The Woman at the Well

¹When the Lord learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John, ²(although Jesus himself was not baptizing — his disciples were), ³he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. ⁴He had to pass through Samaria. ⁵He came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the piece of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob's well was there. Jesus, worn out from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. ⁷A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." ⁸(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) ⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) ¹⁰Jesus 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." ¹¹The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get this living water?" ¹²"Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock?" ¹³Jesus answered her, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again." ¹⁴"But whoever drinks the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up into everlasting life." ¹⁵The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't be thirsty and won't have to keep coming here to draw." ¹⁶Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back here." ¹⁷The woman answered, "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 man you are with now is not your husband. What you have said is true." ¹⁹The woman said to him, "Sir, I can see that you are a prophet." ²⁰"Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." ²¹Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem." 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 now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such people to worship him." ²⁴"God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth." ²⁵The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (the one called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things." ²⁶Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." ²⁷Just then his disciples came back and were amazed that he was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?" ²⁸The woman then left her water jar, went back into the town, and said to the people, ²⁹"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" ³⁰They went out of the town and made their way toward him. ³¹Meanwhile, his disciples were urging him, "Master, eat." ³²But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." ³³So the disciples said to one another, "Has someone brought him something to eat?" ³⁴Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work." ³⁵"Do you not say, 'There are still four months and then comes the harvest'? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest." ³⁶"The one who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that the one who sows and the one who reaps may rejoice together." ³⁷"For in this the saying is true: 'One sows and another reaps.'" ³⁸"I sent you to reap what you did not labor for. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor." ³⁹Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony: "He told me everything I ever did." ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹And many more believed because of his own word. ⁴²They told the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said, for we have heard him ourselves and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world."