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John

About this book
Chapter 4

1 Now when Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard that he was winning and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were), 3 he left Judea and set out once more for Galilee. 4 But he had to pass through Samaria. 5 Now he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, so Jesus, since he was tired from the journey, sat right down beside the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.”⁠ 8 (For his disciples had gone off into the town to buy supplies.) 9 So the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you—a Jew—ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 “Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do you get this living water? 12 Surely you’re not greater than our ancestor Jacob, are you? For he gave us this well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing 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 He said to her, “Go call your husband and come back here.” 17 The woman replied, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “Right you are when you said, ‘I have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband. This you said truthfully!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But a time is coming—and now is here—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. 24 God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (the one called Christ); “whenever he comes, he will tell us everything.”⁠ 26 Jesus said to her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.” 27 Now at that very moment his disciples came back. They were shocked because he was speaking with a woman. However, no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you speaking with her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar, went off into the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Surely he can’t be the Messiah, can he?” 30 So they left the town and began coming to him. 31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”⁠ 33 So the disciples began to say to one another, “No one brought him anything to eat, did they?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Don’t you say, ‘There are four more months and then comes the harvest?’ I tell you, look up and see that the fields are already white for harvest! 36 The one who reaps receives pay and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that the one who sows and the one who reaps can rejoice together.⁠ 37 For in this instance the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’⁠ 38 I sent you to reap what you did not work for; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.” 39 Now many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the report of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they began asking him to stay with them. He stayed there two days, 41 and because of his word many more believed. 42 They said to the woman, “No longer do we believe because of your words, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this one really is the Savior of the world.” 43 After the two days he departed from there to Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him because they had seen all the things he had done in Jerusalem at the feast (for they themselves had gone to the feast). 46 Now he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had made the water wine. In Capernaum there was a certain royal official whose son was sick. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come back from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and begged him to come down and heal his son, who was about to die. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders you will never believe!” 49 “Sir,” the official said to him, “come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus told him, “Go home; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and set off for home. 51 While he was on his way down, his slaves met him and told him that his son was going to live. 52 So he asked them the time when his condition began to improve, and they told him, “Yesterday at one o’clock in the afternoon the fever left him.” 53 Then the father realized that it was the very time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he himself believed along with his entire household. 54 Jesus did this as his second miraculous sign when he returned from Judea to Galilee.

Texts in conversation

Compare Genesis 24:15 and John 4:7

Hebrew Bible · New Testament

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Summary

John describes Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at a well, where his request for water repeats a familiar pattern from the Hebrew Bible where a man or his representative meet a woman at a well, depicting an important moment in each narrative.

Passages

Genesis 24:15

Hebrew Bible
14 I will say to a young woman, ‘Please lower your jar so I may drink.’ May the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac reply, ‘Drink, and I’ll give your camels water too.’ In this way I will know that you have been faithful to my master.” 15 Before he had finished praying, there came Rebekah with her water jug on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel son of Milcah (Milcah was the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor). 16 Now the young woman was very beautiful. She was a virgin; no man had ever been physically intimate with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jug, and came back up. 17 Abraham’s servant ran to meet her and said, “Please give me a sip of water from your jug.” 18 “Drink, my lord,” she replied, and quickly lowering her jug to her hands, she gave him a drink. 19 When she had done so, she said, “I’ll draw water for your camels too, until they have drunk as much as they want.”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

John 4:7

New Testament
5 Now he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, so Jesus, since he was tired from the journey, sat right down beside the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone off into the town to buy supplies.) 9 So the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you—a Jew—ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
90–110 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in John

References

"... The anonymous Samaritan woman with an ambiguous past enters in the unfolding narrative after the named, privileged man in Jewish religious life, Nicodemus (3:1-21). As indicated previously, the narrative follows the lines of a well-established biblical type. The bridegroom-to-be or his representative sojourns to a distant territory, meets a woman or a cluster of womenpeople at a well, drawing some water. A drink is either sought or offered to the travelling party, and the woman returns to her household with information about the stranger and an invitation to hospitality is then issued and offered by her kinspeople. In these terms, what unfolds next is a celebratory meal followed by a betrothal. Now the PR who is familiar with the biblical narratives immediately recalls similar scenes like those of servant of Abraham who was sent by him to seek out a potential spouse for his son Isaac, and encountering Rebekah at the well of Nahor; similarly, Jacob seeing and falling in love with Rachel at the well of Haran and later, Moses encountering the daughters of Reuel (Jethro) when they were harassed by shepherds at the well of Midian and subsequently married one of his daughters, namely Zipporah (Genesis 24:15-67; 29:9-14; Exodus 2:15-22). The significance of these encounters, leading to matchmaking, betrothal and marriage, must be seen against the background of the continuation of the line of descendants who inherit the divine promise to Abraham. As such, these people are the agents of the divine plan of continuing salvation ..."
Ricardo Smuts, “Jesus and the Samaritan Woman (John 4:1-42): A Paradigmatic Encounter for Discipleship [μαθητής] and Witness [μαρτυρία]” (PhD diss., Stellenbosch University, 2019), 71.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Genesis 24:15 and John 4:7

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