The Samaritan at the well.

John 4.1-14.

Just to remind you: Ancient Israelis (i.e. Judeans and Galileans) and Samaritans did not get along. Same as Israelis and Palestinians don’t get along; same as white nationalists and black nationalists don’t get along; same as cats and birds don’t get along. There was a lot of paranoia, fear, and dangerous old grudges between those two groups.

That’s why it was just dumbfounding for one Samaritan woman, one day, to find a man of Judean descent striking up a conversation with her. Asking her for water, of all things. As if he actually trusted her not to spit in it.

John 4.1-10 KWL

1 Once {the Lord} Jesus knows

the Pharisees hear Jesus makes and baptizes more students than John—

2 though Jesus himself isn’t baptizing,

but his students are—

3 Jesus leaves Judea,

and again goes off to the Galilee,

5 and he has to travel through Samaria.

So Jesus comes to a Samaritan city called Sychár,

which is near the field Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

6 Jacob’s spring is there.

Jesus, fatigued by his long walk, is therefore sitting at the spring.

It was about the sixth hour after sunrise [i.e. noon].

 

7 A woman from Samaria comes to get water.

Jesus tells her, “Give me some to drink”—

8 for his students went into the city

so they might buy food.

9 So the Samaritan woman tells Jesus,

“How can you even be near me, Judean, and ask for a drink?

—me being a Samaritan woman?

For Judeans have no interaction with Samaritans.”

10 In reply Jesus tells her, “If you knew God’s gift,

and knew who’s telling you, ‘Give me some to drink,’

you could ask him,

and he could give you living water.”

Most translations of John have “For Judeans have no interaction with Samaritans” not as something the Samaritan said, but as John’s commentary on the situation. The word συγχρῶνται/synchrónte also means “work together with,” or “have use of”—the two people-groups really did have nothing to do with one another. Each did their own thing… or, of course, fought.

Obviously this woman didn’t recognize Jesus’s accent, or she’d’ve known he was Galilean, not Judean. Not that it would make any difference. Samaritans and Galileans didn’t interact either.

But as we already know about Jesus, he does interact with Samaritans. He came to save everybody, y’know; not just the people of his homeland! Samaritans too. Jesus doesn’t do nationalism or racism, and those who claim to follow him should likewise have no interaction whatsoever with those things—even less interaction than Judeans had with Samaritans.

Jacob’s well.

Sometime back in the 19th century BC, Jacob’s slaves dug a well just outside Shechem, a city his nomadic household had pitched their tents by. Ge 33.18 It’s the city where the king’s son, Shechem ben Hamor, raped Jacob’s daughter Dinah—leading Jacob’s sons Simeon and Levi to wipe out the entire city in retaliation. Ge 34 But that’s getting way ahead of our story.

Why’d Jacob dig a well? He had a huge family, lots of slaves, and even more livestock. For that, you need a water source as close as possible, and it would’ve been impractical to go to the local town or village for water on a daily basis. Plus the ancients would often deny strangers any access to their water, in order to drive them away. Ge 26.12-22 Jacob might’ve tried to access the city’s water, but was refused. We don’t know the details.

Likely the Samaritans had a whole bunch of folk tales about it. If you know anything about Jewish mythology—and Samaritan myth-making was likely no different—betcha there was a whole struggle between the moral, godly Jacob and the immoral, pagan Canaanites who denied him water. Plus a happy ending, where Jacob finally dug this well and drank from it in victory.

So when Jesus and the Samaritan had this conversation, it seems his talk about “living water” pushed her buttons about the local civic pride—the significance of Jacob’s well.

John 4.11-14 KWL

11 The woman told Jesus, “Sir, you have no bucket.

The well is deep. So how do you have living water?

12 You’re no greater than our ancestor Jacob,

who gave us this well, and he drank from it himself,

and his children and his animals.

13 In reply Jesus tells her, “All who drink of this water

will thirst again.

14 Whoever might drink of the water I give them,

will never thirst in the age to come,

but the water I’ll give them

will become a spring of water within them,

gushing with eternal life.”

