John 4:1–45 – “Jesus and a woman from Samaria”
(Josiah Hall)
John 4:1–45 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 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.)10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
27 Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”
43 After the two days he departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.
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John tells us that this unexpected conversation between Jesus and an unnamed Samaritan woman began around noon (the sixth hour from sunrise [4:6]). Women didn’t normally journey outside of the town to the well to carry a heavy jug full of water to their homes in the heat of the day or by themselves. Instead, they often went to the well together, as the company lightened the burden of the work. This woman’s decision to come to the well by herself at the hottest time of day indicates that she likely experienced exclusion from her community.
Why would she have been excluded? When we hear Jesus’s insight that she has had five husbands (4:17–18) and is currently living with a man outside marriage, combined with her testimony to her neighbors that Jesus told her “All that I ever did” (4:29), it can be tempting to conclude the woman was sexually sinful. But while this conclusion fits our modern context of sexual freedom, it does not fit the ancient context where men had the primary agency for divorce and, as John 8:1–11 reminds us, women guilty of adultery could be stoned. Indeed, Jesus never condemns the woman or her situation. It is more likely that the woman was excluded by her neighbors, or excluded herself from them, because she didn’t live up to the standards for what a woman was supposed to be in that culture.
Recall from the story of Ruth the ancient practice of levirate marriage where, if a woman was widowed without having had children, she was married off to her deceased husband’s brother. It is probable that the woman has had five husbands due to a combination of her husband(s) dying (remember women married at a much younger age than the men) and perhaps her being divorced because she didn’t satisfy her husband or couldn’t bear children. The fact that she now lives with someone who isn’t her husband should also not be understood in the same way that modern couples often live together outside of marriage. Instead, she is probably living with a man because she has no family to support her and, as a widow, she is in desperate need. In a patriarchal culture where a woman’s ability to bear and raise children was a preeminent value, not least because those children would in turn care for you in your old age, this woman instead lived a life of shame and insecurity.
The woman encounters Jesus as many of us do, out of a need to be seen and known, treated like a person, and loved. And this is exactly what Jesus provides for her, meeting her needs in three ways.
First, the story begins with the expectation that the woman will host Jesus and provide water for this tired man. Instead, Jesus hosts and provides for her. Jesus never receives a drop of water from the well. We might read the woman’s remark that Jesus should “give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water” (4:15) as sarcastic. But by the story’s conclusion, after Jesus has gently identified the woman’s cause of shame and declared himself to be the Messiah coming to make all things right (4:26), the woman does in fact leave her water jug at the well (4:28). In this way she shows that she has received the living water Jesus promised.
Second, Jesus’s encounter with the woman also enables her reintegration into her community, for the entire village not only accepts her testimony and comes to see Jesus for themselves, but they then return to the woman and affirm that she has correctly recognized Jesus’s identity (4:42).
Third, despite her need, an underlying suspicion of Jesus drives much of the conversation’s tension: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (4:9) As John reminds us, Jews and Samaritans “had no dealings with one another” (4:9). The woman’s question to Jesus about the location of worship likely reflects her wondering if this Jewish prophet who claims to be able to provide living water will really accept her as she is: a Samaritan. Yet the episode concludes with her entire village of fellow Samaritans recognizing that Jesus is the savior of the world (4:42). This passage confirms for us that God, through Jesus, breaks down ethnic division and restores people from every tribe to relationship with himself.
Weekly Prayer Focus: Building Design Process
Daily Prayer Request: Parking Solution. Zoning regulations will require us to have around 80 parking spots. (Currently, we have about 40-50. There should be ample street parking, but we may want to acquire more parking spaces. Either way, we need God’s help and guidance as we navigate further solutions to the parking challenge.)