---
title: "The Woman at the Well"
category: "prophecy"
description: "An exegetical study of John 4:1-42: the two Greek words English flattens into 'well', why a spring is not a better bucket, and the first 'I am' in John's Gospel."
tags: ["john", "samaritan-woman", "living-water", "method/word-study", "lang/greek", "person/jesus", "holy-spirit", "worship", "method/textual-criticism"]
draft: false
primary_passage: "John 4:1-42"
bible_references: ["John 3:22-30", "John 7:37-39", "John 1:39", "John 1:46", "John 8:58", "Jeremiah 2:13", "Jeremiah 17:13", "Zechariah 14:8", "Isaiah 12:3", "Isaiah 44:3", "Ezekiel 47:1-6", "Genesis 24:10-27", "Genesis 29:1-12", "Exodus 2:15-21", "Deuteronomy 18:15-18", "Deuteronomy 27:4", "Deuteronomy 11:29", "2 Kings 17:24-41", "Genesis 33:18-20", "Joshua 24:32", "Exodus 3:14", "Luke 14:5", "Revelation 9:1-2", "John 3:9", "John 2:19-21", "Matthew 5:35", "Zechariah 14:16", "Revelation 21:22", "John 2:8-9", "John 8:22", "John 8:24-28", "John 9:9", "John 18:35", "Matthew 12:23", "Genesis 24:42-45", "Genesis 26:19", "Leviticus 14:6"]
date_created: 2025-04-25
date_modified: 2026-10-30
ai_provider_models:
- anthropic/claude-opus-5
- anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
- anthropic/claude-sonnet-5
---
# The Woman at the Well
Jesus asks a Samaritan woman for a drink He has no bucket to reach. Then He offers her water, and
she spends the rest of the conversation talking about equipment and real estate — your bucket, our
well, that mountain.
**John 4 uses two Greek words English prints as one. The woman calls Jacob's well a φρέαρ
(*phrear*), a shaft sunk to reach water; the narrator and Jesus call it a πηγή (*pēgē*), a spring.
What Jesus offers is a spring set inside a person. Jeremiah had already set the spring against the
water people dig for themselves, and named the trade as Israel's sin: "they have forsaken me, the
spring of living waters, and cut out cisterns for themselves" (Jeremiah 2:13, WEB).**
She asks for it anyway as a labour-saving device — "give me this water, so that I will not be
thirsty or have to come here to draw water" (4:15) — and Jesus answers by asking about her husband.
**In one sentence:** Jesus is the spring of living waters that Israel forsook for cisterns, and He gives the Holy Spirit as a free gift that wells up inside whoever asks; He moves worship off every mountain to the Father Himself, so you may come to God fully known and worship Him in spirit and truth.
[](https://the-way.lewy.au/assets/img/comics/woman-at-well.svg)
Teaching children or teenagers? [The Woman at the Well for young readers](https://the-way.lewy.au/youth/woman-at-well/)
tells this story for ages 8 to 16, with its own comic.
## Key Takeaways
*(This section follows the [Key Takeaways](https://the-way.lewy.au/about/key-takeaways/) format — see that page for what each part is for.)*
### Types & Prophecy
**Type.** A man sits at a well in a foreign country, a woman comes to draw water, and a betrothal
follows. That is the shape of Genesis 24 (Abraham's servant and Rebekah, where a drink is requested
too, 24:17), Genesis 29 (Jacob and Rachel) and Exodus 2 (Moses and Zipporah) — and John has just had the Baptist
call Jesus "the bridegroom" who "has the bride" (John 3:29), two paragraphs earlier. Jesus steps
into the scene and redirects it: the bride He leaves with is a village. Nobody in the text names the
pattern, unlike the bronze serpent, where [Jesus names it Himself](https://the-way.lewy.au/jesus/as-the-snake-was-lifted/) (John
3:14) — the resemblance here is in the staging.
**Prophecy.** The Samaritans held only the Torah, and looked for the prophet like Moses of
Deuteronomy 18:15-18 rather than a son of David. The woman's "I know that Messiah is coming" (4:25)
is that expectation, and Jesus answers it directly. Jesus makes a prediction of His own in 4:21 — an
hour when the Father is worshipped neither on Gerizim nor in Jerusalem.
