John 4
The full text of John 4 in the Trinity Bible Version — clear modern English, translated from the original Greek. Free to read.
1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, "Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John"
2 (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were),
3 he left Judea and went away again to Galilee.
4 And he had to pass through Samaria.
5 So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
6 Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, weary from his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."
8 (For his disciples had gone into the city to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman therefore said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
11 She said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get this living water?"
12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, with his sons and his livestock?"
13 Jesus answered her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not thirst, nor have to come here to draw."
16 Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here."
17 The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You have said well, 'I have no husband,'
18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true."
19 The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship."
21 Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
23 But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.
24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
25 The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming" (he who is called Christ). "When that one comes, he will declare all things to us."
26 Jesus said to her, "I am he — the one speaking to you."
27 Just then his disciples came, and they were marveling that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said, "What are you seeking?" or, "Why are you speaking with her?"
28 So the woman left her water jar and went back into the city and said to the people,
29 "Come, see a man who told me everything I have done. Could this be the Messiah?"
30 They went out of the city and were coming to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, "Rabbi, eat."
32 But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about."
33 So the disciples said to one another, "Has anyone brought him something to eat?"
34 Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to complete his work.
35 Do you not say, 'Four months yet, and the harvest comes'? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest.
36 Already the reaper is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together.
37 For in this case the saying is true: 'One sows, and another reaps.'
38 I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."
39 Many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified, "He told me everything I have done."
40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they were asking him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days.
41 And many more believed because of his word.
42 They were saying 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."
43 After the two days he departed from there to Galilee.
44 (For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.)
45 When then he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast, for they too had gone to the feast.
46 So he came again to Cana of Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And there was a royal official whose son was sick at Capernaum.
47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and was urging him to come down and heal his son, for he was about to die.
48 Jesus said to him, "Unless you all see signs and wonders, you will not believe."
49 The royal official said to him, "Sir, come down before my child dies."
50 Jesus said to him, "Go; your son lives." The man believed the word that Jesus had spoken to him, and he went.
51 As he was now going down, his servants met him, saying that his boy was alive.
52 So he asked them the hour at which he began to recover, and they said to him, "Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him."
53 The father then knew that it was at the very hour at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son lives." And he himself believed, and his whole household.
54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.
Translation notes (27)
- John 4:4a Greek ἔδει ('had to / it was necessary') is a Johannine signature for divine appointment (cf. 3:14, 3:30). Geographically there were two routes from Judea to Galilee; observant Jews often took the longer Trans-Jordan route to avoid Samaritan territory. The 'had to' suggests this was God's appointment, not the shortest path.
- John 4:5a Sychar is traditionally identified with the village near ancient Shechem (modern Askar), at the foot of Mount Gerizim. The 'plot of ground' (χωρίον) recalls Genesis 33:19 / 48:22 — Jacob's bequest to Joseph, the only land he personally owned in Canaan. Setting Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at this site frames the dialogue as a meeting at the patriarchal-inheritance boundary.
- John 4:6a 'Sixth hour': Jewish reckoning from sunrise ≈ noon; Roman civil reckoning ≈ 6 a.m./p.m. Most commentators read this as Jewish noon — the heat of the day, when respectable women avoided the well. The Samaritan woman comes alone at this hour for reasons the dialogue exposes (vv.16-18).
- John 4:9a The parenthetical 'For Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans' is omitted by ℵ* and a few other witnesses, possibly suggesting it began as a scribal note. NA28 includes (P63, P66, P75, A, B, C, D all attest).
- John 4:9b Greek συγχρῶνται: (1) general 'have dealings / associate with' — NIV's reading; (2) specific 'use vessels in common with / share utensils' — Daube and others argue this is the precise sense, since Jews considered Samaritan vessels ritually impure. The narrow reading fits the immediate context: Jesus has just asked for a drink from her vessel. TBV's 'share things in common with' is closer to the ritual-purity sense; NIV's 'have dealings with' is the broader reading.
- John 4:10a Greek ὕδωρ ζῶν 'living water' is dual-sensed: (1) literal: running/flowing water (as opposed to stagnant cistern water), preferred for ritual purification (Lev 14:5, 15:13); (2) spiritual: the eschatological gift of the Spirit (Jer 2:13 — God as 'fountain of living waters'; Zech 14:8; Ezek 36:25). The Samaritan woman hears reading (1) in v.11; Jesus means reading (2). The wordplay drives the entire dialogue through v.14.
