Chapter 4

¹So when the Lord learned that the Pharisees had been told that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— ²though it was not Jesus himself who baptized them, but his disciples— ³he left Judea and went back again to Galilee. ⁴Now he had to pass through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph, ⁶and Jacob’s spring was there. So Jesus, tired with his journey, sat down just as he was by the spring. It was about noon. ⁷A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her,

“Give me a drink.”

⁸For his disciples had gone into the town to buy some food. ⁹So the Samaritan woman said to him,

“How is it that a Jew like you asks a Samaritan woman like me for a drink?” For Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans. ¹⁰Jesus answered,

“If you knew what God has to give, and who it is that said to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹She said to him,

“You have nothing to draw water with, sir, and the well is deep. Where can you get your living water? ¹²Are you a greater man than our forefather Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank from it himself, with his sons and his flocks?”

¹³Jesus answered,

“Anyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but anyone who drinks the water that I will give him will never be thirsty, but the water that I will give him will become a spring of water within him, bubbling up for eternal life.”

¹⁵The woman said to him,

“Give me this water, sir, so that I may never be thirsty, nor have to come all this way to draw water.”

¹⁶He said to her,

“Go and call your husband and come back here.”

¹⁷The woman answered,

“I have no husband.”

Jesus said to her,

¹⁸“You are right when you say you have no husband, for you have had five husbands and the man you are now living with is not your husband. What you say is true.”

¹⁹The woman said to him,

“I see that you are a prophet, sir. ²⁰Our forefathers worshiped God on this mountain, and yet you Jews say that the place where people must worship God is at Jerusalem.”

²¹Jesus said to her,

“Believe me, the time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor at Jerusalem. ²²You worship something you know nothing about; we know what we worship, for salvation comes from the Jews. ²³But a time is coming—it is already here!—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and sincerity, for the Father wants such worshipers. ²⁴God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and in sincerity.”

²⁵The woman said to him,

“I know that the Messiah is coming—he who is called the Christ. When he comes, he will tell us everything!”

²⁶Jesus said to her,

“I who am talking to you am he!”

²⁷Just then his disciples came back, and they were surprised to find him talking with a woman, yet no one of them asked him what he wanted or why he was talking with her. ²⁸So the woman left her pitcher and went back to the town, and said to the people,

²⁹“Come, here is a man who has told me everything I ever did! Do you suppose he is the Christ?”

³⁰The people went out of the town to see him.

³¹Meanwhile the disciples urged him, saying,

“Master, eat something.”

³²But he said to them,

“I have food to eat of which you do not know.”

³³So the disciples said to one another,

“Do you suppose that someone has brought him something to eat?”

³⁴Jesus said to them,

“My food is doing the will of him who has sent me, and finishing his work. ³⁵Are you not saying, ‘Four months more and the harvest will come’? Look, I tell you! Raise your eyes and see the fields, for they are white for harvesting. ³⁶The reaper is already being paid and gathering the harvest for eternal life, so that the sower may be glad with the reaper. ³⁷For here the saying holds good, ‘One sows, another reaps.’ ³⁸I have sent you to reap a harvest on which you have not worked. Other men have worked and you have profited by their work.”

³⁹Many of the Samaritans in that town came to believe in him because of the testimony the woman gave when she said, “He has told me everything I ever did!” ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they asked him to stay with them, and he did stay there two days. ⁴¹And a great many more believed because of what he said, ⁴²and they said to the woman,

“It is no longer because of your statement that we believe, for we have heard him ourselves, and we know that he is really the Savior of the world.”

⁴³When the two days were over, Jesus went on to Galilee, ⁴⁴for he himself declared that a prophet is not honored in his own country. ⁴⁵So when he reached Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, for they had seen everything he had done at Jerusalem, at the festival, for they too had gone to the festival.

⁴⁶So he came back to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water into wine. There was at Capernaum one of the king’s officials whose son was sick. ⁴⁷When he heard that Jesus had come back from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and begged him to come down and cure his son, for he was at the point of death. ⁴⁸Jesus said to him,

“Unless you see signs and marvels you will never believe!”

⁴⁹The official said to him,

“Come down, sir, before my child is dead!”

⁵⁰Jesus said to him,

“You can go home. Your son is going to live.”

The man believed what Jesus said to him and went home. ⁵¹While he was on the way, his slaves met him and told him that his boy was going to live. ⁵²So he asked them at what time he had begun to get better, and they said to him,

“Yesterday at one o’clock the fever left him.”

⁵³So the father knew that it was the very time when Jesus had said to him “Your son is going to live.” And he and his whole household believed in Jesus. ⁵⁴This second sign Jesus showed after coming back from Judea to Galilee.