### Lessons about Jesus
- **He is the spring itself.** Jeremiah's indictment names God as "the spring of
living waters" (Jeremiah 2:13; 17:13), and the Septuagint renders it with πηγή — the noun John
puts in Jesus's mouth at 4:14. The woman argues about which ancestors dug the right hole and
worshipped on the right hill while the spring her nation forsook sits on the wall asking her for a
drink.
- **What He gives renews itself.** "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty
again" (4:13) — that is what a shaft delivers. What He gives "will become in him a spring of water
welling up to eternal life" (4:14). John names the gift three chapters later: the Spirit (7:39).
- **He hands it over as a gift, and the only prerequisite He names is asking.** τὴν δωρεὰν τοῦ θεοῦ,
"the gift of God" (4:10) — "you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
She has no bucket either, and it stops being the problem.
- **He exposes her sin, and keeps talking to her.** The order in 4:16-26 is disclosure, then
worship, then His own identity. The sin is named first, and the offer of living water stands with
it on the table.
- **John 4:26 is the first ἐγώ εἰμι on Jesus's lips in the Gospel.** John records the phrase 23
more times, 22 of them Jesus's own, and the seven sayings with a predicate (the bread, the light,
the door, the shepherd, the resurrection, the way, the vine) begin at 6:35. The first goes to a
woman standing alone at a well.
- **John uses the noun "Saviour" exactly once**, at 4:42, and it is Samaritans who say it: "this is
indeed the Savior of the world."
### Memory verses
> ✝️ John 4:14 (ESV)
>
> 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water
> that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
> ✝️ John 4:23 (ESV)
>
> 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in
> spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
### Be Transformed
- **Think.** Jeremiah names two evils: forsaking the spring, *and* cutting cisterns (2:13). The
second is the industrious one, and it is the one that looks like devotion. Any arrangement you keep
up to stay supplied — the routine, the place, the practice — has become a cistern the moment it
stands in for the source.
- **Attitude.** She asked *where* (4:20); He answered *how* (4:24), using the same Greek word in
both. Take your own questions about approaching God — the right building, the right posture, the
right form of words — and ask which of them Jesus would answer and which He would replace.
- **Do.** She asked for the water so she would not have to come back (4:15), and His reply was "Go,
call your husband." Name the sin you have kept outside your conversation with God, confess it to
Him, and keep talking. For her, being known was the way into worship.
### Prayer
Father, you are spirit, and you are seeking worshippers. You are the spring my people traded for
cisterns we cut ourselves, and I have dug my own and found them empty. Give me the living water your
Son Jesus offered her, your Holy Spirit, a spring you set inside me. When Jesus tells me the truth
about my sin, let me hear it the way she did: confess it, and keep talking to you. In Jesus' name.
Amen.
## Study outline
- [Where this sits in John](#where-this-sits-in-john). Nicodemus and the woman as a pair, the bridegroom, why Jesus "had to" go through Samaria, and a Jew asking a Samaritan for a drink.
- [The two words English calls "well"](#the-two-words-english-calls-well). πηγή and φρέαρ, then [Jeremiah's two evils](#jeremiahs-two-evils), [living water](#living-water-is-the-spirit) and [what she asks for](#what-she-asks-for-instead). [What the English versions do with it](#what-the-english-versions-do-with-it) comes first.
- [Five husbands](#five-husbands-a-count-of-marriages). The allegorical reading of 2 Kings 17, and what John's text supports.
- [Worship: the question relocated](#worship-the-question-relocated). Gerizim and Deuteronomy 27:4, then *where* one must worship turned into *how*.
- ["I am, the one speaking to you"](#i-am-the-one-speaking-to-you). The first ἐγώ εἰμι on Jesus's lips in John, and whether it carries Exodus 3:14.
- [A hesitant witness, and a two-day stay](#a-hesitant-witness-and-a-two-day-stay). The water jar, her tentative question, and a town that believed.
- [The theological principle](#the-theological-principle), what is cultural and what is not, and [discussion questions](#discussion-questions). Five questions, for a group or on your own.
