Sometimes believing has to come before seeing. To fully see the woman in this passage, you’ll need to believe that this story isn’t actually about judging her past, that a woman can make a dang good theologian, and that Jesus gets a huge kick out of hanging out with her.

Some important names

During my illustrious career as a camp counselor, I gave occasional campfire messages.  After one especially moving message, a woman yelled to me from across camp,  “Great talk, Moron!”  Since the only other person who calls me that is my rotten brother, I’m fairly sure she was just mispronouncing my uncommon name, but it may be that my talk wasn’t as scintillating as I thought.  Names matter, so let’s discuss three before we get on with the show. 

The first name we need to understand is Jacob because the setting for this story is Jacob’s well, and the woman in our story claims him as an ancestor.  So who is this guy?  Remember I said the name of God’s people, Israel, was first given to a man who injures his hip wrestling with God?  I’ll give you 3 guesses what the guy’s name is before God changes it to Israel.  Yep.  Good ol’ Jacob.  You can read most of his story in Genesis chapters 25-35. 

The next name is Samaritan.  Somewhere along ancient lines, a split occurred within God’s people between the northern Samaritan tribes and the southern tribes of Judah, who became the Jews of the new testament.  While the cause of the split is truly tough to decipher historically, tradition says members of the northern tribes married outside of the Israelite people and adopted the gods of those cultures as well as the God of Israel. This was a problem because God called the Israelites to have no other gods.  Another point of contention between the groups was where the temple should be, as the woman in our story mentions in verses 20-21.  A Sunday school summary may have taught you that the Jews didn’t like the Samaritans.  A better summary is that some Jews didn’t like Samaritans, many sources written by ancient rabbis indicate ambivalence toward them, and that whatever disdain existed was probably mutual (Green et al. 725; Levine, 136).  In addition, when the woman at the well expresses surprise that Jesus asks her for a drink, it’s more likely because of a Jewish assumption that Samaritan women couldn’t be trusted to follow the purity laws than a mandate against Jews and Samaritans sharing (Green et al. 728). The disciples are in the Samaritan city picking up lunch, so they’ll be sharing with Samaritans if they intend to eat that lunch.

The third name we need to understand is “Messiah.”  It means “Anointed One.”  In the Hebrew Bible, prophets, priests, and kings are anointed with oil as a sign they are chosen by God for a specific purpose.  Some first-century Jews believed in prophecies of a coming “Anointed One,” but there was no consensus on precisely who they should look for (Levine, 127).  John knows exactly who the Messiah is, though, and he’s hard at work revealing his identity, including in this story. Unlike Mark, who only gives the unclean spirits the ability to recognize Jesus’ true identity, John sees no need to be cagey about who he is. In just the first three chapters of John’s gospel, two people have already referred to Jesus as “Messiah” as well as “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” “Son of God,” and “King of Israel” (See names of Jesus).

Watch your tone.

One more heads up for this story.  It’s all about tone.  You know when you get a text message, and you can’t tell whether or not you’re in trouble?  “Thanks for taking out the trash” can be ambiguous without a friendly exclamation mark, especially if you can’t remember taking it out.  It’s why God invented emojis.  John is that friend who loooooves to text (Flip through his gospel.  Dialogue everywhere.)  I’m generally a fan, but the man could have used some emojis, not for his first-century audience but for us today.  Lacking emojis, the only way to figure out the tone of this conversation is through context.  I see life-giving joy here.  Let’s see if you do, too.

Trading names

Are you ready for some name-calling?  No worries, rather than the usual nasty downward spiral, the verbal sparring here bubbles up towards truth and life.

Our gospel writer himself starts the name-calling.  A person could drown in all the names of people and cities John dowses us with in just the first 5 verses.  To stay afloat, grab on to this: We hear in verse 5 that Jesus is hanging out alone at a well outside a Samaritan city.  Verse 7 tells us, “A Samaritan woman came to draw water”  and in verse 9, we find out, “the Samaritan woman said to him….”  Why is this Samaritan label important?  Whatever actual historical tension was present between Samaritans and Jews, John expects that we feel some literary tension here.  The woman is surprised by Jesus right off the bat. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (vs. 9).  More name-calling!  She calls herself “woman of Samaria,” and she calls Jesus “Jew,” which is what we do when we meet people, right?   We size each other up and take note of the differences. Keep in mind she’s alone in the middle of nowhere with a strange man.  I can appreciate her need for feistiness.      

Jesus disarms her, though.  He offers a riddle. “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” (vs. 10).  I picture a grin on Jesus’ face when he says this.  Here’s a translation: “If you had any idea who I am, you would ask me for water, and in this parched land where you spend so much energy hauling it around, it would be my great joy to give you flowing, easily accessible, living water.” 

