The transition begun in 3:22 is continued in 4:1–4. Jesus moves from Jerusalem to the Judean countryside and from there to Galilee by way of Samaria. The intervening material (3:23–36) enables the reader to make sense of this cumbersome introduction to chapter 4. That Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John (v. 1) has already been intimated in 3:26. That the Pharisees noticed this is suggested by the fact that John’s disciples seem to have been reminded of it by a Jew (3:25). What has not been told is Jesus’ response to these developments. The purpose of verses 1–3 is to explain Jesus’ actions by his knowledge. The parenthetical comment recalls other instances in which the narrator attributes things that Jesus said or did to supernatural knowledge that he possessed (cf., e.g., 2:24–25; 6:6, 64; 13:1, 3, 11; 18:4). In this case, however, the knowledge is gained through normal channels. When Jesus received word that the Pharisees were beginning to perceive him and John as rivals, he decided to leave the area (v. 3).
The writer takes a moment in passing to correct a possible false impression given by 3:22 and 4:1 (as well as 3:26). Jesus was not personally baptizing anyone. Baptisms were taking place in Judea as a result of his ministry and under his jurisdiction, but the actual baptizers were his disciples. The intent is to assure the reader that the Pharisees’ perception was incorrect. Jesus and John were not rivals and could not have been, for their roles were different and they moved in different spheres (cf. 3:27–36). Theologically, the notion that Jesus, who was supposed to baptize in the Holy Spirit (1:33), also baptized in water as John did is surprising and without parallel in the other Gospels. To the writer of this Gospel, it appears to have been a firmly fixed tradition that he felt compelled to acknowledge but to which he added his own qualifying explanation. Almost in spite of himself, he furnishes strong evidence that Jesus did for a time supervise a baptizing ministry in Judea that invited comparison with John’s and appeared, to some at least, to be a rival movement.
The account of Jesus’ itinerary provides a reason for almost every step. If verses 1–3 tell why Jesus returned to Galilee, verse 4 adds that he had to go by way of Samaria, thus introducing the incident of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. The need to go through Samaria was not geographical but theological. There was work to be done. Samaria was a mission field ripe for harvest (v. 35), and Jesus’ intent was to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work (v. 34). Jesus’ movements are dictated not by circumstances but by his divine calling.
Jesus’ visit to Samaria has two parts: first, his interview with a Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob (vv. 5–26) and, second, an alternating series of glimpses of Jesus and his disciples on the one hand, and the woman and the Samaritan townspeople on the other (vv. 27–42). Jesus’ conversation with the woman centers on the theme of holy places, specifically a field and a well traditionally associated with Jacob (vv. 5–15), and the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim (vv. 19–26). Jesus promises the woman the Holy Spirit, who transcends these holy places and makes devotion to them obsolete (vv. 13–14, 23–24). Between the discussion of the well and the discussion of the holy mountain comes an abrupt glance at the woman’s personal history (vv. 16–18), which lays a basis for her testimony that Jesus had told her everything I ever did (vv. 29, 39).
How are these segments of Jesus’ interview with the Samaritan woman related to each other? The woman serves to represent three “oppressed groups” in which Jesus, according to the synoptic Gospels, showed a marked interest. Simply the fact that she is a woman elicits surprise from his disciples that he would talk with her (v. 27). Though not a prostitute, she is sexually immoral (v. 18). By race and religion she is from the Jewish standpoint an outsider, a hated Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans, the writer explains, will not even touch the same utensils (v. 9). In reaching out to her, Jesus in this narrative is recognizably the Jesus of the Synoptics (cf., e.g., Mark 7:24–30; Luke 7:36–50; 10:25–37), the one who came to show mercy to tax collectors, prostitutes, and all such outcasts of Jewish society.