## Where this sits in John
John 4 is the second of a pair. In chapter 3 a man comes to Jesus: Nicodemus, a Pharisee and teacher
of Israel, who arrives at night, is told he must be born again, and is last heard asking "How can
these things be?" (3:9). In chapter 4 Jesus comes to a woman: a Samaritan, unnamed, probably at
midday, with no religious standing at all, who ends up bringing her town to Him. The contrast runs
through sex, nation, standing and who comes to whom, and the hour sharpens it if "the sixth hour" is
noon (see below).
Between them sits the Baptist's last speech, which is what sets up the well. He calls Jesus
**ὁ νυμφίος** (*ho nymphios*, "the bridegroom"), the one who "has the bride" (John 3:29). Then Jesus
goes and sits at a well.
### "He had to pass through Samaria"
> ✝️ John 4:3-6 (ESV)
>
> 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came
> to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6
> Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.
> It was about the sixth hour.
"He had to" is **ἔδει** (*edei*, G1163, "it was necessary"). The road itself was the ordinary one:
Josephus has Galileans crossing Samaria as the usual three-day route to Judea (*Antiquities* 20.118;
*Wars* 2.232; *Life* 269), and the ESV Study Bible says Jesus "had to pass this way because of
geography" (note on 4:4). The same note adds that the word may also mark God's plan, and John's
usage supports that. **δεῖ** occurs ten times in this Gospel (3:7, 3:14, 3:30, 4:4, 4:20, 4:24, 9:4,
10:16, 12:34, 20:9), and seven of them mark what must happen because God has determined it: you
*must* be born again, the Son of Man *must* be lifted up, He *must* increase, the Son of Man *must*
rise. The other three are in this chapter: 4:4, and the woman's *must* at 4:20 with Jesus's answer
at 4:24 ([below](#the-same-word-a-different-question)). Both senses can stand at 4:4: the shortest
road, and the road God had set. (The word's pop-up counts only this past-tense form, because the
underlying data files the present δεῖ separately, so it shows fewer uses than these ten.)
Sychar is usually identified with Askar, about a mile from the well on the slope of Mount Ebal; the
well is still there, and still over thirty metres deep — which is her objection in 4:11. The hour is
disputed. "The sixth hour" is noon on Jewish reckoning, the hottest part of the day, and since women
normally drew together, a woman drawing alone at noon is usually read as one unwelcome in the group.
The Legacy Standard Bible's footnote at 4:6 allows "Perhaps 6 p.m. Roman time or noon Jewish time",
and the solitary-woman inference stands or falls with noon.
### A Jew asking a Samaritan for a drink
She is startled before any word about water is spoken: "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink
from me, a woman of Samaria?" (4:9, ESV). John's aside, "Jews have no dealings with Samaritans", uses
**συγχρῶνται**, which can mean more narrowly "share use of"; the
CSB footnotes "Or do not share vessels with". Many Jews held Samaritans to be continually unclean, so
drinking from her jar would defile Him (ESV Study Bible, note on 4:9). Jesus asks for it anyway.
(Some manuscripts omit the aside, as the CSB and NLT note.)
## The two words English calls "well"
Read John 4 in any common English version and the well is a well throughout. The Greek uses two
different nouns, and they divide by who is speaking.
| Verse | Speaker | Greek | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4:6 (×2) | the narrator | **πηγή** (*pēgē*, G4077) | a spring — water that rises on its own |
| 4:11 | the woman | **φρέαρ** (*phrear*, G5421) | a shaft sunk to reach water |
| 4:12 | the woman | **φρέαρ** | the same |
| 4:14 | Jesus | **πηγή** | a spring |
The narrator calls it Jacob's *spring*. The woman, both times she speaks of it, calls it a *shaft* —
in this study's own rendering, "you have nothing to draw with, and the shaft is deep" (4:11), "are
you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the shaft?" (4:12). φρέαρ is rare in the New
Testament: outside these two verses it appears only at Luke 14:5 and, four times, of the shaft of the
abyss in Revelation 9:1-2.
Then Jesus takes the narrator's word and moves it: the water He gives "will become in him a **πηγή**
of water welling up to eternal life" (4:14). A spring, relocated inside the person.
