The contempt and hatred which the Jews entertained toward the Samaritans was manifested, not only in their refusal to have any dealings with them beyond what was demanded by necessity (see chap. 4:9) but also in the fact that the Jews made the name of Samaritan a synonym for everything that was vile and contemptible. As Lightfoot remarks, they could not in this instance have mistaken Jesus for a Samaritan literally, because, according to verse 20, he was in the treasury of the temple, a place where no Samaritan was permitted to come. They used the term figuratively as a reproach. Rosenmüller says: “There was a notorious and deadly hatred between the Jews and Samaritans on account of religion. For this reason the Jews, in the language of common life, applied the epithet Samaritan, not only to one who belonged to Samaria, but to everyone whom they supposed had the mode of thinking and the principles of a Samaritan; and they, therefore, often designated by this name a sworn enemy of the Jewish people and the Jewish religion, and a morally bad man. So, in our own language, a man who has a propensity to cruelty and despotism we call a Turk, and a covetous rich man a Jew” (Morgenland, vol. 5, p. 241).