Curious, she takes the bait.   “Sir, you have no bucket.  Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” (vs. 12).  Who does this guy think he is, anyway? Her questions challenge Jesus and continue the name-calling.  Her name for Jesus shifts from “Jew” to “Sir,” and by naming the famous Jacob as her ancestor, her name for herself changes from “Woman of Samaria” to “Daughter of Israel.”  Jerome Neyrey thinks she’s throwing a pun in with her question, suggesting that “Jesus is supplanting Jacob…thus doing to Jacob what he did to his brother Esau” (424).  Whatever game Jesus is playing, she’s willing to join in.  Do I detect a smile on her face, too?  Is this banter?

It’s Jesus’ turn again: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 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” (vs. 13, 14).   If you were a woman whose daily task was to haul heavy jars of water for your household, this claim would get you interested, whether you heard it literally or metaphorically.  Jesus speaks this woman’s language.  

“Sir,” she says again in verse 15, “give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”  She’s already doing exactly what Jesus said she would do in verse 10, asking him for water, even though she doesn’t know who he is yet. She’s in the threshold, a liminal space between letting go of the literal reality she knows and taking hold of the spiritual truth Jesus offers her, which explains why the conversation is about to shift so dramatically.  According to Jo Ann Davidson, “Jesus has heard the woman’s desire to thirst no more.  Thus he is gently leading her to recognize her need for a savior” (221).  He needs her to get to both her truth and his, so Jesus asks her to go get her husband and bring him back.  Now it’s her turn to supply a riddle: “I have no husband.”  But Jesus is done playing and shows his hand. “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.  What you have said is true!” (vs. 17, 18). 

Naming God

We could now choose to go Lady Whistledown and start writing scandal everywhere, but scandal is not the point.  Jesus isn’t condemning her past or seeking repentance.  She shares the part of the story she’s ready to tell, and then by finishing the story, he draws her through the doorway to help her understand who she’s talking to.  How do I know?  Context.  In the next verse, she calls him “sir” a final time and gives him a new name: prophet.  She doesn't feel condemned, she feels seen, and now she desires to see for herself. Rather than carrying away her water jar in shame, she seizes her opportunity to learn from a man who knows things he could only have received from God. She puts on her theologian hat and comments on the burning Samaritan/Jewish question of where the temple should be (vs. 20). Jesus sees not only her past but also her intellect.  He teaches her the nature of worship (“in spirit and truth”) is more important than its location (vs. 24).  She has been seen, and now she sees.  She understands the teaching and solves Jesus’ identity riddle.  She gives one more name to him by saying, “I know that Messiah is coming,” and Jesus confirms, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”  Essentially, she names God, and Jesus grants her what Davidson describes as a “direct, definitive revelation of the Messiah rarely given to anyone,” let alone a Samaritan woman (222). 

Can you imagine?  This woman has dragged both her jar and the weight of a devastating past to this well for who knows how long.  Whether through death or divorce, losing five husbands would undoubtedly be devastating.  They would have left her, by the way.  She had no power to divorce them (Davidson, 227).  As for her current situation, she may be committing adultery, but she may also be a concubine or slave, situations that are both borne out of desperation (Munro, 718).  Whatever the case, she meets a man she expects to disdain her because she’s a Samaritan, but instead, he sees her, respects her, and fulfills a promise.  In verse 28, when she returns to the city to tell the Samaritans about the Messiah she’s just seen, she leaves her water jar behind.  She doesn’t need it anymore because what Jesus said would happen has happened.  She’s got living water (also known as the Holy Spirit) gushing in her now, and she can’t contain it.  It’s flowing out of her and giving life to everyone who hears her story. They are so compelled by her words that they immediately head to the well to see for themselves (vs. 30).

My favorite part is that Jesus is overflowing with life, too!  The disciples urge him to eat the lunch they’ve just brought him, but he’s too giddy to even eat! (verse 32).  He says his food is to do the work of God, and today that work is a delightful conversation with a burdened but perceptive woman.  He knows as they speak that his words fill her with uncontainable life.  By joyfully wondering aloud, “He can’t be the Messiah, can he?” she also brings life to many people who have been fractioned off by their complicated collective past. The irony of it all is that in town, where the 12 chosen disciples of Jesus have only found take-out, the woman of Samaria finds “many believers” who end up giving Jesus yet another name in verse 42:  “Savior of the world.”

Works Cited

Names of Jesus in John: 1:41, 3:28, 1:29, 1:34, 1:50. 

Davidson, Jo Ann. “The Well Women of Scripture Revisited” Faculty Publications, Paper 49, (2006) http;//digitalcommons.andrews.edu/theology-christian-philosophy-pubs/49

Green, Joel B., et al., editors. Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels.  Intervarsity Press, 1992.

Levine, Amy-Jill.  The Misunderstood Jew, The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus.  Harper San Francisco, 2006

Munro, Winsome. “The Pharisee and the Samaritan in John: Polar or Parallel?” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, vol. 57, No.4 (1995) pp.710-728

Neyrey, Jerome H. “Jacob Traditions and the Interpretation of John 4:10-26” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, vol. 41, No.3 (1979) pp.419-437