The difference between the words should not be pressed further than John's use of them. The
Septuagint of Genesis 24 calls Rebekah's one water source both πηγή (24:13, 16, 42-45) and φρέαρ
(24:11, 20), and Isaac's servants dig a φρέαρ of "living water" (Genesis 26:19). What is firm is the
split by speaker in John 4 and the word Jesus chooses at 4:14. The spring-against-shaft contrast is
John's staging, carried by who says which word.
### What the English versions do with it
At 4:6 and 4:11, ESV, NIV, CSB, LSB, WEB, ASV and BSB all print "well" for both nouns, so an English
reader cannot see that the narrator and the woman are using different words. At 4:14 — the promise,
where it costs the most — the versions split:
| Renders πηγή at 4:14 as a spring | Renders it "well" |
|---|---|
| ESV, NIV — "a spring of water welling up" | WEB, ASV, LSB — "a well of water springing up" |
| BSB — "a fount of water" | CSB — "a well, of water springing up" |
The CSB's own footnote at 4:14 offers "Or spring", so its translators saw the choice. Where a
version prints "well" here, the promise reads as Jesus giving her *her own well* — an improvement in
convenience, which is precisely the thing she asks for in the next verse and does not get. Read the
ESV or NIV at 4:14. At 4:6 and 4:11 none of the common modern versions will help; J. N. Darby's
nineteenth-century translation is one that prints "fountain" at 4:6 and "well" at 4:11.
### Jeremiah's two evils
> ✝️ Jeremiah 2:13 (WEB)
>
> 13 "For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the spring of living waters,
> and cut out cisterns for themselves: broken cisterns that can't hold water."
The Hebrew for "spring of living waters" is מְקוֹר מַיִם חַיִּים (*meqôr
mayim ḥayyîm*), and the Septuagint renders מָקוֹר with **πηγή** — the noun
John uses. Set against it are בֹּארוֹת (*bo'rôt*, H953), cisterns people cut for
themselves, which hold nothing; the Septuagint calls them λάκκοι, pits, and its verb for making them
is ὀρύσσω, "dig". Jeremiah says it again at 17:13: "they have forsaken Yahweh, the spring of living
waters."
Jeremiah's word is not the woman's. A cistern stores rainwater and a φρέαρ reaches groundwater, and
the Septuagint's phrase is "spring of the water *of life*" (πηγὴν ὕδατος ζωῆς) rather than John's
"living water". The link between the passages is an analogy: both set water people dig for against
the spring God is. The two evils are a trade, and John 4 stages the trade in reverse. A woman stands at a shaft her
ancestors dug, arguing about whose ancestors dug the right things and worshipped on the right hill,
and the spring of living water is sitting on the wall asking her for a drink.
### Living water is the Spirit
**ὕδωρ ζῶν** (*hydōr zōn*, "living water") was ordinary language for running water as opposed to
standing water in a cistern — the sense it carries at Genesis 26:19 and Leviticus 14:6. That is what
the woman hears, and her reply is practical: you have no bucket, so where would you get flowing
water (4:11)?
John explains what Jesus meant three chapters later:
> ✝️ John 7:37-39 (ESV)
>
> 37 On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts,
> let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his
> heart will flow rivers of living water.'" 39 Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who
> believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not
> yet glorified.
The gift is the Spirit. The prophets had promised water in these terms — water poured on thirsty
ground (Isaiah 44:3), a river out of the temple (Ezekiel 47:1-6), living waters going out from
Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:8) — and Jesus locates the fulfilment inside the believer.
### What she asks for instead
> ✝️ John 4:13-16 (ESV)
>
> 13 Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever
> drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give
> him will become in him a spring of water welling 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
> Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here."
Jesus states the difference in the plainest terms available and she still hears an appliance. Verse
13 is what a shaft delivers: you drink, you are thirsty again, you walk back. Verse 14 is what a
spring delivers. Her verse 15 keeps the shaft-shaped life entire and asks only for the walk to be
removed — no thirst, no trip.
The verb she uses for that trip is **ἀντλέω** (*antleō*, G501, "to draw"), which occurs four times in the
New Testament and all four are in John: twice of the servants drawing water at Cana (2:8-9), and
twice here — she *came* to draw (4:7), and she asks never to have to draw again (4:15). It is also
the Septuagint's verb for the women at the wells of Genesis 24 and Exodus 2, and for Isaiah's
promise: "with joy you will draw water out of the wells of salvation" (Isaiah 12:3, WEB), where the
Hebrew is מִמַּעַיְנֵי (*mimma'ayĕnê*, "from the springs") and the Septuagint
again puts πηγή there.
