⁷A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me water^* to drink.” ⁸(For his disciples had gone away into the town so that they could buy food.) ⁹So the Samaritan woman said to him, “How do you, being a Jew, ask from me water^* to drink, since I^* am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

¹⁰Jesus answered and said to her, “If you had known the gift of God and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me water^* to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep! From where then do you get this living water? ¹²You are not greater than our father Jacob, are you,^* who gave us the well and drank from it himself, and his sons and his livestock?”

¹³Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again. ¹⁴But whoever drinks of this water which I will give to him will never be thirsty for eternity, but the water which I will give to him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” ¹⁵The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or come here to draw water!”^* ¹⁶He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” ¹⁷The woman answered and said to him, “I do not have a husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have said rightly, ‘I do not have a husband,’ ¹⁸for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you have now is not your husband; this you have said truthfully!”

¹⁹The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people^* say that in Jerusalem is the place where it is necessary to worship.” ²¹Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, that an hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ²²You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. ²³But an hour is coming—and now is here^*—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for indeed the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers. ²⁴God is spirit, and the ones who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (the one called Christ); “whenever that one comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” ²⁶Jesus said to her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.^*

The Disciples and the Harvest

²⁷And at this point^* his disciples came, and they were astonished that he was speaking with a woman. However, no one said, “What do you seek?” or “Why are you speaking with her?” ²⁸So the woman left her water jar and went away into the town and said to the people,^a ²⁹“Come, see a man who told me everything I have ever done! Perhaps this one is the Christ?” ³⁰They went out from the town and were coming to him.

³¹In the meanwhile the disciples were asking him, saying, “Rabbi, eat something!”^* ³²But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³So the disciples began to say^* to one another, “No one brought him anything^* to eat, did they?”^* ³⁴Jesus said to them, “My food is that I do the will of the one who sent me and complete his work. ³⁵Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months and the harvest comes’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest already.^b ³⁶The one who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, in order that the one who sows and the one who reaps can rejoice together. ³⁷For in this instance^* the saying is true, ‘It is one who sows and another who reaps.’ ³⁸I sent you to reap what you did not work for; others have worked, and you have entered into their work.”

The Samaritans and the Savior of the World

³⁹Now from that town many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me everything that I have done.” ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to him, they began asking^* him to stay with them. And he stayed there two days. ⁴¹And many more believed because of his word, ⁴²And they were saying to the woman, “No longer because of what you said^c do we believe, for we ourselves have heard, and we know that this one is truly the Savior of the world!”

Read in Logos

John 4:14: “…but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Footnotes

*Here “water” is supplied in the translation as the understood direct object of the verb “give”
*Here “water” is supplied in the translation as the understood direct object of the verb “ask”
*Here “since” is supplied as a component of the participle (“am”) which is understood as causal
*Here “water” is supplied in the translation as the understood direct object of the verb “give”
*The negative construction in Greek anticipates a negative answer here, indicated by the supplied phrase “are you” in the translation
*Here the direct object is supplied from context in the English translation
*Here “people” is supplied in the translation because the Greek pronoun is plural
*The word “here” is not in the Greek text but is implied
*Here the predicate nominative is supplied from context in the English translation
*The word “point” is not in the Greek text but is implied
aAssuming the term is used here in a generic sense to refer to persons of either gender, it should be translated “people”; if instead the term here refers only to the town leaders or elders who met at the town gate, then “men” would be appropriate
*Here the direct object is supplied from context in the English translation
*The imperfect tense has been translated as ingressive here (“began to say”)
*Here the direct object is supplied from context in the English translation
*The negative construction in Greek anticipates a negative answer here, indicated by the supplied phrase “did they” in the translation
bSome interpreters and Bible translations place the word “already” at the beginning of the next verse: “Already the one who reaps receives wages …”
*The word “point” is not in the Greek text but is implied
*The imperfect tense has been translated as ingressive here (“began asking”)
cLiterally “your speaking”