John 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

On his way from Judea back to Galilee, Jesus passes through Samaria and talks with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, speaking about living water, her five former husbands, where people should worship, and telling her plainly that he is the Messiah. She brings her town out to him, and many Samaritans believe, first from her report and then from hearing him themselves during the two days he stays. Jesus then goes on into Galilee, where a royal official from Capernaum begs him to heal his dying son; Jesus says the boy lives, and the father later learns the fever left at that exact hour. The chapter calls this the second sign Jesus did after coming from Judea into Galilee.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • The Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard something.
   • The Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making more disciples than John.
   • The Pharisees had heard that Jesus was baptizing more disciples than John.
2. 4:2
   • Jesus himself was not baptizing.
   • Jesus' disciples were the ones baptizing.
3. 4:3
   • Jesus left Judaea.
   • Jesus departed again into Galilee.
4. 4:4
   • It was necessary for Jesus to pass through Samaria.
5. 4:5
   • Jesus came to a city of Samaria called Sychar.
   • Sychar was near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
6. 4:6
   • Jacob's spring was there.
   • Jesus was wearied from his journey.
   • Jesus sat down just as he was by the spring.
   • It was about the sixth hour.
7. 4:7
   • A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
   • Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.
8. 4:8
   • His disciples had gone away into the city.
   • The disciples had gone to buy food.
9. 4:9
   • The Samaritan woman asked how he, being a Jew, asked a drink of her, a Samaritan woman.
   • Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
10. 4:10
    • Jesus answered her.
    • Jesus said that if she knew the gift of God she would have asked him.
    • Jesus said that if she knew who it was saying to her, Give me a drink, she would have asked him.
    • Jesus said that he would have given her living water.
11. 4:11
    • The woman addressed him as Sir.
    • The woman said he had nothing to draw with.
    • The woman said the well is deep.
    • The woman asked where he then gets the living water.
12. 4:12
    • The woman asked whether he is greater than their father Jacob.
    • The woman said Jacob gave them the well.
    • The woman said Jacob himself drank from it.
    • The woman said Jacob's sons drank from it.
    • The woman said Jacob's livestock drank from it.
13. 4:13
    • Jesus answered her.
    • Jesus said everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again.
14. 4:14
    • Jesus said whoever drinks of the water he will give will never thirst forever.
    • Jesus said the water he gives will become in that person a spring of water.
    • Jesus said that spring of water leaps up into eternal life.
15. 4:15
    • The woman addressed him as Sir.
    • The woman asked him to give her this water.
    • The woman said her purpose was that she not thirst.
    • The woman said her purpose was that she not come here to draw.
16. 4:16
    • Jesus told her to go and call her husband.
    • Jesus told her to come here.
17. 4:17
    • The woman answered that she has no husband.
    • Jesus said she had spoken well in saying she has no husband.
18. 4:18
    • Jesus said she has had five husbands.
    • Jesus said the man she now has is not her husband.
    • Jesus said she has spoken this truly.
19. 4:19
    • The woman addressed him as Sir.
    • The woman said she perceives that he is a prophet.
20. 4:20
    • The woman said their fathers worshipped on this mountain.
    • The woman said that his people say the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem.
21. 4:21
    • Jesus told her to believe him.
    • Jesus addressed her as Woman.
    • Jesus said an hour is coming.
    • Jesus said that in that hour they will not worship the Father on this mountain.
    • Jesus said that in that hour they will not worship the Father in Jerusalem.
22. 4:22
    • Jesus said they worship what they do not know.
    • Jesus said we worship what we know.
    • Jesus said salvation is from the Jews.
23. 4:23
    • Jesus said an hour is coming and now is.
    • Jesus said that in that hour the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
    • Jesus said the Father seeks such people to worship him.
24. 4:24
    • Jesus said God is spirit.
    • Jesus said those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
25. 4:25
    • The woman said she knows that Messiah is coming.
    • The woman said Messiah is called Christ.
    • The woman said that when he comes he will announce all things to them.
26. 4:26
    • Jesus said to her that he, the one speaking to her, is he.
27. 4:27
    • At that point his disciples came.
    • The disciples were amazed that he was speaking with a woman.
    • No one said, What do you seek?
    • No one said, Why are you speaking with her?
28. 4:28
    • The woman left her water jar.
    • The woman went away into the city.
    • The woman spoke to the people.
29. 4:29
    • The woman told them to come and see a man.
    • The woman said the man told her all the things she did.
    • The woman asked whether this might be the Christ.
30. 4:30
    • They went out of the city.
    • They were coming to him.
31. 4:31
    • In the meantime the disciples were asking him.
    • The disciples called him Rabbi.
    • The disciples told him to eat.
32. 4:32
    • Jesus said he has food to eat.
    • Jesus said they do not know about that food.
33. 4:33
    • The disciples said to one another, asking whether anyone had brought him something to eat.
34. 4:34
    • Jesus said his food is to do the will of the one who sent him.
    • Jesus said his food is to finish that one's work.
35. 4:35
    • Jesus asked whether they say there are yet four months and then the harvest comes.
    • Jesus told them to lift up their eyes.
    • Jesus told them to look at the fields.
    • Jesus said the fields are white for harvest already.
36. 4:36
    • The reaper receives wages.
    • The reaper gathers fruit for eternal life.
    • The purpose is that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together.
37. 4:37
    • In this case the saying is true.
    • The saying is that one sows and another reaps.
38. 4:38
    • Jesus said he sent them to reap what they had not labored for.
    • Jesus said others have labored.
    • Jesus said they have entered into the labor of others.
39. 4:39
    • Many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him.
    • They believed because of the woman's word of testimony.
    • The woman testified that he told her all that she did.
40. 4:40
    • The Samaritans came to him.
    • The Samaritans asked him to stay with them.
    • He stayed there two days.
41. 4:41
    • Many more believed because of his own word.
42. 4:42
    • They said to the woman that they no longer believe because of her speech.
    • They said they have heard for themselves.
    • They said they know that this man is truly the Christ, the Savior of the world.
43. 4:43
    • After the two days he departed from there.
    • He went into Galilee.
44. 4:44
    • Jesus himself testified something.
    • Jesus testified that a prophet has no honor in his own homeland.
45. 4:45
    • He came into Galilee.
    • The Galileans received him.
    • The Galileans had seen all the things he did in Jerusalem at the feast.
    • The Galileans had themselves gone to the feast.
46. 4:46
    • Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee.
    • At Cana he had made the water wine.
    • There was a certain royal official.
    • The official's son was sick at Capernaum.
47. 4:47
    • The official heard that Jesus had come from Judaea into Galilee.
    • The official went to him.
    • The official asked him to come down and heal his son.
    • The son was about to die.
48. 4:48
    • Jesus said to him that unless they see signs and wonders they will not believe.
49. 4:49
    • The royal official addressed him as Sir.
    • The official asked him to come down before his child dies.
50. 4:50
    • Jesus told him to go.
    • Jesus said his son lives.
    • The man believed the word Jesus spoke to him.
    • The man went on his way.
51. 4:51
    • He was already going down.
    • His servants met him.
    • The servants said his boy lives.
52. 4:52
    • He inquired of them the hour when the boy got better.
    • They told him the fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour.
53. 4:53
    • The father knew it was at that same hour.
    • That was the hour in which Jesus said to him, Your son lives.
    • The father himself believed.
    • His whole household believed.
54. 4:54
    • This was the second sign Jesus did.
    • He did it having come out of Judaea into Galilee.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1