- John 4:12a 'Our father Jacob' — Samaritans claimed descent from Joseph (and through him from Jacob), sharing the patriarchal narratives with Jews while disputing the Jerusalem temple's centrality. The woman invokes Jacob as a shared inheritance, framing her challenge: 'whose claim on Jacob is bigger?'
- John 4:14a Greek ἁλλομένου ('welling up / leaping up / springing up') — a vivid spring-water verb describing water that leaps from its source. The image is internal: the gift becomes a continually-active source within the person, not an external supply they have to keep returning to. The OT background includes Isa 12:3 ('with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation') and Ezek 47 (river flowing from the temple).
- John 4:14b εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον ('to eternal life') — directional. The spring's water flows TOWARD eternal life, not just is 'unto' it; it is the eschatological river that ends in eternal life.
- John 4:20a 'This mountain' = Mount Gerizim, where Samaritans built their temple (~400 BC; destroyed by John Hyrcanus ~128 BC, but worship continued at the site). Samaritans claimed Gerizim was the divinely-appointed mountain (Deut 27:12, with the Samaritan Pentateuch reading Gerizim where MT reads Ebal); Jews countered with Jerusalem (Deut 12:5 read as referring to Zion). The dispute was the central theological schism between the two communities — and forms the immediate context for vv.21-24.
- John 4:21a ὥρα 'hour' — Johannine technical term. Here the hour is the eschatological transition that transcends the Gerizim/Jerusalem polarity. Cf. 2:4, 7:30, 12:23, 17:1 — the same ὥρα that culminates in Jesus' glorification reorganizes worship itself.
- John 4:22a 'Salvation is from the Jews' — Jesus identifies with the Jewish covenant ('we worship') against Samaritan worship ('you worship'). Salvation comes through the Jewish messianic line; Samaritan worship lacks the fuller prophetic revelation. This is Jesus' clearest affirmation of Jewish covenant priority. Vv.23-24 will then move beyond both Jewish AND Samaritan worship in favor of Spirit-and-Truth worship — but the priority-claim of v.22 is not retracted.
- John 4:23a Greek ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ — anarthrous, no article on either noun. Translation choices: (1) 'in spirit and truth' (lowercase 's' — manner: from the inner spirit, in truth); (2) 'in the Spirit and truth' (Holy Spirit as agency); (3) 'in Spirit and Truth' (both as divine realities). NIV: 'in the Spirit and in truth' (commits to Holy-Spirit). TBV preserves the anarthrous Greek with lowercase 'spirit' — most natural reading for the bare Greek; v.24's 'God is spirit' supports the faculty reading; v.23's verse-internal logic does not require the Holy Spirit specifically. Holy-Spirit overtones remain available as a secondary sense.
- John 4:24a Greek πνεῦμα ὁ θεός — predicate-first construction with anarthrous predicate ('spirit [is] the God' = 'God is spirit'). The construction parallels John 1:1's anarthrous θεός: an anarthrous predicate names *nature*, not personal identity. 'God is spirit' (lowercase) names God's nature; 'God is Spirit' (capital, treating it as trinitarian identification) would be theologically defensible but lexically over-translates.
- John 4:24b v.24's second 'in spirit and truth' continues v.23's anarthrous construction; lowercase reading is consistent across both verses (cf. 4:23 footnote).
- John 4:25a Samaritan messianism centered on the figure of the Taheb ('the Restorer'), a prophet-like-Moses figure (cf. Deut 18:18) expected to restore true worship at Gerizim — distinct from the Jewish Davidic Messiah but cognate. The woman uses the Jewish-Aramaic term 'Messiah' (Greek: Μεσσίας); John parenthetically translates 'Christ' for his Greek readers (the same pattern as 1:41). Her phrasing reflects her position between the Jewish and Samaritan religious worlds.
