The five husbands of the Samaritan woman are explained at 2 Kings 17:29-33. How can you have five senses as your husband but yet "know not what ye worship"? "Ye" is plural.
Five People, Five Gods
When the original inhabitants of Samaria were exiled from their land by Shalmaneser, the Assyrian king, sent people from five different places in Babylon, each group with its own god, to inhabit the land of Samaria. The Jews who were left in Samaria intermarried with these people and incorporated the worship of their gods into the worship of Jehovah. While they continued to claim that they feared and worshipped the Lord — Jehovah, and convinced themselves that they did, they became base idolaters and forsook the worship of God altogether. Read 2 Kings 17:29-33.
{Can you imagine someone worshiping the "moon principle" and the "sun principle" but rejecting God as a an intelligent being altogether?}
“Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. And the men of Babylon made Succothbenoth[1], and the men of Cuth made Nergal,[2] and the men of Hamath made Ashima,[3] And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak,[4] and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.[5] So they feared the LORD, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places. They feared the LORD, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.”
These five gods (Nibhaz and Tartak as a conglomerate and Adrammelech and Anammelech as a conglomerate), like the five husbands this Samaritan woman had had, were all false gods of whoredom. As those men were not this woman’s husbands, (They took everything from her and gave her nothing!), so the gods of the heathen were not God and were not husbands to her needy soul. But He who was her Husband, the Lord Jesus Who had espoused her to Himself from eternity had come “to take the names of Balaam out of her mouth” and to teach her to call Him alone “My Husband” (Hosea 2:16-17). O may He do that for you!
=After a while, the southern tribes of the nation, Judah, were taken captive and carried away into Babylon for seventy years. But they never lost their distinct identity as Jews, and stoutly refused to worship the gods of Babylon.
- Succothbenoth - meant booths of daughters or prostitutes.
- Nergal - means 'dunghill cock' (symbol of a hero worshipped) or meant "hero" -- one of the chief Assyrian and Babylonian deities, seems to have corresponded closely to the classical Mars. ( 2 Kings 17:30 ) It is conjectured that he may represent the deified Nimrod.
- Ashima - means crime; offense. (Hindu/Sanskrit - Without borders; Limitless).Also may refer to a particular river. was the god of Hamath, worshipped under the image of an ape or a goat with no fur.
- Nibhaz was a dog, representing a demon. Tartak was a jackass, representing the prince of darkness. Both were probably made of gold.
- Adrammelech was the sun god, in the form of a man. Anammelech was the moon god with the representation of a woman. They were images of Molech, to whom men and women offered their own children as sacrifices in fire.
None of those words had any specific relation to worship of the five senses. The five husbands = five senses is without foundation.
St. John's Gospel Described and Explained Volume 2 by Christoph Ernst Luthardt - Page 63The five husbands was a reference to idol worship. The sixth husband was reference to the Samaritans not having properly been 'evangelized' into Israel. The Samaritans were known for claiming to be Jews while not being so. The Gnostic claiming "five husbands" = "five senses" is baseless. Husband is a word that refers to one who protects an asset or assets. The Temple was still standing at the time.
Discourses and Sayings of Our Lord Jesus Christ by John Brown - Page 70 footnote.
Simon {Magus} was the Samaritan sorcerer who professed conversion to Christianity and sought to buy an apostleship. The Bible records this historic event in Acts 8:9-24.
...
There are veiled references to Simon's false Christianity and similar heretical sects in the New Testament. Jude 4, for example, is rather pointed against Simon's principal doctrine—the heresy that one does not have to obey God's laws after conversion. John, the apostle who completed the Bible, placed great emphasis on Christians keeping God's commandments (I John 2:3-6).
John's phrase about those "who say they are Jews, and are not, but lie" (Revelation 3:9) may have its first-century basis in Simon's Samaritan counterfeit of true Christianity. Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century, mentions that Samaritans would falsely claim to be Jews when they thought it was to their advantage to do so (Antiquities of the Jews, 9.14.3; 9.8.6). (Source)
In the early portion his Book VI of the Refutation of All Heresies, Hippolytus deals with the reported writings of Simon from a book called Megale Apophasis, or the Great Announcement.[14] Using Justin as his source, Hippolytus states that Simon was from the village of Gitta in Samaria. However, unlike in Irenaeus, Simon is characterized by Hippolytus as trying to explain the mysteries of the law of Moses, and incorporating them into his own doctrines.
According to Hippolytus, Simon claims to have appeared to the Jews “in Judea as ‘Son,’ and in Samaria as ‘Father,’ and among the rest of the Gentiles as ‘Holy Spirit.”[17] Simon was claiming to be the Father, the one true God. (Source)Related:
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