John - Chapter 4

Jesus and the Samaritan woman

^{1 ①} The Lord knew that the Pharisees were informed about him; people said that Jesus was attracting and baptizing more disciples than John; ²in fact it was not Jesus himself who was baptizing but his disciples. ³So Jesus left Judea and returned to Galilee. ⁴He had to cross Samaria.

⁵He came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well is there. Tired from his journey, Jesus sat down by the well; it was about noon. ⁷Now a Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸His disciples had just gone into town to buy some food.

⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan and a woman, for a drink?” (For Jews, in fact, have no dealings with Samaritans.) ¹⁰Jesus replied, “If you only knew the Gift of God! If you knew who it is that asks you for a drink, you yourself would have asked me and I would have given you living water.”

¹¹The woman answered, “Sir, you have no bucket and this well is deep; where is your living water? ¹²Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well after he drank from it himself, together with his sons and his cattle?”

¹³Jesus said to her, “Those who drink of this water will be thirsty again; ¹⁴but those who drink of the water that I shall give will never be thirsty; for the water that I shall give will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵The woman said to him, “Give me this water, that I may never be thirsty and never have to come here to draw water.” ¹⁶Jesus said, “Go, call your husband and come back here.” ¹⁷The woman answered, “I have no husband.” And Jesus replied, “You are right to say: ‘I have no husband’; ¹⁸for you have had five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband. What you said is true.”

¹⁹The woman then said to him, “I see you are a prophet; tell me this: ²⁰Our fathers used to come to this mountain to worship God; but you Jews, do you not claim that Jerusalem is the only place to worship God?”

²¹Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you shall worship the Father, but that will not be on this mountain or in Jerusalem. ²²You Samaritans worship without knowledge, while we Jews worship with knowledge, for salvation comes from the Jews. ²³But the hour is coming and is even now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for that is the kind of worshippers the Father wants. ²⁴God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

²⁵The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah, that is the Christ, is coming; when he comes, he will tell us everything.” ²⁶And Jesus said, “I who am talking to you, I am he.”

²⁷At this point the disciples returned and were surprised that Jesus was speaking 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 ran to the town. There she said to the people, ²⁹“Come and see a man who told me everything I did! Could he not be the Christ?” ³⁰So they left the town and went to meet him.

³¹In the meantime the disciples urged Jesus, “Master, eat.” ³²But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.” ³³And the disciples wondered, “Has anyone brought him food?” ³⁴Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the One who sent me and to carry out his work.

³⁵You say that in four more months it will be the harvest; now, I say to you, look up and see the fields white and ready for harvesting. ³⁶People who reap the harvest are paid for their work, and the fruit is gathered for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.

³⁷Indeed the saying holds true: ‘One sows and an other reaps.’ ³⁸I sent you to reap where you didn’t work or suffer; others have worked and you are now sharing in their labors.”

³⁹In that town many Samaritans believed in him when they heard the woman who declared, “He told me everything I did.” ⁴⁰So, when they came to him, they asked him to stay with them and Jesus stayed there two days. ⁴¹After that many more believed because of his own words ⁴²and they said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you told us; for we have heard for ourselves and we know that this is the Savior of the world.”

⁴³When the two days were over, Jesus left for Galilee. ⁴⁴Jesus himself said that no prophet is recognized in his own country. ⁴⁵Yet the Galileans welcomed him when he arrived, because of all the things he had done in Jerusalem during the Festival and which they had seen. For they, too, had gone to the feast.

Jesus cures the son of an official

^{46 ②} Jesus went back to Cana of Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. At Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill, ⁴⁷and when he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and asked him to come and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.

⁴⁸Jesus said, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe!” ⁴⁹The official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” ⁵⁰And Jesus replied, “Go, your son is living.” The man had faith in the word that Jesus spoke to him and went his way. ⁵¹He was already going down the hilly road when his servants met him with this news, “Your son has recovered!” ⁵²So he asked them at what hour the child had begun to recover and they said to him, “The fever left him yesterday in the afternoon about one o’clock.”

⁵³And the father realized that it was the time when Jesus told him, “Your son is living.” And he became a believer, he and all his family. ⁵⁴Jesus performed this second miraculous sign when he returned from Judea to Galilee.