The story of the woman at the well in John’s gospel is often contrasted with the story of Nicodemus, from chapter 3 of John’s gospel. It is likely that the gospel’s author placed these stories close together so we would compare them. Nicodemus is a male Pharisee, a religious “insider” with some power, who meets with Jesus at night. The unnamed person in this story is a woman Samaritan with not much power, who meets with Jesus at noontime. These two very different people end up having private conversations with Jesus, Nicodemus by design, and the woman apparently by accident.
While comparing the stories can be enlightening, it is also important to consider each story for what that story has to tell us. Before we read the story, there are a couple of points to consider about Samaritans and women and about the assumptions commentators make about both.
Samaritans and Jews both claimed Jacob as an ancestor. Samaritans also observed Torah, although Samaritans and Jews had different ideas about its interpretation. They had different ideas about where best to worship. The Samaritans built their temple on Mt. Gerizim in the mid 5th century BCE. It was expanded around 200 BCE and it was destroyed by the Maccabees around 128 BCE.1 For cultural and historical reasons, these two related communities did not get along and tended to avoid interacting with each other.2 Their differences go back to the Assyrian occupation in 721 BCE.3 While we should not dismiss the very real discord between them, also recognize in this story Jesus and the disciples are traveling through Samaria without apparent worries or difficulties. The disciples in the story have gone to a town to purchase food and townspeople invite Jesus and the disciples to stay with them.
It’s not unusual to find commentators that assume the woman at the well is a prostitute or at least has an immoral lifestyle. We can wonder why some are so quick to make assumptions about a woman’s morals, when they normally don’t for men. The woman at the well is not the only woman in the gospels treated this way. Sometimes people state that she is at the well alone at noontime because the other women in her town shun her, usually because of some suspected moral laxity. But the text does not say that. It simply says she is at the well at noon. And in the story the townspeople listen to her and respond favorably to her. A simpler explanation is that she just needed more water that day, no judgement required.
The text also says that she had five husbands and the man she lives with now is not her husband. Again, some assume an immoral life. But more benign scenarios are possible. She could have been widowed or divorced several times. We don’t know how old she was, if she lived a long life, perhaps she outlived some men. (Remember also, divorce was not typically something a woman could initiate.) She could have been unmarried because she was concubine of a Roman soldier. There are multiple plausible explanations for her situation. We shouldn’t uncritically assume she was an immoral person.4 As you read the story of the Samaritan woman, notice that Jesus doesn’t condemn her.
Let’s read the story of the Samaritan woman trying to focus on what the text tells us, and with less dependence on what we may have been told about it. Try imagining the situation. You do not have to be historically correct in every detail. What if Jesus is not “teaching” but participating in a conversation? What do you notice?
So he [Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered 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.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well,and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” John 4:5-42 NRSVue
What did you notice?
This story has some wordplay. Jesus asks the woman for water. Then he tells her that he can give her “living water”. This normally refers to water that is spring water or fresh water and not water from a cistern. As they talk back and forth, Jesus starts to reveal what he means by living water, saying it is “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life”. Jesus also engages the disciples in some wordplay around food and harvests.
As the conversation between the woman and Jesus continues, she asks a serious theological question about where the proper place of worship actually is. Jesus gives her a serious answer. Her theological question and knowledge is not dismissed because she is a woman. And the answer Jesus gives is an invitation.
Jesus invites her to move out of tying worship to land, to a location, to a country. Worship on Mt. Garizim or in Jerusalem is no longer sufficient. “But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The woman declares her belief in the Messiah. Jesus tells her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.” Jesus treats this woman’s questions and her faith seriously and with respect.
Notice how Jesus relates to this woman. He doesn’t condemn her for having “wrong” Samaritan beliefs. He doesn’t condemn her for having 5 husbands and not currently being married. He takes her theological question seriously.
This is a significant conversation, so why don’t we know her name? After all we were told Nicodemus’ name in the last chapter. I suspect it is because the invitation into a more open and spacious faith is not only for this one woman. If she had been named, commentators might have used that to avoid the inclusion of all Samaritans. They could have argued that Jesus meant to only invite her. As an unnamed woman, she stands for all Samaritans, women and men5.
To be sure we don’t miss Jesus expansive inclusion of the Samaritans, he also pointedly tells the disciples to “look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. … For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Jesus wants to be sure his disciples understand that despite past and current differences, the invitation to life in the kin dom of God includes Samaritans.
People from the Samaritan village. She functions as a missionary, a disciples to them. They believe the woman’s testimony about Jesus, and they ask Jesus to stay with them. Jesus interrupted his travel plans and spent two days with them. As with the Nicodemus story, Jesus extends an invitation into a larger, more expansive faith. In this story, people listen and accept that invitation. They believe.
Jesus presents a life, a space, a culture, where women converse about serious topics with men. Where Samaritans and Jews move past their historical and cultural divisions. In these days of Christian nationalism, it is important to look at how Jesus moves past land based, nation based, and ethnic based divisions.
He untethered faith and worship from the land, from a physical location, from a nation. This must have been a surprise to both Samaritan and Jew. There is no nationalist ideology here. Despite the beliefs of the Samaritans and of the Jews, Jesus says there is ultimately no preferred land or preferred way of worshiping God. He is not interested in creating a physical nation of followers. “The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”
By inviting the Samaritan woman, Jesus invited all Samaritans. As the gospel story continues, Jesus will invite more and more and more people, until all are invited and welcomed.
- https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/the-temple-on-mount-gerizim-in-the-bible-and-archaeology/ ↩︎
- “Samaritans” James D. Purvis, in HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, Kindle Edition, Mark Allan Powell, gen. ed. 2011, pages 911-914, ↩︎
- “The Gospel of John” Gail R. O’Day, in The New Interpreter’s Bible Vol IX Leander Keck Editor, Abingdon Press, 1995, page 463. ↩︎
- Carey, Holly J. Women Who Do: Female Disciples in the Gospels, Eerdmans, 2023, page 162-164, esp footnote 26. ↩︎
- I hardly need to point out, if she had been a man, some commentators would use that to exclude women. ↩︎
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