John 4:5–42

⁵  So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶  Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

⁷  A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸  (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) ⁹  The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 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.” ¹¹  The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹²  Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” ¹³  Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴  but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”¹⁵  The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

¹⁶  Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”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 now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” ¹⁹  The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. ²⁰  Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” ²¹  Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ²²  You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 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 is seeking such people to worship him. ²⁴  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵  The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” ²⁶  Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

²⁷  Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” ²⁸  So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, ²⁹  “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”³⁰  They went out of the town and were coming to him.

³¹  Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”³²  But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³  So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” ³⁴  Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.³⁵  Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. ³⁶  Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷  For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸  I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

³⁹  Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” ⁴⁰  So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹  And many more believed because of his word. ⁴²  They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

John 4:5–42 ESV – Bible Gateway

---

Jesus is wearied from his journey and stops off at Jacob’s well in a town in Samaria and sits beside it. This well is very near the tomb of Joseph and the “well is very deep, exceeding a depth of one hundred feet, and the water is cool and delicious even to this day.”[1] While Jesus is wearied, his intent in not primarily to refresh himself with water from the well, but ultimately to refresh everyone from a well of living water. Jesus’ examples remind us that when exhausted, while we must attend to our physical needs, to never forget those around us and the mission we are ordered to.

There are some obvious themes here in this Gospel and the other reading for today, but also some deeper ones from a Jewish context.

Peter Kreeft mentions one theme:

Water is mentioned in three of the four Scripture passages in the Mass today: first, the Old Testament passage from Exodus about the water that flowed out of the rock that Moses struck at Massah and Meribah, and second, the mention of that event in the Psalm, and third, the Gospel reading about Jesus and the woman at the well.[2]

John Bergsma mentions a more hidden one connected to water in the reading from Romans:

St. Paul here speaks of being “justified by faith.” We know that justification is a fruit of Baptism (1 Pet 3:21). But for Baptism to be effective, it must be received in faith. Lack of faith can impede the subjective effects of the sacrament. Justification is by faith though not by faith alone. St. Paul goes on to allude to baptism again: “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”[3]

The other major theme is full of nuptial images, and that Jesus is the divine bridegroom.

This story is so full of nuptial images, it is difficult to explore them all. First, there is the very fact that Jesus meets this woman at a well. This happens three times in the Old Testament—it is how the Patriarchs met their wives. Think of Isaac and Rebekah (Gen 24— although this betrothal was by a proxy); Jacob and Rachel (Gen 29); and Moses and Zipporah (Exod 2). Conditioned by the Old Testament narratives, we actually expect a woman to show up as soon as Jesus sits down by the well, and so she does! … Interestingly, the only other place in the Gospel of John where Jesus will request a drink is from the Cross[4]

Brant Pitre develops this theme.

The reason John tells this story is because he recognizes that in it the woman at the well is like a bride and that Jesus is the divine bridegroom and that he has come into the world not to marry this individual woman in a natural marriage, but to enter into a supernatural marriage, a relationship as Savior between himself, and not just her as an individual, but with all the people of the world. So this woman, the Samaritan woman, is a kind of image of the Church, St. Augustine said, because she’s not just Israelite, she’s also pagan, so she kind of represents all of humanity in herself, both the Jews and the Gentiles, both the Israelites and the pagans, who are waiting for a savior to come and to save them. From what? To save them from their sin. To save them from their brokenness. To save them from their past. To save them from their adultery, because what did Israel do? They took all these false gods, they entered into relationships of spiritual adultery with all the false gods of the Canaanites and of the other peoples of the land.[5]

He fully develops this theme in his book “Jesus the Bridegroom: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told”

CCC 1617 The entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church. Already Baptism, the entry into the People of God, is a nuptial mystery; it is so to speak the nuptial bath[6] which precedes the wedding feast, the Eucharist. Christian marriage in its turn becomes an efficacious sign, the sacrament of the covenant of Christ and the Church. Since it signifies and communicates grace, marriage between baptized persons is a true sacrament of the New Covenant.,[7] [8]

When a woman from Samaria comes to draw water from the well, it surprised her when Jesus asks her to draw him water. “The Samaritan woman probably recognized that Jesus was Judean by his distinctive Jewish traditional clothing and his accent…”[9] “Centuries of animosity between Jews and Samaritans loom in the background of this episode”[10], and she would not have expected that Jesus would talk to her for multiple reasons beyond the cultural bias. St. John references the time as being noon and this would not be the normal hour that women would come to the well to draw water. “This is a woman with a checkered personal history, which is no doubt why she is coming to the well at noon, to avoid the other women in the town who came at the usual times of dawn and dusk.”[11]

As Jesus asks her to draw water for him, he also draws her into a deeper conversation, moving from physical to spiritual nourishment. There is a parallel between how this woman understands what Jesus says and the Apostles. That the first understanding is the more literal and not the more mystical intent of Jesus’ words. Jesus explains further, and she is still clinging to the lower interpretation. She thought if she was provided this living water and would not be thirsty again, she wouldn’t have to make this trek to the well when nobody is there. This is quite understandable since in our own lives we often diminish Jesus’ promises to us to a more material realm.

