Living water and true worship: the Samaritan woman and the royal official in John 4

John 4 comes from the fourth Gospel, which is anonymous in its text but credits its testimony to 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' (21:20-24). The church from the late second century identified this disciple with John the apostle, son of Zebedee, writing from Ephesus, and many scholars still hold this. Others suggest the author was a different John, the elder known to Papias, or that a community of his followers shaped his testimony. The usual date is about AD 80 to 100, though some argue for earlier. John's stated purpose is that readers may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and have life in his name (20:31). This chapter is found only in John, but Luke shows the same interest in Samaritans (Luke 9:51-56; 10:25-37; 17:11-19; Acts 8). The healing in 4:46-54 resembles the centurion's servant in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10. Some scholars think these are variant accounts of one event; others point to the differences (a royal official and his son, not a centurion and his servant) and think they are separate.

The Samaritans were a people in the hill country between Judea and Galilee, centered around Shechem and Mount Gerizim. According to 2 Kings 17:24-41, the Assyrians resettled the region after the northern kingdom fell in 722 BC, and the people who lived there combined the worship of the LORD with other religions. Jews of Jesus' day regarded Samaritans as impure and not truly Israel. The Samaritans accepted only the five books of Moses and worshiped at their own temple on Mount Gerizim, which the Jewish ruler John Hyrcanus destroyed in the second century BC. The quarrel was old and bitter. Many Jews are said to have avoided Samaria by crossing the Jordan.

The chapter follows Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, a respected Jewish teacher, with a conversation with a nameless Samaritan woman. The contrast is deliberate. Jesus leaves Judea when the Pharisees hear that he is gaining more disciples than John, and goes toward Galilee. Verse 4 says he 'had to' go through Samaria. The geography allows this, but the verb may also suggest purpose. The two scenes, the well and the official's house, are linked by the theme of belief in Jesus' word.

John 4 is made of two scenes and is a good example of John's way of telling a story at two levels. A woman comes to draw water, and Jesus uses the water to speak of life. The disciples bring food, and Jesus uses food to speak of his work. The pattern is one of misunderstanding followed by revelation: she thinks he means well water, and he means the Spirit; the disciples think someone brought food, and he means the will of his Father. The reader should ask what each image stands for, using the explanations that John and the Old Testament supply.

The scene also recalls a biblical pattern, the meeting at a well. Isaac's servant meets Rebekah (Genesis 24), Jacob meets Rachel (Genesis 29) and Moses meets Zipporah (Exodus 2), and each leads to a marriage. Literary readers note that John 4 echoes this pattern and then turns it: the woman leaves her jar and her town comes. This is a reading of the story's shape, not something John states.

The interpretive question is the reference to five husbands. The usual reading takes it literally as a history of broken marriages, and the woman's reaction supports it, since she says he told her everything she ever did. Some ancient and modern readers see a symbol of the five peoples who settled Samaria (2 Kings 17:24). The class follows the literal reading, since the text does not hint at the symbolic one.

Verses 1–9

Jesus learns that the Pharisees have heard of his success and leaves for Galilee, passing through Samaria. He comes to Sychar, near the land that Jacob gave his son Joseph (Genesis 33:19; 48:22; Joshua 24:32), and sits tired by Jacob's well at about the sixth hour, probably noon. A Samaritan woman comes to draw water, and Jesus asks her for a drink. His disciples have gone to buy food. She is surprised that a Jew would ask a Samaritan woman for a drink, and John explains that Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans. Jesus crosses three barriers: ethnic, religious and gender. Coming alone at midday may mean she was avoiding the other women, though the text does not say.

Verses 10–15

Jesus says that if she knew the gift of God and who was asking her for a drink, she would have asked him and he would have given her living water. 'Living water' meant fresh running water as opposed to still water in a cistern. She takes it literally: he has no bucket and the well is deep. Where would he get this living water? Is he greater than Jacob, who gave them the well? Jesus replies that everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water he gives will never be thirsty. It will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. She asks for this water so she will not have to keep coming to draw. The prophets use water for God himself (Jeremiah 2:13) and for the Spirit and salvation he gives (Isaiah 12:3; 44:3; 55:1; Ezekiel 47). John explains this image later: the water is the Spirit that those who believe in Jesus would receive (7:37-39).