To understand this passage, you gotta know ὕδωρ ζῶν/ýdor zon, “living water,” is the way Aramaic-speakers referred to flowing water—water from a stream, spring, aqueduct, or pipe. It’s moving, so it’s “living.” Jesus used the idiom to talk about water which doesn’t just flow, but bubbles up life.

When Jesus initially offered the Samaritan “living water” instead of well water, her first response was understandably, “Hey, don’t dis my well. It’s Jacob’s well. He give us this well. He and his kids drank from it. You think you’re better than him? You’re not better’n him.” So no, the Samaritan referring to Jacob wasn’t some strange non-sequitur. It was her civic pride.

But it was also her personal justification for coming to Jacob’s well for water. Y’see, this woman was from Sychár, Jn 4.5 and Sychár had flowing water. The town today is called Askar. In the middle of it is the spring of Ain Askar—their primary water source. Yet instead of using the local water, this Samaritan walked a kilometer and a half to an out-of-town well. Apparently she did this most days. Jn 4.15

Preachers do tend to notice she was drawing water around noon, instead of first thing in the morning, when it wouldn’t be so warm. They like to speculate this woman was a bit of an outcast, or at least a loner. But they really underestimate the situation. She wasn’t just going to a well when no one else was. She was going to a well way, way out of her way. One which nobody used but passersby, herdsmen—and today, the Son of God.

So bringing up “living water” prodded this Samaritan in a whole other way.

Water in the age to come.

Of course, Jesus isn’t speaking of literal water. Like he did with Nicodemus when he talked about being born again, Jesus is once again using metaphors to describe profound spiritual truths. The reference to “living water” was just to get the Samaritan’s attention, as he knew it would. Now to his point.

This water—any water—will only slake thirst for a time. Jesus’s “water” will take care of thirst forever—literally εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα/eis ton eóna, “in the [next] age,” Jn 4.14 in the age to come, when Jesus returns to earth to personally reign over God’s kingdom. The word αἰών/eón and αἰώνιος/eónios tend to be translated “eternity” and “eternal” (KJV “everlasting”) because the age to come will last forever. But it doesn’t literally mean eternal. It only does in context: God’s kingdom lasts forever.

Both the Pharisee and Samaritan sects believed in the age to come. The Pharisees believed it began once Messiah came. The Samaritans, who were always ruled by foreigners and never had their own king, looked forward to the Taheb, the prophet-like-Moses. Moses was no king, but he ruled Israel on the LORD’s behalf, and the LORD was Israel’s real king. But whether you called him Messiah or Taheb, Samaritans just hoped he’d overthrow the Romans, much like Moses helped free the Hebrews from Egypt. Then this guy would usher in God’s kingdom, and create a time of peace and prosperity.

We Christians know the kingdom includes way more than the Pharisees or Samaritans ever imagined: Resurrection, eternal life, new heavens and earth, New Jerusalem. Regardless, we all know there’s an age to come. The ancient era, and the Christian era, aren’t the last ages of human history.

So Jesus’s water “will become a spring of water within them, gushing with eternal life.” Jn 4.14 Our lives will be constantly renewed, refreshed, fed, and healed. Christians speculate once we get resurrected, we’ll have indestructible bodies which’ll never be hurt, never need food nor water nor oxygen. And yeah, they’ll be indestructible, 1Co 15.52 but not because they can’t break. In New Jerusalem there are trees of life to cure people of whatever maladies they have Rv 22.2 —and you might recall the only people in New Jerusalem were resurrected. Apparently in the age to come, we can still unintentionally hurt ourselves! But there’s unlimited healing. There’s unlimited water of life, for everyone to drink.

If Jesus’s water is a metaphor for the Holy Spirit, we experience some of that healing right now. The kingdom is coming into the world, and to a degree it’s already here. So when we’re led by the Spirit, our spirits are constantly renewed, refreshed, fed, healed. Our lives become abundant.

Like Nicodemus, the Samaritan didn’t understand Jesus’s metaphor. After all, she’d come to the well to get literal water. Here it was, kinda staring her in the face, so it stands to reason she’d take Jesus literally. But Jesus intended to give her the living water he meant—and in the next verses, he continued to guide her to it.