The encounter begins surprisingly, not with Jesus granting mercy to the woman, but with him asking mercy from her. He is placed in the curious position of needing help (a drink of water, cf. Mark 9:41) from someone his culture would have him hate. But his thirst provides the occasion for him suddenly to reverse roles and offer living water (v. 10) to the woman. Whether she actually gave Jesus a drink before this turn of events we are not told. But what began with Jesus asking water from her (v. 7) concludes with the woman asking him for the never-ending supply of water he claimed to be able to give (v. 15).
The reversal of roles is made possible by Jesus’ use of water as a metaphor for the Holy Spirit (vv. 10, 13–14). What he promises is nothing less than baptism in the Spirit (cf. 1:33). The identification of the living water as the Spirit is not explicit here, as it is in 7:38–39, but it is valid nonetheless. The “gift of God” (v. 10) is an expression used of the Spirit (in a Samaritan setting) in Acts 8:20 (cf. Acts 2:38; 10:45; 11:17), and the Spirit becomes unmistakably the theme of the latter part of Jesus’ self-disclosure to the woman (vv. 21–24). The only other possibility is that the water represents eternal life (v. 14), but the point of Jesus’ pronouncement is that this water provides or sustains eternal life (just as physical water sustains physical life), not that water is itself the metaphor for life. The Spirit is the one who “gives life” (6:63; cf. 1 Cor. 15:45). Spirit baptism is an impartation of life, the beginning of a new creation (20:22; cf. Gen. 2:7). Jesus’ ministry is more than merely a continuation of John’s. Whatever baptizing activity Jesus may have carried on in Judea is of secondary importance and is now behind him. His real work is not to baptize in water but to do what John had predicted he would do: baptize in the Holy Spirit. The metaphor of water is used here not in the sense of washing or being immersed, but of drinking (cf. Paul in 1 Cor. 12:13: “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body …, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink”). The Spirit quenches thirst, not in the sense of removing a person’s desire for the presence of God, but in the sense of continually satisfying that desire. The Holy Spirit will be like an eternal self-replenishing spring within the believer “welling up to eternal life” (v. 14).
The Samaritan woman takes the metaphor literally. The only life-giving water she knows is the water in the well, which belongs to her and her people already (vv. 11–12). Jesus’ promise of the Spirit and eternal life means only that she will never have to come back to this well to draw water! (v. 15). This sequence ends in misunderstanding, yet the woman’s remark is curiously apt, for when the Spirit comes, such holy places as the well of Jacob will in fact lose their significance. Religious or ethnic identities based on control of these sites will give way to a new identity in the Spirit (cf. vv. 21, 23).
Jesus’ reply to the woman signals a turn in the narrative. Instead of correcting her misunderstanding, he tells her that she must come back to the well at least once more, with her husband (v. 16). It appears that Jesus’ mission to Samaria will begin with the conversion of a whole family. Such things occur in the book of Acts (16:15, 33–34; 18:8; cf. 11:14) and at the end of this very journey in John’s Gospel when Jesus reaches Galilee (4:53), but in Samaria it is not to be. Perhaps in the hope of receiving the living water immediately, the woman tells Jesus that she has no husband. Jesus ironically commends her for telling the truth (vv. 17, 18) and so exposes her adultery (cf. Mark 10:12). The change of subject is not so abrupt as it appears. The narrative assumes a close connection between baptism in the Spirit and the forgiveness of sins (cf. Mark 1:4–8; Acts 2:38). Jesus, who will baptize in the Spirit, is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (1:29). When the Spirit is given (20:22), Jesus will say to his disciples, “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven” (20:23). Sin, to be forgiven, must first be exposed, and it is, but the woman’s adultery is not the center of interest in this chapter. The movement of the narrative is not from the woman to her present husband (or lover) but from the woman directly to the rest of the townspeople (vv. 28–30). Whatever feelings of guilt she may have had go unmentioned.
