John 4:1-26

John 4

The Samaritan Woman

¹ Jesus ^[1] found out that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John, ² though it was not Jesus himself who was baptizing but his disciples. ³ So he left Judea and went back again to Galilee.

⁴ He had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the piece of land Jacob gave to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there. Then Jesus, being tired from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. ^[2]

⁷ A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into town to buy food.)

⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews do not associate 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 “Sir,” she said, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this living water? ¹² You are not greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his animals.”

¹³ Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I will give him will never be thirsty ever again. Rather, the water I will give him will become in him a spring of water, bubbling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵ “Sir, give me this water,” the woman said to him, “so I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

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

¹⁷ “I have no husband,” the woman answered.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say, ‘I have no husband.’ ¹⁸ In fact, you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews insist that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹ Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will not worship the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But a time is coming and now is here when the real worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for those are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

²⁵ The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (the one called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”