Jesus answers her misunderstanding with a different subject. He says, "Go, call your husband." The conversation leaves the water and goes to the part of her life she had not
brought to the well.
## Five husbands: a count of marriages
> ✝️ John 4:17-19 (ESV)
>
> 17 The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I
> have no husband'; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.
> What you have said is true." 19 The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
A reading that circulates takes the five husbands allegorically, as the five foreign populations
Assyria resettled in Samaria — 2 Kings 17:24 names Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath and Sepharvaim,
five of them — with the sixth, illegitimate partner standing for Samaritan worship. Five verses
later the same chapter names the gods those populations made, and there are seven (17:29-31). John
gives no signal to read the number as anything but a count of marriages: Jesus states it, she
confirms it, and what she draws from it is that He has knowledge she did not give Him — "I perceive
that you are a prophet".
Her "I have no husband" is true and closes the topic. Jesus reopens it, agrees with her twice ("you
are right", "what you have said is true"), and fills in the rest. What He exposes is sin: "the one
you now have is not your husband" means the present relationship is not a marriage (ESV Study Bible,
note on 4:18). She does not deny it. He names it and keeps talking, and the conversation goes on to
worship, water and His own identity with the sin on the table. That is conviction, and the Jesus who
exposes the sin is the one offering the sinner living water. The next thing she does is start asking
Him theology.
## Worship: the question relocated
> ✝️ John 4:20-24 (ESV)
>
> 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people
> ought to worship." 21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on
> this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know;
> we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now
> here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is
> seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in
> spirit and truth."
### Why she points at that mountain
"This mountain" is Gerizim, visible from the well. Her claim rests on a reading in her own Bible.
Deuteronomy 27:4 commands that stones be set up and an altar built after Israel crosses the Jordan.
The Masoretic Text names the mountain **Ebal**; the Samaritan Pentateuch names **Gerizim**:
| Text | Deuteronomy 27:4 |
|---|---|
| Masoretic (WLC) | בְּהַר עֵיבָל — "on Mount Ebal" |
| Samaritan Pentateuch | בהר גריזים — "on Mount Gerizim" |
Gerizim is also the mountain of blessing in Deuteronomy 11:29, and Jacob built an altar at nearby
Shechem (Genesis 33:18-20), where Joseph was buried (Joshua 24:32). The Samaritans put their temple
on Gerizim, and the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus destroyed it about a century and a half before this
conversation. Her
"our fathers worshiped on this mountain" rests on a real textual and historical claim, and she is
standing next to its ruins.
### The same word, a different question
Her verse 20 uses **δεῖ** — Jerusalem is "the place where one *must* worship". Jesus's verse 24 uses
the same word: those who worship God "*must* worship in spirit and truth". She asks *where* one must
worship; He answers *how*. Two of John's ten uses of δεῖ sit four verses apart, doing that pivot.
Verse 21 removes both mountains, and verse 22 still awards the
Jewish claim outright — "you worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is
from the Jews", where the "you" is plural, addressed to Samaritans generally rather than to her. The
Samaritan claim is wrong, and the Jerusalem claim is right about the past: salvation came through
the Jews. What changes is the ground of access. From "now" (4:23) the Father is reached through the
Son, whose body is the temple (John 2:21), and not by standing on the right mountain. That does not
end Jerusalem's future. Jesus still calls it "the city of the great King" (Matthew 5:35), and the
prophets see the nations going up there to worship the King in person (Zechariah 14:16). The place
stays; it stops being the way in, and in the end the city's temple is "the Lord God the Almighty and
the Lamb" (Revelation 21:22).
"God is spirit" (**πνεῦμα ὁ θεός**) grounds it: God is present wherever He is sought, so worship goes
wherever His worshippers are. Whether "in spirit and truth" means the human spirit or the Holy Spirit is left
open by the Greek — the LSB footnotes "Or Spirit" at 4:24 and the CSB "Or in spirit and truth" at
4:23, and the NIV and CSB print "Spirit" in their text — and John 7:39's identification of the living water as the Spirit makes the second reading the
more natural one in this Gospel.