Jesus asks her to “Go, call your husband, and come here.” When she answers, she does not equivocate and answers Jesus with the truth, as she sees it, that she has no husband. Her discernment regarding who Jesus is, is also deepening. Jesus lauds her answer by replying “… for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

the woman’s five husbands symbolize the pagan gods of five nations mentioned in 2 Kings 17. Jesus thirsts not only for water but, more important, for a permanent union between the Samaritans and the Father.[12]

The woman’s personal life parallels the historical experience of the Samaritan people. According to 2 Kings 17:24–31, the five foreign tribes who intermarried with the northern Israelites (Samaritans) introduced five male deities into their religion. These idols were individually addressed as Baal, a Hebrew word meaning “lord” or “husband”. The prophets denounced Israel for serving these gods, calling such worship infidelity to its true covenant spouse, Yahweh. Hope was kept alive, however, that God would show mercy to these Israelites and become their everlasting husband in the bonds of a New Covenant (Hos 2:16–20). This day has dawned in the ministry of Jesus, the divine bridegroom (3:29), who has come to save the Samaritans from a lifetime of struggles with five pagan “husbands”.[13]

Since the Samaritan women replied truthfully, she could also receive more, but she was also still at the level of concentrating on the doctrinal disagreements between the Jewish and Samaritan people.

The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible has this note on the term living water introduced in verse 4:10.[14]

An expression with two levels of meaning. The woman takes it to mean “flowing” water, i.e., a preferable alternative to stagnant well water (4:11–12). Jesus, however, is speaking of the life and vitality of the Spirit (7:38–39; CCC 728, 2560).

Several prophetic texts depict the blessings of the Lord as life-giving “water” (Is 12:3; 44:3; Ezek 47:1–12; Zech 14:8). See note on Jn 3:5.

Christian tradition associates living water with baptismal waters, which lead us to “eternal life” (4:14). Paul, in fact, describes Baptism in terms of drinking from the Spirit (1 Cor 12:13; CCC 694).

Samaritan belief was an admixture of Jewish faith and pagan idolatry. They accepted only the Pentateuch. Samaritan belief likely was varied, with different ideas about a messiah as a prophet as taken from the Pentateuch. She reveals her belief in a coming messiah who will be an anointed one and Jesus more fully reveals himself to her, saying “I who speak to you am he.”

At this prominent moment, the disciples return and were scandalized that Jesus was talking to a woman alone at the well, although they kept this thought to themselves. This woman’s conversion to belief in Jesus is sudden and in her haste to evangelize her fellow Samaritans, she leaves her water jar at the well.

Returning to Peter Kreeft’s commentary:

The other point in the story that I want to mention is about the jar or bucket that held the water. Those jars were much more important, and much more expensive, in ancient Israel than in today’s society. If you didn’t have a bucket you couldn’t draw water, and if you didn’t get water, you died. Yet this woman, this very worldly and practical woman, when she met Jesus, completely forgot her jar and left it at the well where Jesus was when she ran off to tell everyone in town that the Messiah had come. Jesus had taught her the lesson that the spiritual water that he gives is more important than the physical water that Jacob’s well gave, just as the soul is more important than the body.[15]

She becomes a witness to Jesus sharing what she had experienced, and that Jesus knew her and all that she ever did. Her testimony must have been rather amazing since she could convince people, despite her low state, in the order of their society. That they looked beyond this and did not dismiss her words, but were prompted to investigate what she said themselves. When they later returned, “They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

“Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses,”[16]

In verses 4:31–38, the disciples show their own obtuseness in not recognizing the food the Jesus truly hungers for, “The Father’s will is always the driving force behind Jesus’ mission (5:19; 6:38; 12:49; 14:10; etc.).” [17]

Sources

• St. John’s Gospel: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary for Individuals and Groups: Ray, Stephen K.
• Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Cycle A
• The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year A – John Bergsma
• Catholic Productions, Commentaries by Brant Pitre
• Jesus and the Samaritan Woman – Israel Study Center
• The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible꞉ The New Testament
• The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture)
• St. Pope Paul VI put it in 1975
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition
• Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

---

1. St. John’s Gospel: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary for Individuals and Groups. Steve Ray, 2002  ↩
2. Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Cycle A, Third Sunday of Lent  ↩
3. The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year A, John Bergsma, Third Sunday of Lent  ↩
4. ibid  ↩
5. Catholic Productions, Brant Pitre, Third Sunday of Lent, Year A  ↩
6. Cf. Eph 5:26–27.  ↩
7. Cf. DS 1800; CIC, can. 1055 § 2.  ↩
8. Catholic Church. (2000). Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Ed). United States Catholic Conference, Paragraph 1617  ↩
9. Dr. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg, Jesus and the Samaritan Woman  ↩
10. Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament  ↩
11. The Word of the Lord: Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings for Year A, John Bergsma, Third Sunday of Lent  ↩
12. Francis Martin, William M. Wright IV, The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture)  ↩
13. Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament  ↩
14. ibid  ↩
15. Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Cycle A, Third Sunday of Lent  ↩
16. Evangelii Nuntiandi, December 8, 1975, St. Pope Paul VI  ↩
17. Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament, Verse 4:34  ↩