The Samaritan Woman at the Well
This blog will be Bible reading notes, or a short commentary, on this well-known passage in John 4:4–43. Because of its length, I won’t reproduce it here—read it first, and then have it open alongside. The main takeaway is that this is one of those stories that I believe to be regularly if not invariably misread in evangelical commentaries (reflecting a traditionally male-centric and flawed reading).
The bracketed numbering reflects verse numbers.
(4): Did Jesus “have to” go through Samaria from Judea to Galilee? Was it “necessary”? Not geographically; it was the shortest route but given the animosity between Jews and Samaritans, most would have taken the longer route around Samaria. So was it the prompting of the Holy Spirit that he “had to”—to fulfil some predestined purpose? If so, did Jesus have divine foreknowledge of what that would be, or was he trying to sense it in real-time, as he came into that village, on the lookout (as it were) for what that purpose might be? Your answer will probably depend on how you think the Holy Spirit leads and prompts (or how much conscious divinity—“like God”—you ascribe to the earthly Jesus in the events of his life versus his concurrent humanity—“like you and me”).
Jewish-Samaritan hostility was religiously centered, and at times became violent. Samaritans were perceived to be mongrel Jews—heretics—who rejected the authority of the temple in Jerusalem and whose Scriptures comprised only the Torah (the first five OT books) but not the Prophets and the Writings (the Hebrew Bible comprised those three sections). Samaritans were “on the margins” of Judaism; worse than gentiles, having bastardised the faith.
(6): John’s portrayal of Jesus generally tends toward emphasising his divinity; here we see his humanity: Jesus was tired from the journey and sat down by the well. Is that because he was “led to,” or just because (in the first instance) he was tired and thirsty?
(7)–(9): Further shocks. As if choosing to travel through Samaria wasn’t enough, now Jesus deliberately engages in conversation not just with a woman, and not just one on one (the disciples having gone into town to buy food), but with a Samaritan woman to boot. Culturally scandalous, especially for a rabbi (as the disciples affirm in v.27). Note that John tells us “It was about noon.”
(10)–(15): Collecting well water was a woman’s job. It was a place where women would congregate (see, e.g., Genesis 24; Exodus 2:15–16). Usually this happened at dawn and dusk, because of the heat. As with Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in the previous chapter, concerning physical birth and spiritual re-birth, there’s a juxtaposition (and misunderstanding). In this case, it has to do with “literal” water versus “spiritual” water. As modern readers, we’re frustrated that the woman isn’t “getting it.” But her confusion is more understandable than it might appear: aside from any metaphorical spiritual implication, “living water” envisaged moving water (as opposed to static well water)—like a spring (v.14)—which was superior. The women of the town came to the well because there was no running water available from a stream, brook, or spring. So she’s thinking, how could this Jewish stranger know of such a water source close by? “Are you greater than our father Jacob?” (v. 12) = “Do you think you know more about the availability of water round here than the great patriarch Jacob did?” and by implication, than we Samaritans do. Since Samaritans rejected the Prophets as Scripture, perhaps she was unaware (unlike Jesus, we may assume) that Jeremiah speaks of God as “the spring of living water” (CEV: “the source of life-giving water”) in Jeremiah 2:13. Cf. Isaiah 55:1: “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.”
(16)–(18): Here begins the dialogue that commentators assume paints her as a “scarlet woman”—a “sinful woman”—not only married five times previously but now living in sin with another lover. Jesus has (apparently) “exposed” her and her sin!
But why (other than through presuppositions and prejudice) is it necessary to read the passage that way? One evangelical commentator sums it up as “the reputation that has dogged her incessantly has now surfaced again.” Where does he get this conclusion from? It’s not in the text. He’s reading that in from a combination of her prior relationship history plus the time of day that she was drawing water (presumed to be necessary because the women of the town had shunned her due to her unacceptably immoral lifestyle).
But there is another, equally or more plausible, alternative reading available to us, one that starts with sympathy and understanding instead of a harsh moral judgement on her perceived lack of holiness. Notice that the text itself tells us nothing whatsoever either about how she came to have had five husbands or the circumstances concerning the man she was now with. Perhaps some of those husbands were soldiers who had died in fighting. Perhaps she’d been desperately unlucky to have older husbands who had sadly all died before her (we know nothing about the woman’s age). Perhaps she had naïvely married genuinely reprehensible men who had abandoned her. Perhaps she had even been trafficked from a very young age. In terms of her current situation, perhaps she would have loved it if the man would marry her, but he wouldn’t (maybe he was married himself). Perhaps she had no alternative than to accept the situation, that he was the only man available to her for whatever reason (perhaps she had scars, illness, or a disability) since a woman on her own in those times (with no other family, and especially no sons) would struggle to support herself. Ending up in prostitution could be a real possibility. Perhaps the reason she was drawing water at noon, in the heat of the day, was because she’d been unwell earlier, or had an unwell child. The text is silent on all of these possibilities; it rules none of them out. Perhaps it was a combination of these things. Or maybe the woman was another Job.
(19–(25): The dialogue here is typically perceived to be a sinful woman seeking to divert attention from her sinfulness onto religious niceties. But why read it like that? At face value (and why not read it at face value?) its plain meaning is that she realises this man has a prophetic insight that we’d call a “word of knowledge”—”How could he have known all that about me?” Ironically, Jesus is being identified as a prophet by a Samaritan whose people didn’t recognise the Jewish prophets! She’s not “changing the subject” here, but genuinely wants to hear more about God from this fascinating man. Jesus doesn’t call her out on that—“Don’t change the subject, woman; we’re talking about your sinfulness”—as some might have expected him to. Rather, he’s happy to engage in a genuine conversation about Jewish versus Samaritan beliefs and practices. (Jesus’ use of “woman” in v.21 is respectful, not a slur).
(28)–(30) and (39)–(42): Pay close attention to these passages. The standard interpretation takes for granted that this woman was shunned by her community for her immoral, sinful life. And yet, according to the text (as opposed to commentators’ “must be” presumptions), the townspeople readily engaged in conversation with her about the potential prophetic (even, messianic) credentials of this Jewish stranger. It says they believed in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony. As a direct result of that, they invited Jesus to stay with them (yet more scandalous behaviour by Jesus—to accept hospitality from Samaritans!) and he stayed two days. The passage closes with the townspeople saying, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves.” This doesn’t much sound like a scandal-ridden, despised, and ostracised woman to me.
If there is scandal in how this passage has been read and interpreted, it’s not so much the woman in the story as the scandalous way that male evangelical commentators have bought into a particular way of reading the story—their blatant presuppositions as to what’s going on—stigmatising the woman with negligible textual evidence to support that.
Notice that the story does not end with anything from Jesus along the lines of “Go, and sin no more” (per John 8:11). Exactly what Jesus has in mind by the phrase there is uncertain—it’s assumed to be “stop committing adultery.” But bearing in mind that this woman is similarly condemned without sympathy or understanding by the same commentators, perhaps it’s not what Jesus had in mind.
In any event, the point here is that aside from observing as a factual statement that “the man you now have is not your husband” Jesus says nothing judgemental about her life circumstances.
I am not suggesting indifference on Jesus’ part to sexual immorality (don’t read what I’m saying that way). I’m simply suggesting that we might want to read-in less judgment and more kindness, understanding, and grace in how Jesus saw the situations of both these women. Let the text speak for itself in what it actually says (and doesn’t say) and be careful with the “must be” and “can’t be” presuppositions through which we read it.