John 4:9-49

⁹“How is it,” replied the Samaritan woman, “that you who are a Jew ask for water from a Samaritan woman like me?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans).

¹⁰“If you knew of the gift of God,” replied Jesus, “and who it is that is saying to you ‘Give me some water,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹“You have no bucket, Sir, and the well is deep,” she said; “where did you get that ‘living water?’

¹²Surely you are not greater than our ancestor Jacob who gave us the well, and used to drink from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle!”

¹³“All who drink of this water,” replied Jesus, “will be thirsty again;

¹⁴but whoever once drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst any more; but the water that I will give him will become a spring welling up within him — a source of eternal life.”

¹⁵“Give me this water, Sir,” said the woman, “so that I may not be thirsty, nor have to come all the way here to draw water.”

¹⁶“Go and call your husband,” said Jesus, “and then come back.”

¹⁷“I have no husband,” answered the woman. “You are right in saying ‘I have no husband,’” replied Jesus,

¹⁸“For you have had five husbands, and the man with whom you are now living is not your husband; in saying that, you have spoken the truth.”

¹⁹“I see, Sir, that you are a prophet!” exclaimed the woman.

²⁰“It was on this mountain that our ancestors worshipped; and yet you Jews say that the proper place for worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹“Believe me,” replied Jesus, “a time is coming when it will be neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem that you will worship the Father.

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

²³But a time is coming, indeed it is already here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father spiritually and truly; for such are the worshippers that the Father desires.

²⁴God is Spirit; and those who worship him must worship spiritually and truly.”

²⁵“I know,” answered the woman, “that the Messiah, who is called the Christ, is coming; when once he has come, he will tell us everything.”

²⁶“I am he,” Jesus said to her, “I who am speaking to you.”

²⁷At this moment his disciples came up, and were surprised to find him talking with a woman; but none of them asked ‘What do you want?’ or ‘Why are you talking with her?’

²⁸So the woman, leaving her pitcher, went back to the town, and said to the people,

²⁹“Come and see someone who has told me everything that I have done. Can he be the Christ?”

³⁰And the people left the town and went to see Jesus.

³¹Meanwhile the disciples kept saying to him, “Take something to eat, Rabbi.”

³²“I have food to eat,” he answered, “of which you know nothing.”

³³“Can anyone have brought him anything to eat?” the disciples said to one another.

³⁴“My food,” replied Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me, and to complete his work.

³⁵Don't you say that it still wants four months to harvest? Why, look up, and see how white the fields are for harvest!

³⁶Already the reaper is receiving wages and gathering in sheaves for eternal life, so that sower and reaper rejoice together.

³⁷For here the proverb holds good — ‘One sows, another reaps.’

³⁸I have sent you to reap that on which you have spent no labour; others have laboured, and you have reaped the results of their labour.”

³⁹Many from that town came to believe in Jesus — Samaritans though they were — because the woman had said, ‘He has told me everything that I have done.’

⁴⁰And, when these Samaritans had come to Jesus, they begged him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.

⁴¹But far more came to believe in him because of what he said himself,

⁴²and they said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you say that we believe in him, for we have heard him ourselves and know that he really is the Saviour of the world.”

⁴³After these two days Jesus went on to Galilee;

⁴⁴for he himself declared that ‘a prophet is not honoured in his own country.’

⁴⁵When he entered Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, for they had seen all that he did at Jerusalem during the Festival, at which they also had been present.

⁴⁶So Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. Now there was one of the king's officers whose son was lying ill at Capernaum.

⁴⁷When this man heard that Jesus had returned from Judea to Galilee, he went to him, and begged him to come down and cure his son; for he was at the point of death.

⁴⁸Jesus answered, “Unless you all see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”

⁴⁹“Sir,” said the officer, “come down before my child dies.” And Jesus answered, “Go, your son is living.”