## "I am, the one speaking to you"
> ✝️ John 4:25-26 (ESV)
>
> 25 The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes,
> he will tell us all things." 26 Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he."
The Samaritans kept only the Torah, so the figure she expects is the prophet like Moses of
Deuteronomy 18:15-18 — one who would "tell us all things". Jesus answers in that register and exceeds it.
The Greek is **Ἐγώ εἰμι, ὁ λαλῶν σοι** — "I am, the one speaking to you." **This is the first
ἐγώ εἰμι on Jesus's lips in John's Gospel.** John records the phrase 23 more times, 22 of them
Jesus's own (the other is the healed blind man, 9:9): the bread, the light, the door, the shepherd,
the resurrection, the way, the vine, and the bare "before Abraham was, I am" at 8:58. This one, first,
is spoken to a lone Samaritan woman with no one else present.
Whether it carries the weight of Exodus 3:14 is unsettled. In context it answers her sentence about
the Messiah, so "I am he" is the natural sense — but the NLT's footnote at 4:26 offers "The 'I AM'
is here" and "I am the LORD", and cross-references Exodus 3:14, so the divine-name reading is a live
translator's option as well as a commentator's. The absolute use, with no predicate at all, comes at
8:24 and 8:28 and is unmistakable at 8:58; what 4:26 establishes is that the formula starts here. [The Names of
God](https://the-way.lewy.au/god/names-of-god/#i-will-be) sets out Exodus 3:14 itself.
## A hesitant witness, and a two-day stay
> ✝️ John 4:28-29 (ESV)
>
> 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 "Come, see a
> man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?"
She asked in 4:15 never to have to come back and draw. Thirteen verses later she walks back to town
and the **ὑδρία**, the water jar, stays at the well. John does not say why she left it. He does say
she came for water and left without it, and the verb is **ἀφίημι** (*aphiēmi*, G863) — the same one that opened the
chapter when Jesus "left" Judea (4:3).
Her question is framed with **μήτι** (*mēti*, G3385), a particle that normally expects the answer
*no*. John uses it twice more — the crowd asking "will he kill himself?" (8:22) and Pilate's "am I a
Jew?" (18:35) — both expecting a denial. But Matthew uses the same form for amazed crowds wondering
whether Jesus might be the Son of David (Matthew 12:23), and the ESV and NIV print 4:29 as an open
question. So her testimony reads either as *"this couldn't be the Christ, could it?"* or as a
hesitant hope. On both readings it is tentative, and it worked anyway:
> ✝️ John 4:39-42 (ESV)
>
> 39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me
> all that I ever did." 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and
> he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the
> woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves,
> and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world."
Her "Come, see" (**Δεῦτε ἴδετε**) uses the same verb as Jesus's "Come and you will see" to the
first disciples (1:39, where it is future, ὄψεσθε), and the same imperative Philip used to Nathanael,
"Come and see" (1:46), with a different verb for "come". She is
doing what the disciples did, on the strength of one conversation and a question she was not sure of
the answer to.
Two details close the account. Jesus, who arrived **κεκοπιακώς** — "wearied" from the journey
(4:6) — tells the disciples that "Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor" (4:38). All
three occurrences of **κοπιάω** in John are in this chapter, and they run from His tiredness at the well to the harvest it produced. And the Samaritans' verdict uses **σωτήρ**,
"Saviour", the only time the noun appears in John's Gospel.
## The theological principle
Jesus gives the Spirit as an inward, self-renewing source of life, received as a gift; He exposes
the sin of the one He is giving it to, and keeps giving; and He relocates worship from a place to the
Father Himself, so that access depends on Him alone.
None of this rests on the narrative alone. John identifies the living water as the Spirit Himself
(7:39); the gift language is the passage's own (4:10) and is taught explicitly at Ephesians 2:8-9;
and the relocation of worship is developed across the epistles, where the people themselves become
the temple the Spirit indwells (1 Corinthians 3:16-17; Ephesians 2:19-22).
