Jesus Meets a Samaritan Woman

4 Now when Jesus^[a] realized that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John— ² although it was not Jesus who did the baptizing but his disciples— ³ he left Judea and went back to Galilee. ⁴ Now it was necessary for him to go through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the piece of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s Well was also there, and Jesus, tired out by the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.^[b]

⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus told her, “Please give me a drink,” ⁸ since his disciples had gone off into town to buy food.

⁹ The Samaritan woman asked him, “How can you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” Because Jews do not have anything to do with Samaritans.^[c]

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Please give me a drink,’ you would have been the one to ask him, and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ The woman^[d] told him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket, and the well is deep. Where are you going to get this living water? ¹² You’re not greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it, along with his sons and his flocks, are you?”

¹³ Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks this water will become thirsty again. ¹⁴ But whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never become thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become a well of water for him, springing up to eternal life.”

¹⁵ The woman told him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I won’t get thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶ He told her, “Go and call your husband, and come back here.”

¹⁷ The woman answered him, “I don’t have a husband.”

Jesus told her, “You are quite right in saying, ‘I don’t have a husband,’ ¹⁸ because you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

¹⁹ The woman told him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet! ²⁰ Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain. But you Jews^[e] say that the place where people should worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹ Jesus told her, “Believe me, dear lady,^[f] the hour is coming when you Samaritans^[g] will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You don’t know what you’re worshiping. We Jews^[h] know what we’re worshiping, because salvation comes from the Jews. ²³ Yet the time is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit^[i] and truth. Indeed, the Father is looking for people like that to worship him. ²⁴ God is spirit,^[j] and those who worship him must worship in spirit^[k] and truth.”

²⁵ The woman told him, “I know that the Anointed One^[l] is coming, who is being called ‘the Messiah’.^[m] When that person comes, he will explain everything.”

²⁶ “I AM,” Jesus replied, “the one who is speaking to you.”

²⁷ At this point his disciples arrived, and they were astonished that he was talking to a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want from her?”^[n] or, “Why are you talking to her?” ²⁸ Then the woman left her water jar and went back to town. She told people, ²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done! Could he possibly be the Messiah?”^{[o] 30} The people^[p] left the town and started on their way to him.