I don't think the first two individuals we see Jesus interact with after He cleanses the temple are random placements of unconnected stories. There are too many similarities and differences that seem very purposeful. Last week was Nicodemus; this week is the Woman at the Well. (The interlude with John the Baptist in John 3 connects these two stories. When you read it, think of both Nicodemus and the Woman at the Well.)
SIMILARITIES
Neither understand “the gift of God”
Both stories feature water and the Spirit[1] (the John the Baptizer interlude features water and an explanation of the Spirit)
They (and the disciples) are confused about terms (birth/water/bread)
Both initially see Jesus as a prophet (believe about rather than believe in)
DIFFERENCES
Male vs. female
Jewish vs. Samaritan
Signs and wonders vs. no signs and wonders
Nicodemus leaves confused; she leaves converted
He leaves covertly; she leaves loudly and brings people back
THE STORY (Bible quoted in italics; commentary in regular font)
Jesus left Judea (where the Pharisees were thick) and set out once more for Galilee. But he had to pass through Samaria, which had long been a place of idol worship combined with worship of Yahweh. Israel’s Jews considered these cousins with Gentile blood and worship to be not just impure, but evil.[2] When traveling between Galilee and Judea, many Jews would cross the Jordan twice rather than pass through Samaria. Jesus headed straight through.
Now Jesus came to a Samaritan town called Sychar (which means, fittingly, “Drunken”).[3] It was near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.[4] Jacob’s well was there, so Jesus, since he was tired from the journey, sat down beside the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water.
It wasn’t that unusual for people to draw water at this time (you didn’t get peak heat until around 3:00), but it wasn’t typical. Was it her second trip because she had already used up her morning draw? Did something delay her that morning? Was she trying to avoid people? John doesn’t say why she was there at that time; he just tells us what follows.
We don't know if other people were there or not – the text doesn’t say – it just says that when the Samaritan woman arrived, Jesus asked for her help, which in the Middle East was a gesture that honored her. Jesus said, “Give me some water to drink.” (For his disciples had gone off into the town to buy supplies.) This was part of the protocol for hospitality, because the one requesting acknowledged a need that the one requested could satisfy.
But the Samarian woman had some questions. She said to him, “How can you—a Jew—ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink?” (For Jews have no communion with Samaritans.) That’s an understatement. The Jews and Samaritans really didn’t like each other. The Samaritans had intermingled not only their families with hostile nations but also their temples with hostile gods, then had the audacity to desecrate Jewish temples while building their own temple and declaring it to be the true one. They also rejected every part of the Old Testament except the first 5 books. The rabbis had declared everything in Samaria unclean. Some went so far as to declare that if a Samaritan were in a town, all the spittle in that town was to be considered unclean (because it might derive from a Samaritan). To drink from her jar would have made Jesus ritually impure in the eyes of Jesus’ Jewish peers.
The early church writers consistently pointed something else out: she seemed to be concerned that Jesus was about to break Jewish law.[5] If she were as morally corrupt as she is often portrayed –and had the kind of animosity in her that Samaritans and Jews often had for each other - it’s hard to envision she wouldn’t have found it delightful to corrupt this strange Jewish man. But her first response is concern: “Are you sure you should be doing this?” File this away as we think of her….
Jesus answered her, “If you had known the gift of God[6] and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you fresh, flowing water – the water of life.” The rabbis spoke of Torah, the law, as a gift from God that was as refreshing as living water. But John uses the symbolism differently to refer to God’s own refreshing spirit, the Holy Spirit, that the prophets said would be poured out on all people. Paul will write later in his first letter to the Corinthians that we all drink of the same Spirit (12:13)
“Sir,” the woman respectfully said to him, “you have no bucket and the well is 100 feet deep; where then do you get this living water? Surely you’re not greater than our ancestor Jacob, are you? For he gave us this well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock.”
Jesus didn’t just come out and say, “Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I am better than Jacob.” He simply describes what He has to offer and lets her decide. He replied, “Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.”
Had the Samaritans used the entire Old Testament, this probably would have sounded familiar to her. Isaiah, for example, wrote (12:3), “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Zechariah wrote that living water would come from Jerusalem and cover the world (14:8). But, like I said earlier, the Samaritans only used the first 5 books of the Old Testament. They had nothing from the prophets. In fact, they thought Moses was the last prophet, and they looked forward to the next Moses.
The woman was likely testing this bold claim when she said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” Oh, so you can get fresh, running water when there is none in sight? Let’s see it! Does she think he’s bluffing and she’s trying to respectfully end this game? Is she hopeful that there is another, better source of water, maybe closer to home? Maybe she could be the town hero if she found better water! We don’t know. What we do know is that Jesus pulls a Nicodemus Switcheroo and changes the subject entirely.
Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come back here.” The woman replied, “I have no husband.” Jesus, who had knowledge of her heart (like he did with Nathaniel and Nicodemus), said to her, “Right you are when you said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband. This you said truthfully.”
Lots of ink has been spilled discussing how immoral this woman was (a serial adulteress? A prostitute?) That’s not at all clear from the text.
If she was a known serial adulteress or a prostitute, men would not have kept marrying her (and because the Samaritans had the Law, the penalty would have been death).
Perhaps she had been divorced most or all of these times (it was really easy for a man to initiate divorce over even the most minor things, like burning breakfast toast).
Perhaps she was repeatedly widowed; if so, others might think that God was set against her because something was wrong with her.
It’s not even clear that she was living in a morally compromised relationship with the man in her life. I mean, maybe she was:
She could have been living with a man (which would have been unusual for both of them).
Maybe she was living with a man to whom she was betrothed (kind of married in that they had started the covenant process but not married in that they hadn’t finished it?)
Maybe she was a concubine (which was allowed).
Maybe a vindictive husband put her away without divorcing her, and she eventually remarried (which would count as adultery).
But maybe, for a variety of reasons, her marriage had not yet been consummated, which was the act of covenant initiation (which no one would know except the woman, her husband, and now Jesus). Maybe her deceased husband’s brother had married her (#OTlaw) but had never consummated the marriage.
WE DON’T KNOW. A loooooot is read into this text. What we do know is this: Jesus gets to an issue to which she responds with a term of respect, and without a sense of shame or anger. The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
Hmmmm. Her spiritual eyes are opening. This is a revelatory moment: someone waiting for the next prophet - who would be an end time Restorer - acknowledges that Jesus – a Jewish man, not a Samaritan - is a prophet. So, what kind of question would you ask a Jewish prophet? We would expect a petty or small-minded person to ask a petty or small-minded question, probably something like a parlor trick. She has something on her mind much like Nicodemus: He wanted to make sure he was in the Kingdom; she want’s to know if she is getting her worship right.” Great question, because “zeal for the house of the Lord” consumes prophets.[7]
She continued, Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, Mount Gerizim, which is holy to us (Deut. 11:29; 27:12). Your people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem, but we Samaritans are unwelcome in Jerusalem’s temple. Who is right? Which temple is the right one? And if it’s the one in Jerusalem, how can I, a Samaritan, worship where I am supposed to worship?
Jesus said to her, “Believe me, my lady,[8] a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not know. How could you know? You have rejected the revelation of the prophets after Moses, prophets who revealed so much about Yahweh and His plan for His people and the world. We worship what we know, because it was always God’s plan that the source of salvation would arise from the Jewish people. But a time is coming—and now is here—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit(by the power of the Holy Spirit) with truth[9] about God, which they lack.[10] The Father seeks such people to be his worshipers, identified not by where they worship but whom and how they worship together, as one people united by God. God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The woman said to Jesus, “I know that the Messiah is coming; He will be a restorer, like Moses.[11]He will restore God’s divine favor that ended after Moses. We believe whenever he comes, he will tell us all things.”
Jesus said to her, “It is the I AM who speaks to you.”
That was a phrase she recognized. That is how God identified himself to their hero, Moses. And I suspect this is where it really sank in that this was not a conversation just about water with just another prophet. This man offered the promised restoration, the return of God’s favor on outcast people and the repairing of the ruins in their temples, their homes, and their hearts.
Now at that very moment his disciples came back. They were shocked because he was speaking with a woman. Not only did traditional Mediterranean culture considered it inappropriate for a woman to talk with unrelated men in unguarded settings but also the Mishnah read, “He that talks much with womankind brings evil upon himself and neglects the study of the Law and at the last will inherit Gehenna.” Yikes. However, no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you speaking with her?” Good call, disciples.
Then the woman, thoroughly distracted from her original mission, left her water jar, went off into the town and said to the people the same thing Phillip had said: “Come and see. There is a man who told me everything I ever did. Surely he can’t be the Messiah, can he?”[12] It would seem Jesus and the woman talked more than is recorded. The text hardly shows that he “told her everything she ever did.” It seems safe to assume that as they talked, Jesus demonstrated that he knew her – which to the Jewish and Samaritan people was something that would characterize the coming Messiah.
So they left the town and began coming to him. This is yet another detail that makes me think the woman was not an infamous as I was raised to believe. Who would believe the report about a spiritual issue (not just about a prophet but about the Messiah Moses promised) from a serial adulteress or a tragically promiscuous person, especially in a culture that did not think women were reliable narrators to begin with? Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” So the disciples began to say to one another, “No one brought him anything to eat, did they?”