### What is cultural and what is not
Several things in John 4 belong to their setting. The betrothal scene at a well is a literary
convention of Genesis and Exodus; the Jewish avoidance of Samaritan vessels is a first-century purity
rule; women drawing water together at set hours is village custom; and the Gerizim-Jerusalem dispute
is a quarrel between two peoples. What crosses into every culture is what Jesus does with them: He
gives the Spirit freely to whoever asks, He names sin and keeps talking to the sinner, and He is
worshipped in spirit and truth wherever His people are.
## Discussion questions
1. Jesus says the well water leaves you thirsty again (4:13) and she asks for His water so she will
not have to keep walking to the well (4:15). Where are you asking God for a shorter walk to the
same well?
2. Jeremiah 2:13 names two evils: forsaking the spring, *and* cutting cisterns. Why does
the second one matter separately from the first?
3. Jesus raises the woman's marital history before He says anything about worship or His own
identity, and keeps talking to her afterwards. What does that ordering suggest about how being known
relates to worship?
4. Her testimony is a question expecting the answer *no*, and a town believed through it. What does
that suggest about how sure a witness has to be?
5. Deuteronomy 27:4 reads "Ebal" in one Bible and "Gerizim" in another, and centuries of dispute
followed. Jesus answers by removing both mountains. What questions might we be asking that He
would answer the same way?
## References & Recommended Reading
**Original-language and textual sources** (all queried in this project's own
[reference database](https://the-way.lewy.au/scripture/original-language-data/)):
- **SBL Greek New Testament** (SBLGNT), ed. Michael W. Holmes — the Greek text of John 4 used
throughout, including the πηγή/φρέαρ distribution and the ἐγώ εἰμι count.
- **MACULA Greek Linguistic Datasets** (Clear Bible) — lemma, morphology and Louw-Nida domains for
the word studies; the source of the δεῖ, ἀντλέω and κοπιάω occurrence lists.
- **Westminster Leningrad Codex** and the **Samaritan Pentateuch** — the Deuteronomy 27:4
Ebal/Gerizim comparison.
- **Open Scriptures Septuagint lemmas** — the LXX's use of πηγή at Jeremiah 2:13, 17:13 and Isaiah
12:3, and of ἀντλέω at Genesis 24, Exodus 2 and Isaiah 12:3.
- **unfoldingWord Literal Text** (ULT) word alignment — checking which Greek word each English word
renders before resting a point on the English.
**Translations quoted.** ESV throughout unless labelled otherwise; the World English Bible (WEB) for
Jeremiah 2:13 and Isaiah 12:3. Renderings of John 4:6, 4:11 and 4:14 compared across ESV, NIV, CSB,
LSB, WEB, ASV and BSB. See [Bible Translations & Source Texts](https://the-way.lewy.au/scripture/translations/) and
[copyright](https://the-way.lewy.au/about/copyright/).
**Commentaries and background** (consulted after the exegesis above, and they corrected it — see the
paragraph on ἔδει and on the sixth hour):
- **ESV Study Bible** (Crossway) — notes on John 4:4 (the δεῖ pattern), 4:5-6 (Sychar, Jacob's
well), 4:9 (Samaritan uncleanness and the narrower sense of συγχρῶνται), 4:18 (the present relationship
not a marriage), 4:20-24.
- **NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible** (Zondervan) — notes on John 4:4 (the Josephus citations
for the Samaria route), 4:6 (the hour and the woman drawing alone), 4:16 (the well betrothal scenes), 4:19 and
4:25 (Samaritan messianic expectation).
- **CSB Ancient Faith Study Bible** (Holman) and **Legacy Standard Bible** (Three Sixteen
Publishing) — translators' footnotes at 4:6, 4:9, 4:14, 4:23 and 4:24, which is where the
disputed hour and the "Or spring" alternative came from.
- **NLT Life Application Study Bible** (Tyndale) — the translators' footnote at 4:26 offering "The
'I AM' is here" and cross-referencing Exodus 3:14.
- **J. N. Darby's translation** — "fountain" at 4:6 and "well" at 4:11.
- **Josephus**, *Antiquities* 20.118; *Wars of the Jews* 2.232; *Life* 269 — cited via the Cultural
Backgrounds note above for the ordinary Judea-to-Galilee route through Samaria.
- **Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart**, *How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth* — the
exegesis-before-application method this study follows.