Instead of guilt, her reaction to Jesus’ supernatural insight into her life is one of amazement (vv. 29, 39). Her immediate conclusion is that he is a prophet (v. 19). Because he is a Jew and a prophet, she seizes the opportunity to start a discussion with him about the respective claims of the Jewish and Samaritan places of worship—the temple mountain in Jerusalem and Mount Gerizim near Shechem (v. 20), the latter probably visible from where they were standing. It is useless to speculate whether or not she was trying to divert attention from her personal morality. To the Gospel writer, at least, her remark is not a diversion but carries forward the main thrust of the story.
Jesus tells her that the crucial question is not where but how to worship God. Soon the alternatives of Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim will lose their significance. The true worshipers (i.e., the Christians) will worship the Father in spirit and truth (v. 23) as a result of the promised baptism. In the words of later Christian writers, they are a “new race” (Epistle to Diognetus 1) or a “third race” (“For what has reference to the Greeks and Jews is old. But we are Christians, who as a third race worship him in a new way”; Preaching to Peter, cited in Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis VI, 5.39–41, translated in Hennecke-Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1964], vol. 2, p. 100). Playing on the woman’s reference to her fathers, or Samaritan ancestors who worshiped on Gerizim (v. 20), Jesus subtly introduces the title Father in connection with the worship of God (vv. 21, 23), making the point that only in the Spirit (i.e., in the new Christian community) is it possible to worship God as Father (cf. Paul in Rom. 8:15–16; Gal. 4:6). Because he is Father, this is how he wants to be worshiped, and Christians are the kind of worshipers he seeks (v. 23).
Jesus speaks in verse 22 as a Jew, for it is as a Jew that the Samaritan woman has addressed him. Yet he speaks not for Judaism as a whole but for the small community of faith that has formed itself around him (cf. 3:11). When his Jewish opponents in a later confrontation (8:41) claim to know God as Father, Jesus denies their claim (8:42). The only advantage of Jew over Samaritan is that salvation is from the Jews (v. 22b), that is, Jesus himself has come from among the Jews, bringing “grace and truth” and the knowledge of God to the whole world (cf. 1:17–18). This knowledge makes it possible, first for Jesus’ Jewish disciples and then for Samaritans and Gentiles, to know whom they worship (v. 22) or to worship the Father as he really is (vv. 23–24). If God is Spirit (v. 24), then only the coming of the Spirit makes his true character known.
The woman responds to Jesus’ teaching in the only terms she knows, the Samaritan expectation of a Messiah who will come and explain everything to us (v. 25). The Gospel writer has borrowed the Jewish term Messiah (i.e., “Anointed One”) to designate the figure of whom the woman speaks. The Samaritans’ own term was “Taheb” (or “Restorer”). The Taheb, whose functions corresponded generally to those of the Jewish Messiah, was a figure modeled after Moses, in line with the biblical expectation of a prophet like Moses who would come and tell the people everything that God commanded (Deut. 18:18). Such an expectation was alive in Judaism as well (cf. 1:21) but played a larger role among the Samaritans. Significantly, it is here in a Samaritan context, and only here, that Jesus acknowledges his messiahship clearly and without hesitation (v. 26). Six chapters later, the people of Jerusalem will still be asking, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly” (10:24). Yet long before, in a small Samaritan village, the secret is already out! Jesus’ acceptance of this woman’s version of messiahship is probably to be explained by the prophetic or teaching role she assigns to her Messiah. The statement that when he comes, he will explain everything (v. 25) anticipates the language of Jesus’ promise of the Spirit to his disciples in the farewell discourse (cf. 16:13–16). The Spirit’s work is an extension of the work of Jesus. It is a work of revelation, and when the Samaritan woman thinks of revelation she thinks of the Taheb. Reaching beyond her recognition of him as a prophet (v. 19), Jesus finally makes himself known to her as the Prophet-Messiah for whom she and her people have been waiting (v. 26). The basis on which he said a time is coming (v. 21), and quickly added, a time is coming and now has come (v. 23), is made clear. Jesus’ interview with the woman (vv. 5–26) has achieved its purpose. A revelation has taken place, and the woman’s hope has become reality.
