John 4

Jesus and a Samaritan Woman

1When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John— 2although Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were— 3he left Judea and went back to Galilee. 4He had to pass through Samaria. 5So he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the field Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8His disciples had gone into town to buy food. 9The Samaritan woman said, “How can you, a Jewish man, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” For Jewish people do not share such things with Samaritans. 10Jesus answered, “If you knew God’s gift and who it is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11She said, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where then do you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and livestock?” 13Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. 14But whoever drinks the water I will give will never be thirsty. The water I will give will become in that person a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15The woman said, “Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17The woman answered, “I have no husband.” Jesus said, “You are right to say, ‘I have no husband,’ 18because you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you said is true.” 19The woman said, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jewish people say the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21Jesus said, “Woman, trust me, 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 true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth. Indeed, the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” 25The woman said, “I know that Messiah is coming”—the one called Christ. “When he comes, he will tell us everything.” 26Jesus said to her, “I am—he is the one speaking to you.”

The Harvest and Samaritan Trust

27Just then his disciples returned. They were amazed that he was speaking with a woman, yet no one asked, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” 28The woman left her water jar, went into the town, and told the people, 29“Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did! Could this be the Christ?” 30They left the town and began coming to him. 31Meanwhile the disciples kept urging him, “Rabbi, eat.” 32But he said, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33So the disciples asked one another, “Did someone bring him something to eat?” 34Jesus said, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and complete his work. 35Do you not say, ‘Four months more, and then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are already white for harvest. 36The one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37In this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38I sent you to reap what you did not labor for. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” 39Many Samaritans from that town trusted in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony: “He told me everything I ever did.” 40So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to remain with them, and he remained there two days. 41Many more trusted because of his word. 42They told the woman, “We no longer trust only because of what you said. We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man truly is the Savior of the world.”

An Official Trusts Jesus’ Word

43After the two days Jesus left there for Galilee. 44For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. 45When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him because they had seen everything he did in Jerusalem during the festival, since they too had gone to the festival. 46Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. A royal official was there whose son was sick in Capernaum. 47When he heard Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to him and begged him to come down and heal his son, who was about to die. 48Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will certainly not trust.” 49The official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50Jesus told him, “Go. Your son lives.” The man trusted the word Jesus spoke and went on his way. 51While he was going down, his servants met him and said his child was alive. 52He asked them when the boy began to get better. They told him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53The father knew this was the hour when Jesus told him, “Your son lives.” He and his whole household trusted. 54This was the second sign Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.