Verses 16–26

Jesus tells her to call her husband. She says she has none. He agrees: she has had five, and the man she has now is not her husband. She says he must be a prophet and raises the question of worship: her ancestors worshiped on this mountain (Gerizim), but the Jews say Jerusalem is the place. Jesus tells her that a time is coming when worship will be neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. Samaritans worship what they do not know, he says, while Jews worship what they know, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and has now come, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. God is spirit, and those who worship him must do so in spirit and truth. The phrase means worship given in the Spirit and made possible by the Son who is the truth (14:6), not simply inward as opposed to outward. She says that she knows the Messiah is coming and will tell them everything. Jesus answers with words that can be rendered 'I am he'. It is the first time in John that he states plainly that he is the Messiah, and the phrase 'I am' may echo the divine name (Exodus 3:14; Isaiah 43:10).

Verses 27–38

The disciples return and are surprised that he speaks to a woman, but no one asks why. The woman leaves her water jar, goes into the town and tells the men to come and see a man who told her all she ever did. Can he be the Christ? Meanwhile the disciples urge Jesus to eat, but he has food they do not know about: to do the will of him who sent him and to finish his work. He points to fields white for harvest: the reaper already receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper rejoice together. The Samaritans coming across the fields are the harvest.

Verses 39–42

Many Samaritans from the town believe because of the woman's testimony. They ask him to stay, and he stays two days. Many more believe because of his word. They tell the woman that they no longer believe because of what she said, because they have heard for themselves and know that this is the Savior of the world. The title is a large one, since Roman emperors were also given titles of savior, and here it is spoken by a people the Jews despised.

Verses 43–54

After two days Jesus goes on to Galilee. John notes that a prophet has no honor in his own country, and yet the Galileans receive him, having seen what he did at the feast in Jerusalem. At Cana, a royal official, probably in the service of Herod Antipas, asks him to come to Capernaum to heal his dying son. Jesus says that unless they see signs and wonders, they will not believe. The official asks him to come before his child dies. Jesus tells him to go, for his son lives. The man believes the word and sets out. On the way his servants meet him with the news that the boy is alive. He finds that the fever left at the very hour Jesus spoke, around the seventh hour. He and his household believe. John calls this the second sign Jesus did when he came from Judea to Galilee.

John 4 teaches that salvation is for all peoples, though it comes through the Jews. Jesus says that salvation is from the Jews, because the promises were given to Israel and the Messiah is Israel's king. But he reaches across the barrier to Samaritans, and the Samaritans call him Savior of the world. This anticipates the mission of Acts 8, where Philip takes the gospel to Samaria, and the commission of Acts 1:8. Paul later teaches that in Christ the old divisions are overcome (Galatians 3:28).

The chapter teaches about the Holy Spirit as the gift of God for the thirsty. The living water, an image taken from the prophets, pictures the life given by the Spirit, received through Jesus (7:37-39). It teaches about worship. God is spirit, and the place no longer defines worship, since the hour has come when the Father is worshiped in the Spirit and the truth. Under the old covenant, Jerusalem and its temple were the place of worship. Now the place is a person. The chapter also shows mission at work: sower and reaper rejoice together, and a witness who has met Jesus can lead a town to him. The second half teaches that faith can rest on Jesus' word alone: the official believed and set out before he knew the outcome.

Jesus is shown in this chapter as the giver of living water, the Messiah, the one who knows all hearts, the true object of worship and the Savior of the world. His claim to give the water that ends thirst is greater than Jacob, who gave the well. This answers the woman's question in verse 12: he is greater than Jacob. The words in verse 26 are the plainest declaration so far in the Gospel that he is the Messiah whom the woman expects to explain everything. In later chapters he claims more: he is the bread of life, the light of the world and the one who was before Abraham.

The living water echoes the Old Testament picture of God as the fountain of living waters (Jeremiah 2:13) and the promises of rivers of water in Isaiah and Ezekiel. John himself explains it as the Spirit that Jesus gives (7:37-39), which is fulfillment of Joel 2:28 and Ezekiel 36:27. The theme of Jesus as the true place of worship connects with 2:19-21, where his body is the temple, and with 1:14, where he tabernacles among us.

The official's son shows Jesus' authority over life. He speaks and the boy lives, from a distance of many miles. The word 'lives' is used three times in the passage (4:50, 51, 53). It is a sign that points to Jesus as the one who gives life (5:21; 11:25).