The New Heaven and the New Earth

21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.^{(A) 2} And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.^{(B) 3} And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

⁵ And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.”^{(E) 6} Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.^(F)

The River of Life

22 Then the angel^[a] showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb^{(A) 2} through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life^[b] with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.^{(B) 3} Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him;^{(C) 4} they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.^{(D) 5} And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.^(E)

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)

²⁰ Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy. ²¹ When a woman is in labor, she has pain because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.^{(A) 22} So you have pain now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.^(B)