John 4

¹Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John”— ²although Jesus himself was not the one baptizing, but rather his disciples— ³he left Judea and went away again toward Galilee. ⁴It was necessary for him to pass through Samaria.

⁵So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s spring was there. So Jesus, having become exhausted from the journey, sat down just as he was by the spring. It was about the sixth hour. ⁷A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." ⁸For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me—a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews do not share common vessels 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 said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep. Where then do you get this ‘living water’? ¹²Surely you are not greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well? He himself drank from it, as did his sons and his livestock."

¹³Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks from this water will be thirsty again. ¹⁴But whoever drinks from the water that I will give them will never be thirsty, into the age to come. Instead, the water I will give them will become a spring of water within them, leaping up into the life of the age to come."

¹⁵The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to keep coming all the way here to draw water." ¹⁶He said to her, "Go, call your husband and come back here." ¹⁷The woman answered and said to him, "I do not have a husband." Jesus said to her, "You have spoken correctly in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ ¹⁸For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. In this, you have told the truth."

¹⁹The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, yet you people say that the place where it is necessary to worship is in Jerusalem." ²¹Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 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 worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for indeed, the Father seeks such people to be his worshippers. ²⁴God is spirit, and those 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 everything to us." ²⁶Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one speaking to you."

²⁷Just then his disciples arrived, and they were astonished that he was talking with a woman. However, no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” ²⁸So the woman left her water jar and went away into the city. She said to the people, ²⁹"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could this be the Christ?" ³⁰They left the city and began coming to him.

³¹In the meantime, the disciples were urging him, saying, "Rabbi, eat." ³²But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." ³³So the disciples said to one another, "No one brought him anything to eat, did they?" ³⁴Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his work. ³⁵Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then the harvest comes’? Look, I tell you: lift up your eyes and observe the fields, for they are white for harvest. Already ³⁶the reaper is receiving a wage and gathering fruit for the life of the age to come, so that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷For in this the saying is true: ‘One is the sower and another is the reaper.’ ³⁸I sent you to reap what you have not labored for. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."

³⁹Many of the Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the word of the woman testifying, "He told me everything I ever 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 own word. ⁴²They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man is truly the Savior of the world."

⁴³After the two days, he departed from there for Galilee. ⁴⁴For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own homeland. ⁴⁵So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen everything he did in Jerusalem during the festival; for they also had gone to the festival.

⁴⁶Then he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum. ⁴⁷When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was about to die. ⁴⁸Jesus said to him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe." ⁴⁹The royal official said to him, "Sir, come down before my child dies." ⁵⁰Jesus said to him, "Go; your son lives." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. ⁵¹While he was already going down, his slaves met him and said that his boy was living. ⁵²So he inquired from them the hour in which he got better. They said to him, "Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him." ⁵³The father realized that it was at that exact hour in which Jesus had said to him, "Your son lives," and he himself believed, along with his whole household. ⁵⁴This was now the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea into Galilee.