The Word Made Fresh
1When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2(although it wasn’t Jesus himself, but his disciples who baptized) 3he left Judea and headed back to Galilee. 4The route he chose took them through Samaria. 5He came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the tract of land Jacob had given his son Joseph. 6Tired from his journey, he sat down around noon by Jacob’s well.
7A Samaritan woman came there to draw water. Jesus asked her to give him a drink – 8his disciples had gone into the city to buy food. 9The Samaritan woman said, “So, how does it happen that you, a Jew, can ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (Jews and Samaritans don’t have anything to do with each other.)
10Jesus answered, “If you knew God’s gift in who is asking for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
11“You don’t even have a bucket,” she replied, “and this is a deep well. Where will you get this ‘living water’? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who drank from this well as did his children and his flocks, and gave the well to us?”
13“Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again,” Jesus said. 14“But whoever drinks the water I have to give will never be thirsty, because the water I have to give will be like a spring gushing up to eternal life within them.”
15The woman said, “Sir, please give me this water, so I might never be thirsty, nor will I have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16“Go and call your husband, and then come back here,” Jesus said.
17“I don’t have a husband,” she replied.
Jesus said, “You are right to say you have no husband. 18You have been married five times, but the man you live with now is not your husband. You told the truth!”
19 “Sir,” she replied, “I see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that people must worship in Jerusalem.”
21“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, the time is coming when you will not worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem. 22You don’t know what you’re worshiping, but we worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. 23But the time has come for true worshipers to worship the Father spiritually and truthfully; such are the people the Father looks to for worship. 24God is spirit, and whoever worships God must do so in spirit and truth.”
25The woman replied, “I know the Messiah (who is also called Christ) is coming, 26and when he comes he will tell us everything.”
26“I am he,” said Jesus, “the very one who is speaking with you.”
27His disciples returned at that point, and were astounded that he was carrying on a conversation with a woman, but none of them asked, “What does she want?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”
28Then the woman left her water jar and returned to the city. She told the people, 29“Come and see a man who told me everything I have done! Can he possibly be the Messiah?” 30They left the city and came out to meet him.
31The disciples were urging Jesus to eat, 32but he said, “I have food that you don’t know about.”
33They asked each other, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?”
34Jesus responded, “My food is to do the will and complete the work of the One who sent me. 35You’ve heard the expression, ‘Only four months until the harvest.’ But I say, look around! Don’t you see the fields are ripe for harvesting? 36The reaper is already getting paid and is gathering fruit for eternal life, and those who sow and those who reap can celebrate together. 37You’ve heard the saying, ‘There are those who sow, and there are those who reap.’ 38I sent you to reap something you didn’t sow. Others have reaped, and you have joined them in their labor.”
39There were a lot of Samaritans who believed in Jesus because of what the woman had declared, saying, “He told me everything I’ve ever done!” 40When they came to Jesus they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41A lot more of them believed because of his words. 42They told the woman, “It isn’t because of what you told us that we believe. We have now heard him ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
43After two days with them, Jesus left that place and went to Galilee, 55though he himself had said that a prophet is not honored in his own country. 45The Galileans welcomed him when he arrived, because they had gone to the festival in Jerusalem and had seen all that he had done there.
46He came again to Cana in Galilee where he had turned water into wine. There was a royal official in Capernaum whose son was ill. 47When he heard that Jesus was in Galilee, he came and begged him to come and heal his son who was dying.
48Jesus said to him, “People don’t believe unless they see signs and wonders.”
49He said, “Sir, please come before my little boy dies.”
50“Go,” Jesus said, “Your son will live.”
The man believed him and soon left to return home. 51While he was on his way, his servants met him and told him his child was alive. 52He asked them to tell him exactly when his son began to recover. They said, “The fever left him yesterday an hour after noon.” 52The father realized this was the hour Jesus had told him his son would live. He then believed, along with his entire household. 53This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.
Commentary
1-6: Although John is willing for Jesus to surpass him in popularity, Jesus senses that such popularity may be perilous, and when the Pharisees begin hearing about him he decides it is time to head back to Galilee. Such a journey would not require going through Samaria, but we get the impression that he is in a bit of a hurry to remove himself from inspection and speculation, so he takes the shortest route out of Judea and finds himself in Samaria outside the village of Sychar about 25 miles NNE of Jerusalem and 35 miles SSW of the Sea of Galilee. The name Sychar does not occur elsewhere in the Bible, but John identifies it as the site of a well dug by Jacob on land given to Joseph (no record of this is in Genesis).
7-15: While Jesus rests at the well a Samaritan woman comes to draw water and Jesus asks her for a drink. We are told now that the disciples had gone into Sychar to buy food. She is surprised that he would ask a drink of water from her, since Jewish men don’t customarily associate publicly with women and Jews don’t associate with Samaritans. As was the case in the exchange with Nicodemus, in the conversation that follows Jesus once again uses an ordinary thing to teach an extraordinary truth. The common thing in this case is water. The extraordinary truth is, once again, the gift of eternal life (compare 3:16, 36). For her part, the woman has as hard a time understanding Jesus as had Nicodemus. She, too, is interpreting his words too literally.
16-26: Jesus gives the conversation a personal turn by asking her to bring her husband even though he apparently already knows her situation, though John does not explain how he came by the information. She says she’s not married, and Jesus tells her that he knows she has had five husbands and is currently living out of wedlock. Her reaction is that he must be a prophet to know such things about someone he’s never met. Then she acknowledges again the differences between Jews and Samaritans and alludes to their different customs of worship. Jesus tells her that the place of worship is not important, but rather the attitude of the worshiper. She then reveals her faith that the Messiah will come, and he in turns reveals himself as the Messiah, an extraordinary revelation, since he hasn’t told that to anyone else.
27-30: The disciples return, and the woman goes back into the village. She tells her people about the man she met at the well, though questioning whether he can be the Messiah (by the way, she left her water jar behind).
31-38: In the exchange between Jesus and his disciples, he once again uses ordinary things to teach extraordinary truths. Food is turned into God’s claim on one’s life. The harvest becomes a symbol for God’s gathering of the faithful. As in the encounter with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, the theme in this lesson for his disciples is eternal life.
39-42: Jesus actually stays with the Samaritans in Sychar for two days, and they are convinced that he is the Savior of the world. What a contrast to his own people, the Jews!
43-45: In Galilee, Jesus finds that he already has a reputation because his countrymen saw “all that he had done in Jerusalem,” although John has only reported the cleansing of the temple and the nocturnal conversation with Nicodemus.
46-54: We are back in the Galilean village of Cana where Jesus had performed his first miracle (remember, though, that the only witnesses had been his disciples and the servants at the wedding banquet). A “royal official” from Capernaum begs him to come heal his son. “Royal official” probably means that he was employed in the administration of Herod Antipas. Jesus initially seems to brush aside the request, lamenting that people want to see “signs and wonders” before they take his message seriously. The official begs him again but Jesus, instead of going to the man’s house, simply pronounces the child to be well. To his credit the man believes him and heads home. The encounter with Jesus took place at about 1:00 p.m., and the man would therefore have not reached Capernaum that same day, since it was about 25 miles. When he arrives home the next day he learns that the boy’s fever had suddenly broken at the very time Jesus had pronounced him healed, thus confirming that Jesus had indeed been responsible for the healing.
Takeaway
It is extraordinary that John tells us this Samaritan woman is the very first person to whom Jesus presents himself as the Messiah, the Christ. And then Jesus goes to the Samaritan city, and the people there believe, too. You can’t judge a book by its cover, and you can’t judge others based on some preformed idea of how people should look and talk. Be like Jesus to everyone!