Book of Common Prayer

¹³ For when God made promise to Abraham, because he had no greater thing to swear by, he swore by himself, ¹⁴ saying: Surely I will bless you and multiply you indeed. ¹⁵ And so after he had waited a long time, Abraham enjoyed the promise.

¹⁶ Men will swear by one who is greater than themselves, and an oath to confirm the thing is among them an end of all strife. ¹⁷ So God, wanting very much to show to the heirs of promise the certainty of his counsel, added an oath, ¹⁸ so that by two immutable things (in which it was impossible that God should lie) we may have perfect consolation – we who have fled to hold fast the hope that is set before us, ¹⁹ which hope we have as an anchor of the soul both sure and steadfast. Which hope also enters in, into those things that are within the veil, ²⁰ to where the forerunner has entered in for us – I mean Jesus, who is made a high priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.

The loving conversation of Christ with the woman from Samaria by the well’s side. How he heals the ruler’s son.

4 As soon as the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard how Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John ² (though Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples), ³ he left Judea and went back to Galilee. ⁴ And it so was that he had to go through Samaria. ⁵ Then he came to a village of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. ⁶ And there was Jacob’s well.

Jesus, then wearied in his journey, sat on the well. And it was about the sixth hour, ⁷ and there came a woman of Samaria to draw water. And Jesus said to her, Give me to drink. ⁸ For his disciples had gone away to the town to buy food. ⁹ Then the woman of Samaria said to him, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask drink of me, a Samaritan? (For the Jews will have nothing to do with the Samaritans.)

¹⁰ Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give me to drink, you would have asked of him, and he would have given you the water of life.

¹¹ The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where then do you have that water of life from? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well, and he himself drank from it, and his children and his animals?

¹³ Jesus answered and said to her, Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again. ¹⁴ But whoever drinks of the water that I give him shall never more thirst, but the water that I give him will be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

¹⁵ The woman said to him, Sir, give me of that water so that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.