“Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although only his disciples baptized), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.”

— John 4

Jesus had no desire to get caught up in a Jewish argument about who was greater — He or John the Baptist.

“And he had to pass through Samaria.”

Most Jews traveling through the Samaritan countryside would go around Samaria and pass only into the cities to trade.

Jesus deliberately went through Samaria, and in doing so crossed strict cultural boundaries of people with differing gender and moral values.

But as we will see, it was necessary, because He had a divine appointment with the woman from Samaria, and He met her at Jacob’s Well.

The Samaritan People

The Samaritans worshiped the same God as the Jews, and had their own version of the law of Moses, their own priests, and their own temple, on nearby Mount Gerizim. At one time their temple was pictured on their coins.

They considered themselves — not the Jews — to be the true heirs of God’s promises to Israel.

Their religion taught that God spoke to his people only through Moses, so the only books that were in both the “Jewish and Samaritan Bible” were Genesis through Deuteronomy, and their versions differ in some details.

They celebrated a number of the same feasts, such as the Passover. They also believed there would be a saviour, the Messiah.

The Samaritans are descendants of two groups: The remnant of native Israelites who were not deported after the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC, and foreign colonists brought in from Babylonia and Media by the Assyrian conquerors to settle the land with inhabitants who would be loyal to Assyria.

In the 2nd century BC, the Samaritans reportedly helped the Syrians in their wars against the Jews.

When you think about it, in our time, wouldn’t Jesus’ going to Samaria be like His going to Iran or Syria in our present day?

“So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.”

Here, Jesus is resting (and waiting) at Jacob’s Well, in Jacob’s Field near Sychar in Samaria.

The Samaritan Woman

Because of her questionable lifestyle, she was an outcast among her own people, and if she had been a Jew she could have been sentenced to death by stoning.

She came to draw water in the middle of the day. She came at a time when she would avoid other people.

But on that particular day, Jesus was there waiting on her.

“A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.”

Jesus didn’t waste any time.

“The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings 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 nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

Jesus knew she didn’t know who He was.

“Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’”

“The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.’”

At this point, she may not have understood everything Jesus was saying, but it seems obvious she was detecting something good in Jesus that she had never seen in anyone else.

“Jesus said to her, ‘Go call your husband, and come here.’ 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 now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.’”

She told Him the truth, but not the whole truth. Truth is (perhaps another truth) that Jesus knew all about her life and what she was like.

But we can see she was beginning to take Jesus seriously, and in the next few verses, seemed to be questioning her faith and wanted to know more about Jesus and what He believed.