- John 4:26a Greek ἐγώ εἰμι, ὁ λαλῶν σοι — literally 'I am, the one speaking to you.' Two interpretive layers: (1) 'I am he [the Messiah you just mentioned]' — direct answer to the woman's expectation in v.25; (2) the absolute ἐγώ εἰμι echoes the LXX rendering of God's name in Exodus 3:14 ('I AM') and Isaiah 43:25 ('I, I am he'). The first Johannine 'I am' in this Gospel is said to a Samaritan woman, not to a Jewish religious authority — a Johannine signal that revelation reaches across the Israel/Samaria boundary.
- John 4:27a The disciples' surprise has two grounds: (1) Jewish men generally avoided private conversation with women in public spaces; (2) the woman is a Samaritan. Their silence ('yet no one said') reflects the gap between their cultural concern and Jesus' practice.
- John 4:29a Greek μήτι expects a tentative-positive answer ('this couldn't be the Messiah, could it?' or 'this is the Messiah, isn't it?'). The hedge captures her transitional state — across the chapter she has moved from 'a Jew' (v.9) to 'Sir' (v.11) to 'a prophet' (v.19) to 'the Messiah' (here, tentative).
- John 4:35a 'Four months yet, and harvest comes' was likely a proverb among Jewish farmers, marking the standard interval from sowing to harvest. Jesus reverses it: the harvest is NOW. The 'fields white' likely refers to the Samaritan crowd approaching from the city in their white robes (v.30) — the harvest is the people, not the grain. Visual layering: agricultural metaphor + the immediate visible scene.
- John 4:37a Greek λόγος here in its concrete-utterance sense: 'saying / proverb' (cf. NIV/ESV/NRSV all use 'saying'). The lexical range of λόγος includes both abstract 'word/Word' (1:1, 1:14 — divine self-expression) and concrete 'saying / proverb / utterance' (here; cf. Luke 1:4, James 3:2). Context determines. The proverbial sense fits Jesus's citation of a known agricultural saying.
- John 4:42a σωτὴρ τοῦ κόσμου ('Savior of the world') — Johannine universal-mission title. The Samaritans (a marginalized group from Jewish-temple worship) confess Jesus as Savior of THE WORLD, not just of Israel. The title appears only here and in 1 John 4:14 in the entire New Testament. The placement of the universal-Savior confession on Samaritan lips, by Samaritans excluded from Jerusalem-worship, is a Johannine signal that the Gospel reaches across all ethnic and religious boundaries.
- John 4:44a Cf. Matt 13:57, Mark 6:4, Luke 4:24 (the same saying in the Synoptics). The 'own country' (πατρίς) is debated: (1) Galilee — Jesus' geographic origin; (2) Judea — the religious heartland that rejected him. Reading (2) fits the narrative better here: Jesus leaves Judea (where he was rejected, cf. 4:1-3) and arrives in Galilee where he IS received (v.45). Reading (1) would create contradiction with v.45. The verse is a Johannine variant of the Synoptic saying.
- John 4:46a Cana echo: this is the second Cana scene (cf. 2:1-11, the wedding miracle). Setting the second sign at the location of the first frames the chapter's structural inclusio.
- John 4:48a Greek ἴδητε ('you see') and πιστεύσητε ('you believe') are 2nd-person plurals. Jesus addresses the official but the rebuke widens to the Galileans (or to humans generally). σημεῖα καὶ τέρατα ('signs and wonders') is a fixed Johannine and apostolic pair (Acts 2:43, 2 Cor 12:12, Heb 2:4). The verse holds the standard Johannine tension between sign-prompted faith and unmediated faith — the official's faith in v.50 will move past sign-prompting.
- John 4:52a 'Seventh hour' = approximately 1 p.m. Jewish reckoning, one hour after Jesus' 'sixth hour' encounter at Sychar's well (v.6). The chapter's time markers (sixth hour at Sychar; seventh hour healing in Capernaum) frame a tight arc — Jesus speaks the word from Cana, the healing happens roughly the same hour at Capernaum (~25 km away).
- John 4:54a δεύτερον σημεῖον ('second sign') — confirms the σημεῖα structural tracking from 2:11 ('the first of his signs'). The two Cana signs frame chapters 2-4 as a Galilean inclusio: water-to-wine at a wedding (2:1-11), word-from-distance heals (4:46-54). The numbered σημεῖα are deliberate Johannine architecture; cf. the seven signs that organize the Gospel's first half (Book of Signs, chapters 1-12).
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