Proper setting for the dialogue (4:1–6)
The Lord came to know that the Pharisees had heard that he was making and baptizing more disciples than John (4:1).1 However, the narrator clarifies that Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples did (4:2). As there was a possibility for the Pharisees to kill him (cf. 7:1), Jesus left Judea to go again to Galilee (4:3).
It was necessary for Jesus to go through Samaria, the normal route for anyone to go to Galilee from Judea (4:4). Samaria is a region that lies in between Judea in the south and Galilee in the north.2 Strict Jews hated Samaritans (cf. 4:9) and avoided going through Samaria to enter Galilee. The Greek word edei (“it was necessary”) refers to the divine necessity for Jesus to pass through Samaria so that he could meet a Samaritan woman and bring salvation through her to many Samaritans. Thus, Jesus crossed the racial, religious, and geographical barriers to enter into Samaria and the gender barrier to have a dialogue with a woman. He went to Sychar, a city in Samaria, and sat beside a well, built up in the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph (John 4:5–6; cf. Gen 33:19; 48:22; Josh 24:32).
After Pompey, the Roman general who captured Palestine (63 BCE), Sychar replaced Shechem as the most important Samaritan city.3 Jacob had erected an altar, called El-Elohe-Israel (“God, the God of Israel”), in the land of Shechem (Gen 33:18–20) and he would have dug also a well (literally “a spring of water”). Out of tiredness and thirst, Jesus sat down to rest in about the “sixth hour” (12 noon) near the well, which was called “Jacob’s Well” (4:6), probably by leaning on the wall built around the well. The indication of time is not only to highlight the historical reliability of Jesus’ ministry in Samaria, but also the fact that it was a high day when living beings needed water to quench their thirst (cf. Gen 29:7). Jesus’ weariness and thirst (4:7) prove his full humanity and his supernatural knowledge (4:1) proves his full divinity (cf. 1:47–48; 2:23–25).
Jesus’ self-revelation to the Samaritan woman (4:7–26)
A woman of Samaria came to draw water from the well. She came alone in the midday, when usually not many women come to the well. This shows that the woman had been isolated from other women because of her perversion from moral standard (cf. 4:16–18). Jesus takes the initiative to start his dialogue with her by asking for water (literally “Give me to drink”; 4:7). Truly Jesus needed water to quench his thirst, but at the same time it is ironic that the one who can supply living water to quench her thirst forever is the one who asks her for water to drink (4:14; cf. 19:28). At this point, John comments that Jesus’ disciples had gone away into the city to buy food (4:8), providing to the dialogue a relevant setting.
As the woman found Jesus to be a Jew, she said with astonishment, “How do you, being a Jew, ask from me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Then the editor clarifies that the Jews have no dealings with Samaritans (4:9). This indicates that there was hatred among the Jews against Samaritans, to the extent that they would not use the vessels used by the Samaritans for purity reasons.4 The rabbis taught the Jews not to eat Samaritans’ cooking or to have any ritual contact with them.
The Samaritans were the people consisting of five nations whom the Assyrians brought in when they captured Samaritan cities in the eighth century BCE. After a priest, at the command of the Assyrian king, came and lived in Bethel to teach them the law of Yahweh, the Samaritan religion became a mixture of the worship of Yahweh and of different gods brought in by the foreigners. Consequently, there was no fear or obedience to Yahweh and his commandments (2 Kgs 17:24–34, 41). The Jews, who returned from exile in 538 BCE, found the Samaritans political rebels who had corrupted Jewish religion with unacceptable practices.5 Obviously the Samaritans could not be fully regarded as Jews. The destruction of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim by John Hyrcanus, the Hasmonean ruler, in 128 BCE deepened the hatred between the Jews and Samaritans. The Jews perhaps considered the Samaritans as demoniacs (8:48; cf. 7:20). Since the woman was well aware of such a political and religious background dividing the Samaritans from Jews, she got astonished at a Jewish man’s request for water. Initially she, like Nicodemus, understood Jesus purely at human level.
Jesus turns her attention to heavenly things. He points out her non-understanding of the person who is asking for water and then discloses himself as the one who would have given her “living water” had she recognized him as the Christ and asked him (4:10). In the OT, God is described as the “fountain of living waters” from which his people would have received life had they not forsaken him (Jer 2:13; 17:13). The term “living waters” also denotes the life of the end-time, when God will be King over all the earth (Zech 14:8–9). This implies that the gift of God Jesus identifies as “living water” is eternal life, a life with God in heaven, and that it has a flowing nature.
In John “water” mostly symbolizes the Holy Spirit, who gives heavenly life as a present possession and also as future life with God to those who believe in Jesus (John 3:3, 5, 8; 7:37–39; cf. 19:34; 20:22; 1QS 4.21). The water Jesus gives is the life of the Holy Spirit, which, as a spring, wells up to eternal life (4:14), the eschatological life that is available even now. Jesus encourages the Samaritan woman to believe in him as the one who comes from God and as the fountain of living waters that gives heavenly life. Such life satisfies the one who receives it so that they have no further thirst. Even death cannot overcome this life (cf. 11:25b–26a).
The woman questioned the greatness of Jesus by asking where he could get the living water, as Jesus had nothing to draw water from and this well’s depth could have been around a hundred feet?6 Was he greater than “our father” Jacob, who gave this well and drank water out of this himself, his sons and his cattle? (4:11–12). Both questions are ironic in the sense that Jesus’ power to give life and his greater status than that of Jacob are unknowingly confessed by a Samaritan woman. Jesus gives to the one who believes in him the rivers of living water (7:37–39), and he is greater than Abraham (8:53, 58) and logically than Jacob. The words “our father Jacob” show not only the common origin of Jews and Samaritans, but also the woman’s knowledge of the Pentateuch.
The heart of the dialogue lies in 4:13–14: “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again; but 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 spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The water from Jacob’s Well is physical and hence will quench thirst only temporarily. But the water given by Jesus, being the gift of the Holy Spirit, has a twofold function:
1 It will permanently satisfy the thirst of anyone who drinks of that water, for it provides everlasting existence with God to the one who receives it (cf. Isa 49:10; Rev 7:16);
2 As the water given by Jesus has an outflowing nature (Isa 44:3–4), it will be a fountain of life within the one who receives it and will reach out others to lead them to “eternal life” (cf. Ps 1:3; Ezek 47:9–12).
On hearing these words, the woman progresses in her understanding of Jesus and addresses him as kyrie (“sir” or “master” or “teacher”; 4:15). However, she misunderstands him, thinking that he is referring to the earthly water that has magical power, and so she asks him for the water that will never make her thirsty (cf. 6:34). Jesus immediately asks her to go and bring her husband (4:16). Jesus’ command means that receiving “living water,” the gift of the Spirit, will not be possible for anyone who has affinity with the things of the flesh (cf. 3:5–6). Therefore Jesus expects those who ask for living water to acknowledge first their life attached with earthly things. Otherwise, they cannot understand the things of the Spirit. Jesus seeks to help the woman to acknowledge that her lifestyle is socially and morally unacceptable. The woman honestly accepts that she does not have a husband.
Jesus first appreciates her truthfulness, by stating, “You said well” (4:17), and then unveils her past life, saying that she had had five husbands and that the man she is living with now is not her husband. Jesus had foreknown the truth about the woman’s perverted life and therefore he states, “You have said this truly” (4:18). Some argue that the woman might not have been an “immoral person,” for she might have married five husbands who all died in succession, or she might have divorced her previous husbands, or they might have divorced