ's silence is better justified by his refusal to regard such a term as conveying opprobrium, tic had risen above the distinction of race, and could afford to despise the taunt. In John 7:20 (see note) a similar charge had been made by the angry Jews. The Lord is accused of being mastered by some daemon, who is perverting his mind and confusing his speech. Some further force is added to the charge from the language of the Talmud, 'Jebamoth,' fol. 47, a: "R. Nachman, son of Isaac, said to a Samaritan, 'Thou art a Cuthite, and testimony from thy mouth has no validity.'"