The Pharisees were a Jewish movement known for strict, detailed observance of the law of Moses and for their influence over ordinary people's religious practice. In this Gospel they act as the group that watches and assesses Jesus. The oldest manuscripts are divided here between "the Lord" and "Jesus" as the subject of "knew."

4:2

The brackets mark an aside from the author correcting the report he has just passed on, a habit he shows several times in this Gospel.

4:3

Judea was the southern territory around Jerusalem; Galilee was the northern region around the lake, roughly seventy miles away. Samaria lay between them.

4:4

Samaria was the territory between Judea and Galilee. It was the shortest route north, about three days on foot, but Jewish travelers sometimes crossed the Jordan and went around it instead. The Greek says he "had to" go, which can mean either that it was the practical route or that it was necessary for some other reason; John does not specify.

4:5

Sychar was a village in Samaria, probably near modern Askar at the foot of Mount Gerizim. The plot of ground is the one mentioned in Genesis 33 and Genesis 48, which Jacob bought and left to Joseph, and where Joseph's bones were buried according to Joshua 24.

4:6

The sixth hour is about midday. Hours were counted from sunrise, so the first hour is roughly six in the morning and the sixth is roughly noon. The King James "sat thus on the well" translates a Greek phrase meaning "just as he was," that is, without ceremony, and "on the well" means at the wellhead, on its low stone rim. The well itself is deep, something over a hundred feet.

4:7

Water was normally fetched in the cool of early morning or evening, and usually by several women together. Drawing at noon alone is unusual, though John does not say why.

4:8

Where the King James says "meat" here and in verses 32 and 34, it means food of any kind. In 1611 "meat" was the general word for anything eaten, and flesh was only one sort of it.

4:9

The Samaritans were the population of the central hill country who kept their own version of the five books of Moses and worshiped at Mount Gerizim rather than at the Jerusalem temple. Jews regarded them as ethnically and religiously compromised, and the hostility ran both ways and went back centuries. The Greek phrase behind "have no dealings with" can mean either that Jews do not associate with Samaritans at all, or more narrowly that they do not share drinking and eating vessels with them, because a Samaritan woman's jar would be counted unclean.

4:10

"Living water" was the ordinary term for running water: a spring, a stream, water that moves, as opposed to the still water standing in a cistern or drawn up from a well. The woman first hears it in that plain sense, which is why her reply in verse 11 is about buckets and depth.

4:11

The Greek word she uses, translated "Sir," is the everyday polite address to a stranger, though it is the same word that elsewhere means "Lord." A traveler would need a leather bucket and a long rope to reach the water in a well this deep, and Jesus has neither.

4:12

The Samaritans traced their descent from Jacob through his sons Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, so "our father Jacob" is a claim she expects a Jew to dispute. The King James "cattle" means livestock generally, not cows in particular.

