John 4:4-14
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
The Samaritan Woman. 4 He had to[a] pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar,[b] near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.(A) 6 Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon.
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 His disciples had gone into the town to buy food. 9 [c]The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”(B) (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) 10 [d]Jesus answered and said to her,(C) “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” 11 [The woman] said to him, “Sir,[e] you do not even have a bucket and the well is deep; where then can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?”(D) 13 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; 14 but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”(E)
Read full chapterFootnotes
- 4:4 He had to: a theological necessity; geographically, Jews often bypassed Samaria by taking a route across the Jordan.
- 4:5 Sychar: Jerome identifies this with Shechem, a reading found in Syriac manuscripts.
- 4:9 Samaritan women were regarded by Jews as ritually impure, and therefore Jews were forbidden to drink from any vessel they had handled.
- 4:10 Living water: the water of life, i.e., the revelation that Jesus brings; the woman thinks of “flowing water,” so much more desirable than stagnant well water. On John’s device of such misunderstanding, cf. note on Jn 3:3.
- 4:11 Sir: the Greek kyrios means “master” or “lord,” as a respectful mode of address for a human being or a deity; cf. Jn 4:19. It is also the word used in the Septuagint for the Hebrew ’adônai, substituted for the tetragrammaton YHWH.
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