The disciples, who have been mentioned only parenthetically in verse 8, come on the scene at this point (v. 27). Surprised that he would even talk with a woman (a Samaritan woman at that!), they seem for the moment too much in awe of Jesus to ask why. Even though the disciples were not present at his self-revelation to the woman, they are left speechless in its wake (cf. their hesitation to ask him questions in 16:5, 19 and 21:12). As soon as the disciples arrive from the town, the woman returns to town, and the narrative divides itself into two scenes centering on two sets of characters: the woman and the townspeople (vv. 28–30, 39–42), and the disciples and Jesus (vv. 31–38).
When the disciples offer Jesus some of the food they have bought in Sychar (see v. 8), Jesus tells them he has food of his own that they know nothing about (v. 32). For the moment, these true worshipers who will one day supersede both Jew and Samaritan are as ignorant as the Samaritan woman (cf. v. 22). They are not yet ready to worship God in the Spirit. The Spirit rests on Jesus, and on him alone (cf. 3:34). The food of which he speaks is obedience to God (cf. Matt. 4:4) and the completion of the task God sent him to do (v. 34).
This task ultimately spans the whole of the fourth Gospel (cf. 17:4; 19:30) but is defined in the immediate setting (with a change of metaphor) as a harvest (i.e., an ingathering of new believers) among the Samaritans. We may contrast the situation with that described in Matt. 9:36–10:6, where the “harvest” includes only “the lost sheep of Israel” and specifically excludes “any town of the Samaritans.” Jesus’ horizons are wider (or at least are widened sooner) in John’s Gospel than in the Synoptics. He who “takes away the sin of the world” (1:29) is about to be acknowledged by an alien people as the world’s Savior (v. 42). It is no ordinary harvest. To show its uniqueness, Jesus makes use of two familiar proverbs (vv. 35, 37):
(1) Four months more and then the harvest. Conventional wisdom dictated four months between planting and reaping (v. 35), but Jesus speaks of messianic abundance like that foreseen by Amos the prophet, in which “the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes” (Amos 9:13; cf. the abundance of wine at the Cana wedding). Verses 35–36 repeat in metaphorical language Jesus’ assurance to the Samaritan woman that a time is coming and has now come (v. 23). A bountiful harvest of eternal life (cf. v. 14) is about to begin. For sower and reaper alike, it is a moment of joy (v. 36).
(2) One sows and another reaps. Jesus transforms a traditional saying on the inequity and futility of human life (cf. Eccles. 2:18–21) into a word of promise to the disciples: They are to benefit from the labor of others for they are sent to reap a harvest they have not planted (v. 38). But in Jesus’ application of these proverbs who is the sower and who is the reaper? And who are the others mentioned in verse 38?
Verse 34 suggests that God is the sower, for Jesus’ task is to finish his work. And in verses 39–42 it is Jesus alone who actually carries out the harvest among the Samaritan townspeople. Yet in verse 35 he summons his disciples to the ripe harvest fields, and they are the ones who in verse 38 are to reap a harvest for which others have worked. The roles in this drama are not fixed. Jesus is not speaking in allegories or riddles but using a simple metaphor capable of several applications. A transition of sorts can be detected at verse 37. If the controlling thought of verses 34–36 was “as the Father sent me,” the controlling thought of verses 37–38 is “I am sending you” (cf. 20:21; also 17:18). But the fact that the disciples play no part whatever in the ensuing mission among the Samaritans suggests that verses 37–38 are intended as a momentary glimpse beyond the immediate situation to the narrator’s own time. Those who proclaim the Christian message, whether to the Samaritans (e.g., Acts 8:4–25) or to the whole world (cf. 20:21) should not be discouraged but remember that Jesus and others (e.g., the woman and the converts of Sychar) have been there already to prepare the way. Even though Samaria may have been off his “beaten track” (cf. Matt. 10:5), Jesus had passed through it on occasion (cf. Luke 9:51–56) and carried on a teaching mission in at least one Samaritan town.
