John 4:1-45--Jesus and the Woman of Samaria

John 4:1-45
English Standard Version

Jesus and the Woman of Samaria
4 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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This is probably another "Bible story" that we are very familiar with on it's own, but haven't stopped to try to see how this ties in with the bigger themes that John is showing us at the beginning of his gospel.  We see barriers being broken by Jesus here, an end to his Judean ministry (for now) because the hostility of the religious establishment there, and we see, in contrast, the receptiveness of the gospel for the Samaritans who only held to the inspiration of the first five books of the Bible (the Torah) and yet were more ready and expectant of the Messiah than the Jews who had the Prophets and the Writings in addition to the Law.  How was it that Nicodemus, a teacher of the Law, and possibly known as "the teacher of Israel" could miss it and this woman who had no access to the Temple in Jerusalem and was so broken and impure would beat him, Nicodemus, to the kingdom of heaven.  It is exactly because this woman realized that she had a need that she longed to have fulfilled and a thirst that she longed to have quenched that only Jesus could satisfy.  Nicodemus ignored his need and therefore was not ready to hear or understand the gospel.

Jesus is leaving what appears to be a very successful ministry in Judea behind as the Pharisees see that He is becoming more popular than John the Baptist.  Jesus heads north for Galilee, but instead of going around Samaria to the east like most "good" Jews would do, for they thought it would make them unclean just to enter into Samaria, Jesus said that he needed to go that way and insists on sending the disciples away to find food while He sits down next to the well in Sychar.  The Samaritan woman then shows up to draw water in the middle of the day, not the right time of the day to come to the well to draw water, which seems to tell us that she was an outcast among outcasts.  She was a Samaritan, and they were hated by the Jews.  She was a woman, and that would already cause her to be marginalized by the men of that culture, and on top of that she was divorced (as we'll see later in that story) and it would seem that she was possibly a bit promiscuous as she was willing to live with a man who was not her husband (again, this comes up later in the conversation).  This sin causes pain, separation between God and others, condemnation and judgment, and a desperate desire for Messiah to appear and fix all that was wrong and broken.  Little did she know that was exactly who she was about to meet!

Jesus uses many of the same tactics with this woman that he used with Nicodemus, though instead of a Socratic debate, she seems to follow Jesus' lead as Jesus talks about natural things like water from a well (stagnant water) versus water from a spring that moves and flows (living water).  Living water was much more preferable because all the impurities flowed downstream.  It wasn't like the well that they had to cover and protect so that nothing dead or unclean fell into the water to contaminate it.  Jesus then said the living water that he had to give was in an abundant supply and would well up inside of her, and that if she would drink of this water, she would never be thirsty again.  I'm sure she understood some of what He said to be metaphor, but she also knew if this was literally a spring of water that He knew about that she could drink from and never have to come to draw water again that it was the most valuable thing she had ever heard about and she wanted to know where the source of this water was so that she could be there.

The conversation then turns as Jesus needs to get her to understand that He's talking about a cure for her brokenness and sin nature.  He tells her to go get her husband so that Jesus can explain it to him (this is culturally appropriate for a man was supposed to learn from the Rabbi and then was supposed to teach his wife and children).  The woman says that she has no husband which is technically correct, though not exactly right as Jesus points out that she's had five husbands, and the man she's living with (in sin) is not her husband.  The woman then makes the understatement of a lifetime when she says, "Sir, I perceive you are a prophet."  The woman knew she had a man of God in front of her, so she wanted to ask Him all the theological questions that she had, and they were good questions, but Jesus was clearly leading this conversation where He wanted it to go and He would not be distracted by even good questions.

She asked about which temple was the right one to worship in--the one the Samaritans built on Mt. Garizim or the one on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem?  Jesus didn't actually answer the question other than to say that the Samaritans worship what they do not know, but the Jews worship what they do know and that salvation (the Messiah) would come from the Jews.  Jesus added that the day was coming (and is now here) when God's people would worship at neither of these temples, but would that His true worshipers would worship Him in spirit and in truth wherever they are.  Moreover, God is seeking such people to worship Him even now.  The woman now knew that they were talking about the Messiah and she said that she understood that the prophecy from Deuteronomy 18:18 that promised the Prophet that would come like Moses to be a prophecy about the Messiah (the Christ).  Jesus' response here looses some of its meaning because we add the word "He" to it as a predicate nominative, but He really said "I AM" to her (declaring Himself not only to be the Messiah, but to be the God who revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush).  He reveals Himself more clearly to this Samaritan woman than He had to any of the Jews that we've seen so far.

Just when Jesus had set the hook, the disciples return.  The woman takes this as her sign to leave, but she leaves going to tell everyone that she knows and that will listen to her to come and meet the man that told her everything about herself and knew everything that she had ever done.  For those that knew this woman's history, this might have been scary to them as some of what Jesus revealed to her might have been about them, but nonetheless, many would come back to see who this person that she claimed was the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God.

In the meantime, the disciples all had questions they wanted to ask but no one dared to such as, "What do you seek" and "Why are you talking to her?" (As we said before, it was culturally inappropriate for Jesus to talk to any Samaritan, any woman, or any adulterer.  This woman had three strikes against her).  They assumed that He must be hungry (a logical presumption because He sent them away to get food), but Jesus confounds them when He says that He's not interested in food right now because His "food" is to do the will of the Father who sent Him.  It was kind of like a "Don't you see what's going on here?" statement.  Food was far less important at the moment because this woman was about to become the first disciple of Jesus in Samaria.  Jesus had to take a moment to turn aside to His disciples and saying that they measure time by how many months until the harvest, but the harvest of souls is right in front of them and is ripe for the picking.  Jesus told them they were going to reap a harvest that they did not sow--others would go before them and God would have done all the work and all they needed to do was be faithful to preach the gospel and call people to repentance, and Jesus said that this was already happening right in front of them.  I can imagine Jesus saying this as the crowd of people are returning back to see Him that the woman has been gathering from town.  Jesus called his disciples to enter into the labor that others had begun.

Many Samaritans simply believed off of the woman's testimony.  Many others believed after meeting and talking to Jesus themselves, and Jesus stayed with them two days, which is remarkable given how most people would be quick to try to get out of Samaria as quickly as possible.  These new converts said that they had originally believed because of the woman's testimony, but now they had seen and heard and evaluated for themselves and they had made up their own mind that they too believed who Jesus said He was--that He is indeed the Savior of the world.  Now that is an interesting statement that seems to point back to something John the Baptist said, and something that John said in his prologue, but that we haven't seen any of the Jews pick up on or believe you.  Jesus is the Savior of the world (not just the Jews).  In fact, His name means "Savior."

After these two days, Jesus returned back to Galilee and the people that were from Galilee that had been in Jerusalem for the feast (we're not exactly sure which one, but it would have to be one of the Feasts that required pilgrimage to Jerusalem), and they had heard what Jesus had said and seen what Jesus had done and were eager to see if He would now do and say these things in their region (though the people of Nazareth were unwilling to accept Him as we read in other gospels for they asked if this one that they knew since He was a little boy was now going to teach them and rebuke them?  They would say "Don't we know your brothers and sisters?"  "Are you not the carpenter's son?"  Implying they thought that Joseph had premarital sex with Mary and that Jesus was the son of Mary and Joseph) and they would not believe Him or listen to Him--in fact they tried to kill Him).  So Jesus would go to other towns where He was welcome and would preach there for a while and move from town to town in Galilee, but He never would come back to Nazareth after that incident.