John 4

¹When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John ²—although Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were— ³he left Judea and went back again to Galilee.

⁴Now he had to pass through Samaria. ⁵So he comes to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the piece of land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob's well was there. Jesus, exhausted from the journey, sat down just as he was by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

⁷A woman from Samaria comes to draw water. Jesus says to her, "Give me a drink." ⁸(For his disciples had gone off into the town to buy food.)

⁹So the Samaritan woman says to him, "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

¹⁰Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."

¹¹The woman says to him, "Sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep. Where then do you get this living water? ¹²You aren't greater than our father Jacob, are you?—who gave us the well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock."

¹³Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks from this water will thirst again. ¹⁴But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never thirst for all eternity. Rather, the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water leaping up into eternal life."

¹⁵The woman says to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I won't be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw."

¹⁶He says to her, "Go, call your husband and come back here."

¹⁷The woman answered and said to him, "I don't have a husband." Jesus says to her, "You've spoken well in saying, 'I don't have a husband.' ¹⁸For you've had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. This you've spoken truthfully."

¹⁹The woman says to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, yet you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship."

²¹Jesus says to her, "Believe me, woman, 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 is now here—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for indeed the Father seeks such people as his worshipers. ²⁴God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

²⁵The woman says to him, "I know that Messiah is coming"—the one called Christ—"when that one comes, he will proclaim all things to us."

²⁶Jesus says to her, "I am—the one speaking to you."

²⁷And at this point his disciples came, and they were astonished that he was speaking with a woman. Yet no one said, "What are you seeking?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

²⁸So the woman left her water jar and went off into the town and says to the people, ²⁹"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" ³⁰They went out from the town and were making their way toward him.

³¹In the meantime, the disciples were urging him, saying, "Rabbi, eat."

³²But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you don't know about."

³³So the disciples were saying to one another, "No one brought him something to eat, did they?"

³⁴Jesus says to them, "My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵Don't you say, 'There are still four months, and then the harvest comes'? Look, I tell you: lift up your eyes and see the fields—they are white, ready for harvest! Already ³⁶the reaper is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷For in this the saying is true: 'One sows and another reaps.' ³⁸I sent you to reap that for which you haven't labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."

³⁹Now many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony: "He told me everything I did." ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹And many more believed because of his message, ⁴²and they were saying to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of your account, for we ourselves have heard, and we know that this one truly is the Savior of the world."

⁴³After the two days, he went out from there to Galilee. ⁴⁴For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own homeland. ⁴⁵So when he came into Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival, for they too had gone to the festival.

⁴⁶So he came again to Cana of Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son was sick in Capernaum. ⁴⁷When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to him and was asking him to come down and heal his son, for he was about to die.

⁴⁸So Jesus said to him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe."

⁴⁹The royal official says to him, "Sir, come down before my child dies."

⁵⁰Jesus says to him, "Go; your son lives." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and set out. ⁵¹Already as he was going down, his servants met him, saying that his boy was living.

⁵²So he inquired from them the hour at which he got better. They said to him, "Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him."

⁵³So the father knew that it was at that very hour in which Jesus had said to him, "Your son lives," and he believed, along with his entire household.

⁵⁴Now this again was a second sign that Jesus performed after coming from Judea into Galilee.