4:14

The word rendered "spring" and translated "well" by the King James is a different word from the one used for Jacob's well earlier in the chapter. Jacob's is a dug shaft holding still water; this one is a natural source that flows up of itself.

4:18

A woman in this period could not normally end a marriage herself; a man could divorce his wife with relative ease, and death was common. The text says only that she has had five husbands and that the present man is not one, without saying how any of the marriages ended.

4:19

A prophet was a person God spoke through. Prophets sometimes knew things they had no ordinary way of knowing, which is why she says this.

4:20

"This mountain" is Mount Gerizim, which stood directly above them. The Samaritan version of the books of Moses commands that the altar be built there, and a Samaritan temple stood on it until the Jewish ruler John Hyrcanus destroyed it around 128 BC, roughly a century and a half before this conversation. The dispute over which mountain God had chosen was the central religious quarrel between the two communities.

4:21

The Father means God.

4:22

"Salvation is of the Jews" uses "of" in its older sense of "out of" or "from," meaning that salvation has its origin and comes by way of the Jewish people.

4:23

"In spirit and in truth" means worship that comes from inside you. It is honest, and it is not tied to one building.

4:24

The Greek says simply "God is spirit", describing what God is like rather than counting him as one spirit among others; the King James "a Spirit" reflects English grammar of 1611 more than the original wording.

4:25

"Messiah" is the Hebrew and Aramaic word for "anointed one," and "Christ" is the Greek translation of it; the two words mean exactly the same thing, which is why John pauses to explain. Kings and priests were anointed with oil when installed. Samaritans did not use the royal title in the Jewish way; they expected a figure often called the Taheb, a restorer and teacher who would make everything known, which matches her description of him explaining all things.

4:26

The Greek is literally "I am, the one speaking to you." The phrase "I am" is the ordinary way of saying "that's me," but it is also the wording used of God's self-naming in the Greek Old Testament, and John uses it repeatedly in this Gospel.

4:27

A respected teacher holding a public conversation alone with a woman, and a Samaritan woman at that, went against the social convention of the time. The disciples' surprise is at the fact of the conversation, not at anything said in it.

4:28

The water jar was a large clay vessel, heavy enough that leaving it behind means she went off in a hurry and intended to come back.

4:29

The Greek question is framed so as to expect a hesitant or doubtful answer: something like "this couldn't be the Christ, could it?" She raises the possibility without asserting it.

4:31

The word the King James gives as "Master" is "rabbi," the title of a recognized teacher of the law. It carries no sense of ownership.

4:32

"Meat" again means food in general. The disciples take him literally in the next verse, a pattern this Gospel uses repeatedly: someone hears a physical meaning where a wider one is intended.

4:33

The King James "ought" here is the old spelling of "aught," meaning "anything."

4:35

"There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest" appears to be a farming proverb about the gap between sowing and reaping. "White" describes grain that has turned from green to pale gold, the color that says it is ripe and must be cut now.

4:36

Harvest laborers were paid daily, in cash or in a share of the crop. Normally the one who sows waits months for the one who reaps; the point of their rejoicing together is that the usual gap has closed.

4:38

The King James "ye are entered into their labours" means you have come into the benefit of work other people did. Who those others were is not specified here.

4:40

"Tarry" is an old word for stay. "Abode" means stayed.

4:42

"Savior of the world" was a title in wide public use in the Roman world, applied to the emperor and to certain gods. Coming from Samaritans, it is a striking phrase, since the deliverer they expected was tied to their own mountain and their own people.

4:44

This is a proverb Jesus quotes elsewhere as well. The word behind "his own country" means one's home town or native district. John does not say here which region he means, and readers have long disagreed: it could be Galilee, where he grew up, or Judea, the homeland of a prophet in the larger sense, which he has just left.

4:45

"The feast" is the Passover in Jerusalem described in John 2. Adult Jewish men were expected to travel to Jerusalem for the major festivals, so Galileans had been in the city and seen what he did there.

4:46

The King James "nobleman" translates a word meaning a man in royal service, an officer or courtier rather than a titled aristocrat. The king in question would be Herod Antipas, who ruled Galilee under Rome. Capernaum lay on the shore of the lake, about sixteen miles from Cana and far below it, which is why the man asks Jesus to "come down."

4:47

"Besought" is an old word for begged.

4:48

"Except" in the King James means "unless." The "ye" is plural in Greek: Jesus is not addressing the father alone but the wider crowd. "Signs and wonders" is a stock pair of words from the Old Testament for displays of power that demand attention.

4:49

"Ere" means "before."

4:52

The seventh hour is about one in the afternoon, counting from sunrise. The King James "amend" means to get better, to mend. Cana is roughly a day's journey from Capernaum, which is why the servants say "yesterday."

4:53

A person's "house" meant everyone living there. That included family, workers and servants.

4:54

John counts miracles in Galilee as "signs," acts meant to point beyond themselves. The first was the water turned to wine at the same town, Cana, in John 2. The counting here is of signs done after coming from Judea into Galilee, not of everything Jesus had done anywhere.