The Passage
John 4:1-44
1Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard
that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John 2(though Jesus
Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), 3He left Judea and
departed again to Galilee. 4But He needed to go through Samaria.
5So He came to a city of Samaria
which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son
Joseph. 6Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied
from His journey, sat thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour[1].
7A woman of Samaria came to draw
water.
Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” 8For His disciples had
gone away into the city to buy food.
9Then the woman of Samaria said
to Him, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”
For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.
10Jesus answered and said to her,
“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’
you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
11The woman said to Him, “Sir,
You have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do You get that
living water? 12Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us
the well, and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?”
13Jesus answered and said to her,
“Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14but whoever
drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that
I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into
everlasting life.”
15The
woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come
here to draw.”
16Jesus said to her, “Go, call
your husband, and come here.”
17The woman answered and said, “I
have no husband.”
Jesus said to her, “You have well said, ‘I
have no husband,’ 18for you have had five husbands, and the one whom
you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”
19The woman said to Him, “Sir, I
perceive that You are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this
mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to
worship.”
21Jesus said to her, “Woman,
believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in
Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22You worship what you do not know;
we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23But the
hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in
spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24God
is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25The woman said to Him, “I know
that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us
all things.”
26Jesus said to her, “I who speak
to you am He.”
27And at this point His disciples
came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do
You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?”
28The woman then left her water pot,
went her way into the city, and said to the men,
29“Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did.
Could this be the Christ?”
30Then they went out of the city
and came to Him.
31In the meantime His disciples
urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
32But He said to them, “I have
food to eat of which you do not know.”
33Therefore the disciples said to
one another, “Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?”
34Jesus said to them, “My food is
to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. 35Do you
not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I
say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already
white for harvest! 36And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers
fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice
together. 37For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another
reaps.’ 38I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored;
others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”
39And many of the Samaritans of
that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He
told me all that I ever did.” 40So when the Samaritans had come to
Him, they urged Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. 41And
many more believed because of His own word.
42Then they said to the woman,
“Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him
and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
43Now after the two days He departed from there and went to Galilee. 44For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
43Now after the two days He departed from there and went to Galilee. 44For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
A Little Background
The descendants of Jacob’s twelve sons became the twelve
tribes of Israel. Jacob settled in a place called Shechem where he would have
dug a well for his large family. Shechem was later known as Sychar.
Later in Israel’s history, King David’s son, Solomon took
the throne. He was gifted with great wisdom. However, Solomon turned from godly to worldly
wisdom. He saw the political advantage of having peace
agreements with other nations, so he married many of the daughters of various
kings. Solomon had over 300 wives and 700 concubines who eventually led him
into idolatry. The heart of the Israelites followed the example of their king.
For his idolatry, God swore to Solomon that the kingdom
would be divided after his death. When Solomon died his son Reheboam ascended
to the throne. But one of Solomon’s servants, Jereboam rose up in rebellion. As
a result, civil war broke out. Only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained
faithful to the royal line of David and Solomon. They became known as the
nation of Judah, the southern tribes. The remaining 10 northern tribes retained
the name Israel. But Jerusalem and the temple
sacrifices were in Judah. Jereboam feared that the hearts of the people would
turn back to Judah when they went to Jerusalem for worship. So he set up his
own alternative worship system.
Because of the rebellion and false worship of Israel, not
one king of Israel ever did right in the eyes of the Lord. Israel was always
apostate (meaning they “fell away” from true worship). Eventually, Judah also
fell. God promised both nations that foreign powers would lead them into captivity.
George W. Wright explains:
The feud between Jews and Samaritans
extended over many centuries, According to 1 Kings 17:24, after the Assyrian
conquest of 722 B.C., the cities of the Northern Kingdom (Israel) were
repopulated by foreigners from Babylonia, Syria, and several other pagan
nations. The Jews in this region intermarried with these foreigners. This
produced a mixed race of “half-breed” Jews who grew to the point where they
knew nothing of the religion of Israel. They rejected the temple in Jerusalem
and substituted their own shrine at Mount Gerizim.
Judah, the southern Kingdom, also fell
to a foreign power. Its leading citizens
were deported to Babylonia, but they retuned seventy years later with their
Jewish bloodline intact. These full-bloodied [sic] Jews of Judah looked down on
the Samaritans because of their mixed marriages and pagan worship. The
hostility between these two groups was so severe that this Samaritan woman was
amazed that Jesus would talk to her. (A
Simplified Harmony of the Gospels, pg. 43) [See additional note below[2].]
Some Explanation
“But He needed to go
through Samaria.” Jesus had gone from
Galilee to Judea just a short time
before. Apparently, he took the route around Samaria as all good Jews had done.
But this time Jesus needed to go through Samaria. The Greek word dei indicates that it was a necessity
that Jesus go through the “hated” territory.
“A
woman of Samaria came to draw water.” In
addition to being a Samaritan, some have said that the woman at the well faced
a great social stigma. We don’t know the facts of her circumstances except that having had five husbands, she was now living with a man who was not her husband. Jesus’ comment seems to suggest a
loose lifestyle. The daily run to the village well would have been done by the
women early in the morning for their daily needs before the heat of the day set
in. Perhaps this woman was avoiding the gossip and derision of the other village
women.
