John 4:4–26

⁴Now he had to go through Samaria.^{b 5}So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.^{c 6}Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

⁷When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”^{d 8}(His disciples had gone into the town^e to buy food.)

⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan^f woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.^a)

¹⁰Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”^g

¹¹“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well^h and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

¹³Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.ⁱ Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water^j welling up to eternal life.”^k

¹⁵The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty^l and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

¹⁷“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

¹⁹“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.^{m 20}Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain,ⁿ but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”^o

²¹“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming^p when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.^{q 22}You Samaritans worship what you do not know;^r we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.^{s 23}Yet a time is coming and has now come^t when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit^u and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴God is spirit,^v and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

²⁵The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ)^w “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”^x