Oh, disciples. The learning curve is long for them. They think of physical food as quickly as the Jewish leaders thought of the physical temple, Nicodemus thought of physical birth, and the Samaritan woman thought of physical water. I’m sensing some patterns here in the storytelling.
Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his work.[13]Don’t worry about me. You are missing what’s here for you. Don’t you know what the farmers say: ‘There are four more months and then comes the harvest?’ I tell you, look up and see that the fields are already white for harvest! You are in Samaria; they are ready to be brought into the Kingdom.The one who reaps receives pay and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that the one who sows and the one who reaps can rejoice together. For in this instance the saying is true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I am setting you up for the joy of reaping a harvest of souls that you did not work for; others, such as all the prophets, have labored before you, an now you have entered into their labor.”
Now many Samaritans from that town believed he was a prophet because of the report of the woman who testified, “He told me everything I ever did.”[14] So when the Samaritans came to him, they began asking him to stay with them. He and his disciples stayed there two days, and because of his word many more believed.
They said to the woman, “No longer do we believe because of your words, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this one really is the Savior of the entire world.” This echoes what John the Baptizer had already said: “God gives the Spirit without limit.” (John 3:34) Jesus promptly demonstrates what he told Nicodemus: God loves and offers salvation to the whole world, even the Samaritans – the ones His people most despised. He goes to them. He accepts their hospitality. He doesn’t worry that others might think he had compromised himself by treating them with dignity. They needed Living Water, and he took it to them.
According to an early tradition, after the Resurrection she was baptized with the name Photini, “the enlightened one.” The story goes that she went with her 7 children to spread the gospel in Carthage, which was in Phonecia on the northern coast of Africa. She was eventually killed (along with her family) by Nero – who had her thrown into a well.[15]
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[1] Is this story actually explaining the “water and Spirit” Jesus just told Nicodemus was needed for a second birth? Hmmmm……
[2] Background info from the commentary accompanying The Voice translation, ESV Reformation Study Bible, NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, NIV First Century Study Bible, Orthodox Study Bible, Believer’s Bible Commentary, Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Adam Clarke’s commentary
[3] With this crime the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 28:1, Isaiah 28:3, Isaiah 28:7-8) charges the Ephraimites, within whose limits the city stood. (Adam Clarke)
[4] “This reference to Joseph in verse 5 will only become clear when we see that the Samaritan woman suffered in her life in a manner similar to Joseph. If this reading of the story is correct, than just as in Joseph’s life, unexplained suffering was endured for the purpose of bringing salvation to Israel, so the Samaritan woman’s suffering in her life led to the salvation of the Israelite Samaritans in that locale.” https://sarahbowler.com/2015/01/20/the-woman-at-the-well/
[5] The book series Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture records numerous early church writers pointing this out.
[6] Language used for the Holy Spirit elsewhere in the New Testament.
[7] This also makes me think the woman should be seen as more than a moral failure. She could have asked a lot of petty or vindictive things of a potential prophet to prove what he knows. She asks a really good question about the temple.
[8] “Woman” is too blunt a translation for our 21st century ears. It sounds rude, when it wasn't. It’s the same way he addressed his own mother in John 2:4.
[9] “In the Spirit and in truth”, or “in spirit and truth.”
[10] “The worship of the Samaritans was a defective worship - they did not receive the prophetical writings: that of the Jews was a carnal worship, dealing only in the letter…with types and ceremonies.” (Adam Clarke)
[11] Making the water imagery very important, considering Moses’ role as a water-giver.
[12] “The Jews believed that one essential characteristic of the Messiah would be, that he should be able to tell the secrets of all hearts. This they believed was predicted, Isaiah 11:2-3. When the famous impostor Barchochab, who rose up under the empire of Adrian, about a hundred years after the incarnation, professed himself to be the Messiah, after having been deceived by him for two years, they at last thought of putting his divinity to proof on this ground: they brought before him persons whom he did not know, some of whom were very vicious, and others of a different character; they desired him to point out who were the righteous, and who were the wicked; which when he could not do, they rose up and put him to death.” (Adam Clarke)
[13] We are told in this story what spiritual nourishment looks like: our water is the Holy Spirit, our food is doing the will of God.
[14] The Samaritan woman is sometimes referred to as the first apostle because of her evangelism. In a culture where women were considered inherently unreliable had a second-class status to the men around them, this is yet another example of how God uses what is foolishness and weakness to the world to shame the arrogance of the ‘wise’ and ‘strong,’ and taking those who “are not” valuable in the eyes of society and demonstrating their value. (1 Corinthians 1:28-29)
[15] Orthodox Study Bible