Jesus Talks with a Samaritan Woman at the Well

John 4:1-42. Jesus talks to a woman in the middle of the day.
This happened near the town of Sychar.
The Hebrew name of Sychar could mean shoulder.

Jesus and His disciples were again heading back to Galilee.
Via Samaria, which was not the normal way for a Jew to travel to Galilee.
Normally Jews would all travel the longer way by going up the Jordan River on the other side.

Background Reading:

Jesus Meets and Talks With a Samaritan Woman

4:1 Now when Jesus realized that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although it was not Jesus who did the baptizing but his disciples— 3 he left Judea and went back to Galilee. 4 Now it was necessary for him to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the piece of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s Well was also there, and Jesus, tired out by the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus told her, “Please give me a drink,” 8 since his disciples had gone off into town to buy food.

9 The Samaritan woman asked him, “How can you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” Because Jews do not have anything to do with Samaritans.

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Please give me a drink,’ you would have been the one to ask him, and he would have given you living water.”

11 The woman told him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket, and the well is deep. Where are you going to get this living water? 12 You’re not greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it, along with his sons and his flocks, are you?”

13 Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks this water will become thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never become thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become a well of water for him, springing up to eternal life.”

15 The woman told him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I won’t get thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 He told her, “Go and call your husband, and come back here.”

17 The woman answered him, “I don’t have a husband.”

Jesus told her, “You are quite right in saying, ‘I don’t have a husband,’ 18 because you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

19 The woman told him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet! 20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain. But you Jews say that the place where people should worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 Jesus told her, “Believe me, dear lady, the hour is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You don’t know what you’re worshiping. We Jews know what we’re worshiping, because salvation comes from the Jews. 23 Yet the time is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. Indeed, the Father is looking for people like that to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

25 The woman told him, “I know that the Anointed One is coming, who is being called ‘the Messiah’. When that person comes, he will explain everything.”

26 “I am he,” Jesus replied, “the one who is speaking to you.”

27 At this point his disciples arrived, and they were astonished that he was talking to a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want from her?” or, “Why are you talking to her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to town. She told people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done! Could he possibly be the Messiah?” 30 The people left the town and started on their way to him.

31 Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, have something to eat.”

32 But he told them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

33 So the disciples began to say to one another, “No one has brought him anything to eat, have they?”

34 Jesus told them, “My food is doing the will of the one who sent me and completing his work. 35 You say, don’t you, ‘In four more months the harvest will begin?’ Look, I tell you, open your eyes and observe that the fields are ready for harvesting now! 36 The one who harvests is already receiving his wages and gathering a crop for eternal life, so that the one who sows and the one who harvests may rejoice together. 37 In this respect the saying is true: ‘One person sows, and another person harvests.’ 38 I have sent you to harvest what you have not worked for. Others have worked, and you have adopted their work as your own.”

39 Now many of the Samaritans of that town believed in Jesus because the woman had testified, “He told me everything I’ve ever done.”

40 So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there for two days. 41 And many more believed because of what he said. 42 They kept telling the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, because now we have heard him ourselves, and we know that he really is the Savior of the world.”
John 4:1-42


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