Jesus & the Samaritan Woman

The Samaritan Woman is not given a name. This is common in Johns gospel - there are several people
who are unnamed. Among these are the Mother of Jesus, the Beloved Disciple, the Paralyzed Man at
the Pool, the Man Born Blind, and the Royal Official. These were real people with real names, identities
and stories, but making them nameless heightened the symbolism in their stories.

Main themes of the story

The Samaritan woman was a foreigner from a despised religious group, but her story made a clear
statement about the role of women in the early Christian communities.

The woman was not silent, nor was she limited to the private world of women. She had a
voice, and she moved out into the public arena, into male space

She entered into debate with Jesus about issues and questions that interested her

She did not wait for permission to

speak, but took the initiative

She experienced the progressive stages of faith

in Jesus:

she met Jesus

she learnt about him

she came to believe in him

she went and told other people about him

The story of the Samaritan woman has 3 parts:

1 The woman meets Jesus at a well John 4:1-26

Jesus and his disciples stop at a roadside well. He meets a Samaritan woman; why is she alone and not
with other women? She questions him boldly and becomes convinced he is the
Messiah.
2 The woman returns to her town John 4:27-38
The disciples return. They are hostile to her but she ignores them. She goes back
to her town. When she gets there she tells everyone about Jesus - like an apostle
she 'went and told' others about Jesus so that they too became believers. They
come out of the village to see for themselves. The disciples urge Jesus to eat, but
he says he has already had food.
3 The woman convinces many people about Jesus John 4:39-42
Many Samaritans believe, because of the woman. Jesus stays with the
townspeople for two days.
It did not matter that she was a woman and a Samaritan. Gender and nationality were not important. No
one was excluded from the Christian community.

She met Jesus face to face

John 4:1-26

During the course of his journeys, Jesus traveled from Judea in the south back to Galilee in the north,
going via Samaria - see MAPS of this area. Normally, Jewish travelers made a detour around Samaria to
avoid contact with Samaritans, but Jesus took the direct route. He came to Sychar, which was a town
near Jacobs Well.
There had once been a great city there, just where this incident took place. Nearby on the peak of Mount
Gerizim had been a temple that rivaled the Temple of Jerusalem. See the section on the Ivory Palace at
Samaria, at Bible Archaeology: Palaces.

But all this had been destroyed before the time of Jesus, and only a village remained. Here Jesus
stopped, tired and thirsty in the midday heat. His friends had gone to the town to buy food. Only a
Samaritan woman was there, drawing water from the well.
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.)

Scholars presume she knew that Jesus

was Jewish by the way he spoke. His
accent was Galilean. There may have
been other members of Jesus' group
standing at a distance, and the woman
may have heard them talk.

But I wonder too if she didn't recognise

his Jewishness by the clothes he wore.
Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? (Jews do
In the story of The Woman with an
issue of blood, the woman tries to touch
not share things in common with Samaritans.)
the fringe of Jesus' garment, which may
have been the fringed shawl worn by
Jesus answered her If you knew the gift of God and who Jewish men - though now worn usually
just for prayer. Possibly Jesus was
it is that is saying to you Give me a drink you would
wearing a fringed shawl when he met
have asked him, and he would have given you living
the woman at the well, and it was this
that showed he was Jewish.
water.
The Samaritan woman said to him How is it that you, a

Read John 4:1-10

Every drop of water used in a household had to be carried
from the local well. So every day women walked to the
bottom of steps cut into the rock, filled their heavy

Or it may be that people from particular

regions wore particular designs and
colours in their woven clothes - like
peasants used to do in France,
Belgium, Italy, etc. Jesus may have
been wearing a patterned weave that
identified him as a Jew from Galilee.

earthenware jars, returned up the steps, and carried the

water home.
The strong younger women of the household normally did this task, but this is not happening here.
The Samaritan woman is no longer young, and since she is carrying her own water, it seems she did not
have younger women in her household to do this heavy task.

Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for something to drink, and here begins the longest conversation
recorded between Jesus and any person. It is surprising that this conversation happens with someone
who was a woman, and non-Jewish.
The woman herself was certainly surprised when
Jesus spoke to her, because normally Jews and
Samaritans did not have anything to do with each
other.
There had been a long-running conflict between the
Jews and the Samaritans. Samaria had been the
capital of the northern kingdom of Israel during the
period of the divided kingdoms. In 721BC Assyria
conquered Israel, and sent most of its people to live
in Assyria. The Assyrians replaced the original
people with five alien tribes who resettled the area
(for information on this event, see 2 Kings 17:1334).
Eventually many of the original population returned
and intermarried with the five alien tribes. By the
time of Jesus, Jews thought that the people who lived in Samaria were not true descendants of the great
Jewish ancestors, and that their religion was not true Judaism but a mixture of beliefs.
Jesus blithely disregarded the ancient enmity between the two groups. He began talking to the woman
about living water. The woman questioned him and drew him into conversation. Jesus explained that
when people drink ordinary water, they get thirsty again. But he had water that gave eternal, not
temporary, life.

Naturally this caught the interest of the woman, burdened

as she was with the daily task of carrying water. She
asked for some of this 'living water'.
Jesus told her to go and get her husband. She did not
have one, she replied. 'You have had five husbands, said
Jesus, but the man you are living with now is not your
husband.'
At this stage the story contains a great deal of
symbolism. The woman herself stood for Samaria, and
her five husbands stood for the five alien tribes. The man
she was now living with, who was not her true husband,
stood for the Samaritan religion.
The woman understood Jesus meaning immediately. He
was speaking about Samaritan worship in the same way
that the Jewish prophets before him had done.
Knowing this, the woman called him a prophet,
and began asking him about differences
between Samaritan and Jewish worship. She
knew that the temple on nearby Mount Gerizim
had been the central place of worship for the
Samaritans, rivaling the Temple in Jerusalem.
Samaritans and Jews always argued over which
of the two temples was the true place to
worship.
Basically the woman was talking with Jesus
about where and how you should worship God,
an issue that interested her. She spoke to him
as an intellectual equal, and he responded.
Jesus told her that very soon none of these
arguments would matter, because the Messiah
was coming, and he would change everything.
In fact, he said, the Messiah had actually
arrived, and it was he.

The woman returns to her town

John 4:27-38

Jesus friends returned, and were nonplussed to find him talking to a woman.
Note that the disciples are surprised that Jesus is talking to a woman. They are not surprised that he is
talking to a Samaritan, even though at the time that this event took place in about 30AD, Samaritans were
viewed with great suspicion.
By the time that John wrote his gospel, the situation
had changed, and there was more concern about the
inclusion of women in authority positions than about
fraternization with Samaritans.
The woman left the water jar she has brought and
hurried back to the town.
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 went on their way to him.
Read John 4:28-30
Leaving her water jar seems a trivial piece of information, but it parallels other incidents in the gospels,
when various men left their everyday pursuits, abandoning fishing nets or tax collection tables to
immediately respond to Jesus.
The woman told everyone about Jesus, suggesting that he might
be the Messiah.
After Jesus' death and resurrection, the male disciples went and
told people about Jesus because they were sent to do so. The
Samaritan woman did the same thing, but on her own initiative.
She saw what should be done, and did it.

The woman convinces people about

Jesus

John 4:39-42

In the meantime, the friends of Jesus urged him to eat. But Jesus refused, saying that he has eaten food
they did not know about. He meant that the food we give our souls and minds is at least as important as
the food we give our bodies. We shall never find happiness unless we nourish our souls and minds as
well as our bodies. This was similar to the Greek ideal of a healthy mind in a healthy body, but Jesus
extended the idea to give it a spiritual dimension.
Then Jesus talked about the harvest. He was not referring to a harvest of foodstuffs, but to the many
people who would believe in him. Among them were the Samaritan townspeople, who had listened to the
words of the woman. Inclusion of the Samaritans among those whom Jesus favored was revolutionary,
since there was bitter enmity between
the Jewish and Samaritan peoples.
The woman had persuaded them to
believe in Jesus. In this, she acted as an
apostle, going out to tell people about
Jesus, and bringing them to him.
Many Samaritans from that city
believed in him because of the
womans 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.

Read John 4:39-42

We envy the Samaritans their experience of

meeting Jesus face to face. All of us have
wondered what he looked like. They knew. See
Modern Images of Jesus - photographs and
movies that show Jesus as imagined by today's
artists.

The Samaritans invited him to stay, and he stayed for two days. Many people believed in Jesus, not just
because of the woman but because they have seen for themselves that Jesus was the Saviour of the
world. Saviour of the world was one of the titles of the Roman Emperor, but at the time that Johns
gospel was written, it was being used increasingly among Christians to describe Jesus.