to the extent that they would not use the vessels used by the Samaritans for purity reasons.4 The rabbis taught the Jews not to eat Samaritans’ cooking or to have any ritual contact with them.
The Samaritans were the people consisting of five nations whom the Assyrians brought in when they captured Samaritan cities in the eighth century BCE. After a priest, at the command of the Assyrian king, came and lived in Bethel to teach them the law of Yahweh, the Samaritan religion became a mixture of the worship of Yahweh and of different gods brought in by the foreigners. Consequently, there was no fear or obedience to Yahweh and his commandments (2 Kgs 17:24–34, 41). The Jews, who returned from exile in 538 BCE, found the Samaritans political rebels who had corrupted Jewish religion with unacceptable practices.5 Obviously the Samaritans could not be fully regarded as Jews. The destruction of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim by John Hyrcanus, the Hasmonean ruler, in 128 BCE deepened the hatred between the Jews and Samaritans. The Jews perhaps considered the Samaritans as demoniacs (8:48; cf. 7:20). Since the woman was well aware of such a political and religious background dividing the Samaritans from Jews, she got astonished at a Jewish man’s request for water. Initially she, like Nicodemus, understood Jesus purely at human level.
Jesus turns her attention to heavenly things. He points out her non-understanding of the person who is asking for water and then discloses himself as the one who would have given her “living water” had she recognized him as the Christ and asked him (4:10). In the OT, God is described as the “fountain of living waters” from which his people would have received life had they not forsaken him (Jer 2:13; 17:13). The term “living waters” also denotes the life of the end-time, when God will be King over all the earth (Zech 14:8–9). This implies that the gift of God Jesus identifies as “living water” is eternal life, a life with God in heaven, and that it has a flowing nature.
In John “water” mostly symbolizes the Holy Spirit, who gives heavenly life as a present possession and also as future life with God to those who believe in Jesus (John 3:3, 5, 8; 7:37–39; cf. 19:34; 20:22; 1QS 4.21). The water Jesus gives is the life of the Holy Spirit, which, as a spring, wells up to eternal life (4:14), the eschatological life that is available even now. Jesus encourages the Samaritan woman to believe in him as the one who comes from God and as the fountain of living waters that gives heavenly life. Such life satisfies the one who receives it so that they have no further thirst. Even death cannot overcome this life (cf. 11:25b–26a).
The woman questioned the greatness of Jesus by asking where he could get the living water, as Jesus had nothing to draw water from and this well’s depth could have been around a hundred feet?6 Was he greater than “our father” Jacob, who gave this well and drank water out of this himself, his sons and his cattle? (4:11–12). Both questions are ironic in the sense that Jesus’ power to give life and his greater status than that of Jacob are unknowingly confessed by a Samaritan woman. Jesus gives to the one who believes in him the rivers of living water (7:37–39), and he is greater than Abraham (8:53, 58) and logically than Jacob. The words “our father Jacob” show not only the common origin of Jews and Samaritans, but also the woman’s knowledge of the Pentateuch.
The heart of the dialogue lies in 4:13–14: “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst, but the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The water from Jacob’s Well is physical and hence will quench thirst only temporarily. But the water given by Jesus, being the gift of the Holy Spirit, has a twofold function:
1 It will permanently satisfy the thirst of anyone who drinks of that water, for it provides everlasting existence with God to the one who receives it (cf. Isa 49:10; Rev 7:16);
2 As the water given by Jesus has an outflowing nature (Isa 44:3–4), it will be a fountain of life within the one who receives it and will reach out others to lead them to “eternal life” (cf. Ps 1:3; Ezek 47:9–12).
On hearing these words, the woman progresses in her understanding of Jesus and addresses him as kyrie (“sir” or “master” or “teacher”; 4:15). However, she misunderstands him, thinking that he is referring to the earthly water that has magical power, and so she asks him for the water that will never make her thirsty (cf. 6:34). Jesus immediately asks her to go and bring her husband (4:16). Jesus’ command means that receiving “living water,” the gift of the Spirit, will not be possible for anyone who has affinity with the things of the flesh (cf. 3:5–6). Therefore Jesus expects those who ask for living water to acknowledge first their life attached with earthly things. Otherwise, they cannot understand the things of the Spirit. Jesus seeks to help the woman to acknowledge that her lifestyle is socially and morally unacceptable. The woman honestly accepts that she does not have a husband.
Jesus first appreciates her truthfulness, by stating, “You said well” (4:17), and then unveils her past life, saying that she had had five husbands and that the man she is living with now is not her husband. Jesus had foreknown the truth about the woman’s perverted life and therefore he states, “You have said this truly” (4:18). Some argue that the woman might not have been an “immoral person,” for she might have married five husbands who all died in succession, or she might have divorced her previous husbands, or they might have divorced her one by one. However, the woman’s plain statement “I have no husband,” while she had a man whom she could not call her husband, makes this conjecture unacceptable. The word “now having” is deliberate to indicate that she was not living with a legally married person. In conformity with the oriental view on morality, the Samaritans also must have considered frequent remarriages as dishonorable and illegitimate.7 Jesus touched the core of her life because he wished to give eternal life to the marginalized woman and admit her into God’s new community.
The woman took Jesus’ disclosure of her private life positively and saw Jesus in a new light and said, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet” (4:19). She came to recognize Jesus as a prophet who had divine knowledge and words, for in Samaritan tradition prophecy was closely connected with the power to know what had happened in the past and what was still to come.8
The woman’s initiation to discuss about worship on Mount Gerizim confirms her understanding of Jesus as a taheb, the “coming one,” for the Samaritans believed that the taheb will come to restore true worship by purifying Mount Gerizim from all defilement caused by the Jews. For them, Mount Gerizim was the most holy of all mountains (cf. Ant. 18.4.1).9 Her statement “our fathers worshipped on this mountain” (4:20) may imply the OT patriarchs and those who started worshipping on Mount Gerizim, where the Samaritans built the temple ca. 388 BCE (cf. Deut 11:29; 27:12–13). However, the Jews regarded Jerusalem as the holy site where one should worship (Deut 12:4–7, 21; 14:22–26; 1 Kgs 14:21; 2 Chr 12:13). The long-time conflict between Jews and Samaritans on the place of worship is visible in the woman’s statement, “And you [i.e., the Jews] say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship” (4:20b).
In response, by politely calling her “O woman” (cf. 2:4; 19:26), Jesus invites her to believe him and his message (4:21a). Jesus calls her first to listen to his message and then mentions the importance of how and whom one should worship rather than where one should worship. The phrase “an hour is coming,” in which “hour” is used without the definite article, means that this coming hour will see a change in the worship of God, with both Gerizim and Jerusalem losing significance after “the hour,” the time set by God for Jesus to suffer, die, rise from the dead and finally to ascend to the Father.10 Jesus’ cross, which will bring a revival in worship, is anticipated here.
Jesus’ reveals that the object of worship is God the Father (4:21b). In the coming hour, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, true worship will be offered to the Father in “spirit and truth” (4:23–24). The Samaritans worshipped Yahweh alongside foreign gods, and never as the Father with whom believers can relate as children. As God is spirit (4:24), he cannot be limited to any building or place. Jesus challenges that the Samaritans (plural “you”)
