16: The Woman at the Well
We can imagine the Samaritan woman looking at Jesus—a strange man sitting just by the well from which she needed to draw water—and thinking about her options. Perhaps she considered whether to continue her errand or return sometime later. He looked tired and dusty, probably from walking up the mountain to the ridge road that passes on to Galilee.
Which meant he was also a Jew.
Why she chose to continue her journey, we don’t know—but it led to one of those fascinating conversations scattered throughout the Scriptures.
Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.)
John 4:7
What does this mean?
Perhaps Abraham’s Servant standing by the well, waiting for one of Abraham’s relatives to come and draw passed through her mind.
Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Let the young woman to whom I shall say, ‘Please let down your jar that I may drink,’ and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’—let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.”
Genesis 24:13–14
Or perhaps Jacob, fleeing Esau, is standing by the well waiting for someone to come draw water from the well so he can quench his thirst passed through her mind.
Now as soon as Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother, Jacob came near and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother. Then Jacob kissed Rachel and wept aloud.
Genesis 29:10–11
A man, alone, speaking to a woman at a well was not proper at all. It was most unexpected. The woman, perhaps unsure how to answer, draws a distinction between them.
The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
John 4:7–9
Throughout the Gospels, the Samaritans are used as a foil for the unloving attitude of the Jewish leadership and Israel as a nation (for instance, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan) and as outside the primary scope of Jesus’ ministry.
Samaritans were hated by pious Jews, not just because of the argument over the proper place to worship but also because they were not of “pure Jewish blood.” We often fail to appreciate the fine distinction between what might be called ritual purity and heart purity in the Mosaic Law. Ritual impurity could be transmitted, like a disease, from one person to another—or even from a dead body to a living person. Impurity of the heart, however, is personal.
Samaritans were ritually impure, able to transmit their impurity to others. Samaritans, then, were avoided by those who held themselves in strict separation from the world.
Jesus doesn’t address either the question of meeting a woman at a well or the separation between Jews and Samaritans.
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
John 4:10
Living water? Living water means water in motion—a spring, stream, waterfall, or water pouring out of a cloven stone. Still water was dangerous in the ancient world. They had no way to purify water other than the simplest of methods, primarily boiling. Still water, then, meant death, while moving water—bubbling, gurgling, and running—meant life. Hence, moving water was living. For the Samaritan woman, living water fulfills her thirst directly, enables her to cook, and provides for her washing.
The Samaritan woman is confused by the direction the conversation is taking.
The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?”
John 4:11
“Where?”—is more than just a question about the physical location of this living water or how Jesus can reach it. In John’s context, it is a question about who Jesus is.
Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.
John 8:14
Reaching back to the context this woman would have known well, it is also a question about a person’s spiritual state.
But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
Genesis 3:9
Her next question ties who and where together, challenging Jesus’ standing.
Are you greater than our father Jacob?
John 4:12
She is accusing rather than inquiring—clearly, this man sitting before her, dusty, alone, tired, and thirsty, cannot be greater than Jacob, who dug this well and was a mighty man of God.
Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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 13–14
She must have been shocked, and perhaps a bit put off, by Jeus’s answer.
Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.
John 4:15
We often read this as confusion; she still thinks about physical, rather than spiritual, water. Given her previous question was a challenge—”Are you greater than Jacob?”—is perhaps better read as a challenge as well:
“You cannot even get to the water at the bottom of this well, and you’re offering water that will keep me from being thirsty ever again? Yeah, right …”
Jesus’ answer, however, startles her.
Go, call your husband, and come here … I have no husband … You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.
John 4:16–18
Yet, she still has one more challenge.
Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.
John 4:19–20
After Jesus answers this and some further discussion, she finally starts to understand who this might be—and indeed, he is greater than Jacob.
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.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
John 4:25–26
Now, the woman believes.
Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. John 4:39–40
With this basic structure of the text, we can look at several interesting questions Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman raises—but these will need to wait for future dispatches.