Jesus and the Woman of Samaria

4 Now when Jesus^[a] learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John”^{(A) 2} (although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized), ³ he left Judea and started back to Galilee. ⁴ But he had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.^{(B) 6} Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)^{[b](C) 10} 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.”^{(D) 11} The woman said to him, “Sir,^[c] you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”^{(E) 15} The woman said to him, “Sir,^[d] give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”^(F)

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 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 have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” ¹⁹ The woman said to him, “Sir,^[e] I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you^[f] say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”^{(G) 21} Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you^[g] will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.^{(H) 22} You^[h] worship what you^[i] do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.^{(I) 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 seeks such as these to worship him.^{(J) 24} God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”^{(K) 25} The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”^{(L) 26} Jesus said to her, “I am he,^[j] the one who is speaking to you.”^(M)

²⁷ Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” ²⁸ Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ²⁹ “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah,^[k] can he?”^{(N) 30} They left the city and were on their way to him.

8 ¹ while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. ² Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. ³ The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and, making her stand before all of them, ⁴ they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. ⁵ Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”^{(A) 6} They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. ⁷ When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”^{(B) 8} And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. ⁹ When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him.^{(C) 10} Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” ¹¹ She said, “No one, sir.”^[a] And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”]]^[b](D)