The distinction between sowing and reaping is perhaps echoed in the two stages of the Samaritans’ faith in verses 39–42. Their faith had begun with the hesitant testimony of the woman about what Jesus had told her (vv. 29, 39), but when they met Jesus and heard his message for themselves, many more believed. Their “secondhand” faith (as they regarded it) had given way to a personal knowledge and deep conviction that Jesus was truly the Savior of the world (v. 42). These words make it clear at last that, for the Gospel writer, the Samaritans stand as representatives of all the peoples of the world. In passing, by divine necessity, through one Samaritan town and talking with one sinful woman, Jesus both reaps a harvest and anticipates a greater harvest to come, the church’s mission to the Gentiles.
Additional Notes
4:4 He had to go through Samaria. If the traditional location of Aenon is correct (see note on 3:23), and if Jesus’ baptizing activity was near there, it is all the more clear that the necessity was not a geographical one. Samaria, in fact, would represent a detour if one’s destination were Galilee.
4:5 Sychar: The place is shown on the sixth-century Madeba map as “Sychar which is now Sychora.” This probably corresponds to the present-day Arab village of Askar on the slope of Mount Ebal a mile east of Nablus. Askar has a spring that may correspond to the “spring of Sychar” (En Soker) mentioned in the Mishnah (Menachoth 10.2), but a very deep well fitting the description of the one where Jesus stopped is found one kilometer further south, at the village of Balatah on the site of ancient Shechem (destroyed by the Jewish king John Hyrcanus before 100 B.C.). Some have suggested that Sychar in John 4:5 is a mistake for “Shechem” (two Syriac manuscripts actually read “Shechem”), but it is not even certain that a town existed on the site of Shechem in Jesus’ time.
The movements in the story back and forth between the well and the town make more sense if the distance is one kilometer than if it is only the 250 feet or so that today separate the Well of Jacob (as it is still known) from Tell Balatah (the excavations of Shechem by Ernst Sellin and, later, G. Ernest Wright). The woman may have traveled the extra distance from Sychar to this well either for religious reasons or because her neighbors made her unwelcome at her own town’s spring (see J. Finegan, Archaeology of the New Testament [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969], pp. 36–38).
4:6 Sat down by the well: In Greek the adverb houtōs (“thus”) adds a vivid storyteller’s touch to the account, which is lost in most translations (including NIV): Jesus “sat down like this,” or “sat right down” beside the well. The adverb is used similarly in 13:25.
About the sixth hour: See note on 1:39.
4:9 Jews do not associate with Samaritans. A few ancient manuscripts omit this parenthetical remark, but such explanatory asides are entirely characteristic of the narrator’s style. The words belong in the text, and refer quite specifically to laws of purity: Jews and Samaritans do not drink from the same cup!
4:16 Come back: or “come back here.” The repetition in Greek of the adverb enthade (“here”) in vv. 15 (“coming here to draw water”) and 16 (“come back here”) somewhat lessens the abruptness of Jesus’ request in v. 16 and helps to link two stages of the conversation.
4:23 A time is coming and has now come. The new worship had already begun (among the followers of Jesus) even though the end of temple worship at Jerusalem and on Mt. Gerizim was still future (“a time is coming,” v. 21); for the expression, cf. 5:25, 16:31.
The true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth. The Holy Spirit is called “the Spirit of truth” in 14:17; 15:26; 16:13. “Spirit” and “truth” are equated in 1 John 5:6, while “truth” (2 John 2; 3 John 12), or “grace and truth” John 1:14, 17) can be used as designations for the Holy Spirit. The relationship to God as Father is a new relationship made possible by the coming of Jesus Christ into the world.
4:26 I … am he: lit., “I am” (Gr.: egō eimi). Formally, these words correspond to the formula by which Jesus later reveals himself as God (8:58). But here they simply identify him as the Messiah (v. 25).