“Jesus
answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says
to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given
you living water.” Just like He
spoke to Nicodemus, Jesus engaged the woman in conversation about a very common
concrete topic, but He was really speaking in spiritual terms. Perhaps as she
approached the well, she had been feeling the weight of her social burden. The idea of living water that kept her from
coming to that well would have been a great relief!
“Jesus said to her, ‘Go,
call your husband, and come here.’”
Apparently Jesus had missed all the tolerance and diversity training
classes. He wasn’t very sensitive about approaching the woman’s past. His
direct statement caused her to own her situation head on; she couldn’t hide
behind excuses. This surely must have been a prophet; He knew about her past!
“Our fathers worshiped
on this mountain...” But the woman deflected; she tried to justify her own self-rightness. Surely, if He were
a prophet, He would recognize that the Samaritans had a superior religious
system. Instead, Jesus declared that the time was coming (it would be finalized
at the cross) and “now is” (because Jesus was here) when all true worshipers
would worship in spirit and in truth.
Jesus corrected her erroneous understanding. First of all,
true worship soon would no longer be at a singular location—the temple. Worship
would not be a matter of works—that is, the animal sacrifices. Worship would
soon be an issue of the spirit. Jesus defined this to Nicodemus. True worship
would be from a heart that was “born again”—born of the spirit.
But Jesus also said that true worship would be in spirit and
in truth.
The Jews had it right when they claimed that their system of worship was the
true one, and Jesus did not back down from that. Was Jesus being unloving when
He challenged the woman’s statement on the issue of true worship? After all, if
the where and how of worship was about to change, why push the point?
The answer to that question is absolutely critical. Contrary
to some trends in the church, Jesus did not take an “all-inclusive” approach to
the woman. He didn’t declare a “big tent”, or "open a conversation that all
could share in". Instead He affirmed that salvation was (as understood at that
point) “of the Jews” or through the Jewish sacrificial system. When He died on
the cross, Jesus fulfilled all the Old
Testament worship practices. His death fully atoned for the sins of the people and
satisfied the wrath and judgment of God in our place. To worship the Lord in
spirit and in truth is to embrace this truth for oneself, and worship God
within its context.
There is one more critical point to realize in this part of
the exchange, and why the historical background is so vital. The forefathers of
the Samaritans were the same Israelites who had fallen away in mass apostasy even in
the face of the great prophets who preached repentance such as Elijah, Hosea
and Jonah. This Samaritan stood face to face with the very God in human flesh that her ancestors had defied. Jesus could do nothing but tell her the truth. The Israelites and Samaritans created their own way to God. They worshiped on their terms. Jesus disarmed her argument. There was only one way to the Father.
The
woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ).
“When He comes, He will tell us all things.” The Samaritan woman knew how to get out of an
argument, and that is when Jesus revealed His identity to her.
“I have food to eat of
which you do not know.” Just at that moment the disciples returned with food for Jesus. I would love
to know what was going through Jesus’ mind as He spoke to the woman. What a
feast His spirit must have been delighting in as he watched her understanding
unfold and she realized who He was! Jesus continued to speak in spiritual
terms to his disciples. “Don’t you say that there are four
months until harvest? Look! The fields are ready now!” The Old Testament Law or Torah, laid the groundwork, or planted the seed. Jesus saw that the
hearts of the people were ready for Him. All who labored together would rejoice
at the harvest. Jesus was also both harvesting, and sowing for when the disciples would return
to reap “...Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria,
and the uttermost parts of the earth.”
“...they urged Him to stay with them...” The Samaritans welcomed Jesus’ with hearts of
faith. He continued to minister to them for two more days They declared, “Now we believe, not because of what you
said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
Observations and Insights
We can only guess about the Samaritan woman’s background.
What circumstances
would have caused her to have five husbands? Perhaps some died; perhaps some
divorced her for barrenness (a disgrace for Jewish women). Perhaps she had been abused or abandoned at a young age sending her into a life of promiscuity. Whatever her
situation, Jesus didn’t coddle her. He didn’t show her the wounding of her
inner child, or reveal the enemy’s lies about her self-image. Jesus went straight to the solution—He showed
her the truth about who He was—Her Messiah, the answer for all her needs. The
answer for the Samaritan woman is also the answer for my life. It is
significant that in the end, the woman left her water pot to go and tell the
people of Sychar that she had met the Messiah. She would no longer live for
water that didn’t satisfy. Self would be replaced with the new living water of
faith in Jesus. I have a new desire for Jesus, the living water. I am learning that the more I turn away from self, the more I’m
satisfied in Jesus. And the more satisfied I am in Jesus, the less I desire to please my "self". So, I’ll keep my eyes fixed on the Great Shepherd, who is
the author and the finisher of my faith.
His living water feeds my soul. All I need, I find in Him.
Next: Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:14-15; John 4:43-45
[1]
It was about 6:00 in the evening according to the
way the ancient Jews reckoned time.
[2] Contrary to popular opinion, these
tribes are not "lost". Although the norther kngdom, Israel, did not
return as a nation and the people were mostly of mixed race, there were
some members of the tribes of Israel who retained their Jewish
identity. When Assyria invaded Israel taking the people captive, some
Israelites would have been left behind such as the old, and weak. Some Jews may have lived in foreign lands such as Egypt. We
know that Anna the prophetess was from Tribe of Asher (of the northern
kingdom), for example.
