Gospel according to John 4

¹ When Jesus heard that the Pharisees had found out that he was making and baptising more disciples than John –

² though in fact it was his disciples who baptised, not Jesus himself –

³ he left Judaea and went back to Galilee.

⁴ This meant that he had to cross Samaria.

⁵ On the way he came to the Samaritan town called Sychar[*a], near the land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

⁶ Jacob’s well is there and Jesus, tired by the journey, sat straight down by the well. It was about the sixth hour[*b].

⁷ When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’.

⁸ His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.

⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘What? You are a Jew and you ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?’ – Jews, in fact, do not associate with Samaritans.

¹⁰ Jesus replied: ‘If you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying to you: Give me a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water’.

¹¹ ‘You have no bucket, sir,’ she answered ‘and the well is deep: how could you get this living water?

¹² Are you a greater man than our father Jacob who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his sons and his cattle?’

¹³ Jesus replied: ‘Whoever drinks this water will get thirsty again;

¹⁴ but anyone who drinks the water that I shall give will never be thirsty again: the water that I shall give will turn into a spring inside him, welling up to eternal life’.

¹⁵ ‘Sir,’ said the woman ‘give me some of that water, so that I may never get thirsty and never have to come here again to draw water.’

¹⁶ ‘Go and call your husband’ said Jesus to her ‘and come back here.’

¹⁷ The woman answered, ‘I have no husband’. He said to her, ‘You are right to say, “I have no husband”;

¹⁸ for although you have had five, the one you have now is not your husband. You spoke the truth there.’

¹⁹ ‘I see you are a prophet, sir’ said the woman.

²⁰ ‘Our fathers worshipped on this mountain[*c], while you say that Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.’

²¹ Jesus said: ‘Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

²² You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know: for salvation comes from the Jews.

²³ But the hour will come – in fact it is here already – when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth: that is the kind of worshipper the Father wants.

²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth.’

²⁵ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah – that is, Christ – is coming; and when he comes he will tell us everything’.

²⁶ ‘I who am speaking to you,’ said Jesus ‘I am he.’

²⁷ At this point his disciples returned, and were surprised to find him speaking to a woman, though none of them asked, ‘What do you want from her?’ or, ‘Why are you talking to her?’

²⁸ The woman put down her water jar and hurried back to the town to tell the people.

²⁹ ‘Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did; I wonder if he is the Christ?’

³⁰ This brought people out of the town and they started walking towards him.

³¹ Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, do have something to eat;

³² but he said, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about’.

³³ So the disciples asked one another, ‘Has someone been bringing him food?’

³⁴ But Jesus said: ‘My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work.

³⁵ Have you not got a saying: Four months and then the harvest? Well, I tell you: Look around you, look at the fields; already they are white, ready for harvest! Already

³⁶ the reaper is being paid his wages, already he is bringing in the grain for eternal life, and thus sower and reaper rejoice together.

³⁷ For here the proverb holds good: one sows, another reaps;

³⁸ I sent you to reap a harvest you had not worked for. Others worked for it; and you have come into the rewards of their trouble.’

³⁹ Many Samaritans of that town had believed in him on the strength of the woman’s testimony when she said, ‘He told me all I have ever done’,

⁴⁰ so, when the Samaritans came up to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed for two days, and

⁴¹ when he spoke to them many more came to believe;

⁴² and they said to the woman, ‘Now we no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard him ourselves and we know that he really is the saviour of the world’.

⁴³ When the two days were over Jesus left for Galilee.

⁴⁴ He himself had declared that there is no respect for a prophet in his own country,

⁴⁵ but on his arrival the Galileans received him well, having seen all that he had done at Jerusalem during the festival which they too had attended.

⁴⁶ He went again to Cana in Galilee, where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a court official there whose son was ill at Capernaum

⁴⁷ and, hearing that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judaea, he went and asked him to come and cure his son as he was at the point of death.

⁴⁸ Jesus said, ‘So you will not believe unless you see signs and portents!’

⁴⁹ ‘Sir,’ answered the official ‘come down before my child dies.’

⁵⁰ ‘Go home,’ said Jesus ‘your son will live.’ The man believed what Jesus had said and started on his way;

⁵¹ and while he was still on the journey back his servants met him with the news that his boy was alive.

⁵² He asked them when the boy had begun to recover. ‘The fever left him yesterday’ they said ‘at the seventh hour.’

⁵³ The father realised that this was exactly the time when Jesus had said, ‘Your son will live’; and he and all his household believed.

⁵⁴ This was the second sign given by Jesus, on his return from Judaea to Galilee.