5: Jesus and the Samaritan woman – John 4:1-26


4Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” ² —although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— ³ he left Judea and started back to Galilee. ⁴ But he had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
⁶ Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
⁸ (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common 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 no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” ¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 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 have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” ¹⁹ The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” ²¹ Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 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 seeks such as these 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” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” ²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”  NRSV

Get into the Word

1. What prompts Jesus to return to Galilee? Do you think he was concerned about the “competition” with John the Baptist?

2. What is unusual about Jesus’ ending up in Samaria [see notes]? How do you suppose the disciples felt about the trip at this point? How would you have felt?

3. What is the woman’s first reaction to Jesus? Why did she react this way? How do you think you would have reacted?

4. What is Jesus’ message to the woman? Why does she have such difficulty understanding what Jesus is talking about? Why do you think he talked about “living water” with a foreigner before a Jew?

5. What is Jesus’ response when the woman asks for “some of this water?” Why would he bring up her personal life at this point? How does the she respond?

6. What does Jesus say about the correct place to worship? How does the woman react?

Get Personal

How does your relationship with God affect how you worship?

4:4. Samaria — in Jesus’s time Israel was divided into three provinces: Judea, Samaria and Galilee. Samaria was between the other two, so it would be natural for any traveler to go through Samaria to get from Judea to Galilee. But Samaritans were Jews who had intermarried with pagans after the captivity and they were considered outcasts [the Jewish version of this history is in 2 Kings 17:24-31]. Devout Jews took the long way around to avoid even traveling in Samaria.
4:5. Sychar — [also Shechem] figures prominently in Israel’s history. God appeared to Abraham at Shechem on his journey to Canaan, and Abraham built his first altar to God here. Joshua also directed that an altar be built here after the Hebrew people conquered Canaan. Shechem is where Joshua told his fellow Israelites to “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve . . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” [Josh. 24:15].
4:6. Jacob’s Well — although the field is mentioned in Genesis [33:17-19], this is the only Biblical reference to Jacob’s Well. Today it is the site of a Greek Christian church.
4:7. Samaritan woman — usually women would get their water later in the day when it was cooler, but this woman came at noon to avoid the other women of the village [check v. 18].
Give me a drink — Jesus breaks at least four Jewish taboos here: Jews did not talk with Samaritans, men did not talk to women they did not know in public, men did not talk with women known to be immoral, and Jews did not eat or drink with Gentiles (or even use their water bucket).
4:10. Living water — Isaiah uses water as a symbol of life: With joy you will draw

water from the wells of salvation, [12:3], he even links water to thirst spiritually as Jesus does: Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy, and eat! [55:1].
4:11-12. You have no bucket — like Nicodemus in the previous chapter, the woman misses Jesus’ metaphor and responds literally, even thinking she would not have to make any more trips to the well [v. 15].
4:19. Prophet — the woman reflects the common belief that prophets could know about others’ lives. She then uses this belief to challenge Jesus about the “correct” place to worship [v. 20]. 
4:22. You worship what you do not know — Jesus confirms the superiority of Jewish teaching. Because the Samaritans used only the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) their knowledge of God and salvation was very limited.
4:24. Worship in spirit and in truth — Jesus says neither location is actually correct. The important thing is how we worship, not where. This should not be a new idea for Jews: Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. [Psalm 32:2].
4:25. Messiah — Samaritans looked for the prophet God promised to Moses:  “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command, [Deut 18:17-18]. 
4:26. I am he — John is the only Gospel author who records Jesus’ declaration that he is the Messiah before his trial. Matthew even records Jesus efforts to prevent such an early disclosure: Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ, [16:20].