John 4

4 ¹ Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John ² (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were) ³ he left Judea and went back to Galilee. ⁴ And he had to pass through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, worn out from the journey, sat down beside the well. It was about noon. ^a a v6 Counting from sunrise, the sixth hour is about noon.

⁷ A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." ⁸ (For his disciples had gone into the town 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 our Father, and who it is that says 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 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 the well and drank from it himself, with 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 thirst 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 back here."

¹⁷ The 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 one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true."

¹⁹ The woman said to him, "Sir, I see 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 The Father is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." ^b b v24 Throughout this passage Jesus teaches about worship of the Father; the One whose nature is spirit is the same Father who seeks true worshipers.

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 am he — the one speaking to you."

²⁷ Just then his disciples came back. They were astonished that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you want?" or, "Why are you talking with her?" ²⁸ So the woman left her water jar and went back to town and said to the people, ²⁹ "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" ³⁰ They left the town and were coming to him.

³¹ Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, "Rabbi, eat."

³² But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing 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 finish his work. ³⁵ Do you not say, 'There are still 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 harvester is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that planter and harvester may rejoice together. ³⁷ For here the saying holds true: 'One plants and another harvests.' ³⁸ I sent you to harvest that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."

Samaria Believes

³⁹ Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything 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 man truly is the Savior of the world."

Back to Galilee

⁴³ After the two days he departed from there for Galilee. ⁴⁴ (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) ⁴⁵ So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, for they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast, since they too had gone to the feast. ⁴⁶ So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And there was a royal official whose son lay ill at Capernaum. ⁴⁷ When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. ⁴⁸ So Jesus said to him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe."

⁴⁹ The royal official said to him, "Sir, come down before my child dies."

⁵⁰ Jesus said to him, "Go; your son will live." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. ⁵¹ As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his boy was living. ⁵² So he asked them the hour when he had begun to get better, and they said to him, "Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him." ⁵³ The father knew that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." And he himself believed, along with his whole household. ⁵⁴ This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.