Encounter at Jacob’s Well
John 4
In John 4:42 we read that many Samaritans came to Jesus and recognized Him as “Savior of the world.” What led to this great response of the Samaritans? It all began with an encounter at Jacob’s well between Jesus and a Samaritan woman. Jacob’s well is located near the Samaritan city of Sychar. Sychar is believed to be another name for Shechem. We read in Gen 33 that Jacob comes to the city of Shechem following his reunion with Esau and buys a plot of land east of the city from the sons of Hamor. Jacob’s well exists today. It is about 40 miles north of Jerusalem near the base of mount Gerizim. A Greek Orthodox church has been built over it.
Following Jesus’ nighttime meeting with Nicodemus, he went into Judea where many people came to him and were baptized. Jesus then left Judea and began a journey to Galilee. This led him to take the shortest route through Samaria. Around noon, Jesus and his disciples arrived at Jacob’s well. Jesus’ disciples went into the city to buy food and left Jesus at the well. A short while later, a woman from Sychar comes to the well to get water. There she met Jesus and her life was changed forever.
Before we get into the story we need to see where it fits into John’s plan to prove that Jesus is the Son of God.
Chapter 1 We have John’s declaration of Jesus as the Son of God and Jesus’ baptism by John.
Chapter 2 We see the miracle at Cana when Jesus turns the water into wine and his disciples believe.
Chapter 3 We read of the encounter with Nicodemus, the discussion about being born again and John’s final testimony concerning Jesus as the Messiah.
Chapter 4 We see the Samaritans receiving Jesus as Savior.
Each chapter is a progression of thought showing the deity of Jesus in an ever widening circle. This story also shows us a great contrast between Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. Nicodemus was a man, a leader of the Jews, pious, and curious enough about Jesus to come to him at night to investigate. By contrast, the encounter at Jacob’s well is at high noon when Jesus meets a woman, a Samaritan, who is poor, living in immorality and caring for nothing but meeting her physical needs. Nicodemus was at the top of the social and political ladder while the Samaritan woman is at the bottom. John does not even give us her name. But like chapter 3, Jesus uses a common element to teach a spiritual truth. In Chapter three he used the wind and in chapter four he uses water.
In verse 7, Jesus is at the well at noon when this woman approaches the well. Even without supernatural knowledge, anyone would see that this woman has a problem. She came alone to the well at noon. Traditionally women came to the well in groups and early in the morning or late in the evening. This woman was obviously an outcast and no doubt her demeanor displayed that painful truth. I can see her shuffling along, thinking to herself, “How could it get any worse.” And then who should she see as she approaches the well, a man! A Jewish man! She looked at Jesus and did not see the Son of God or the Savior of the world, all she saw was a Jewish man.
Jesus begins the conversation with a simple request, “Give me a drink.” This request catches the Samaritan woman off guard and she says in verse 9, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) The history of the Samaritan race begins when the Assyrians under Shalmeneser put the capital of Samaria under siege, capturing it in 722 B.C. and destroying forever the 10 northern tribes of Israel. Many of the people were taken into exile in Assyria and foreigners were brought in to colonize the northern part of Palestine. These foreigners intermarried with the remaining Israelites who were not carried into captivity, forming a race of mixed blood, called the Samaritans.
Judea was deported to Babylon in 586 B.C. When Esra and Nehemiah returned to rebuild Jerusalem, the Samaritans made several attempts at preventing the rebuilding of Jerusalem. From that point on, “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Jews did not associate with Samaritans and so hated them that they would even go miles out of their way so as not to cross Samaria. Jews would not even use a dish that a Samaritan had used. The prejudices of the day prohibited public conversation between men and women, between Jews and Samaritans, and especially between strangers.
Considering the times, Jesus’ very presence at the well, deep in the heart of Samaria, is remarkable. Even more remarkable is that Jesus, a Jewish man, would lower himself to speak to a Samaritan woman.
Jesus ignores the Samaritan woman’s remark and tells her in verse 9, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” Jesus speaks to this poor woman of the good news of the gospel, Jesus is referring to himself as the “gift of God,” and then offers to give this woman “living water.” Jesus is speaking spiritually but all the woman heard was the offer of “living water.” Living water is a term for running water such as that in a stream or river. In that sense, the water in Jacob’s well was not “living.”
The Samaritan woman is puzzled. She responds in vs. 11, “Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? Jesus is standing there with no bucket or jar or anything with which to carry water. He certainly could not reach down with his hand and scoop out water from the well for it was over 100 feet deep and when she looked around she saw no river or stream. It was only natural that she ask, “Where then do you get that living water.”
But at the same time, she began to see Jesus as someone “different.” Perhaps even someone “special.” She asks in vs. 12, “You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?” It was Jacob who bought this land and dug this well that had provided water for the area for hundreds of years. She asks herself, “Does this Jew have a greater knowledge than our father Jacob? Is there a spring or stream or river around here that I don’t know about?”
Again, Jesus does not answer her question but continues in vss 13-14, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” Jesus now speaks more plainly to her explaining that the “living water” he speaks of is not literal water but eternal life. Now the Samaritan woman is even more curious but still stuck in the physical. She asks in vs 15, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.”
Now Jesus has the woman’s attention. She really wants that living water. Jesus perceives that not only is she physically thirsty, but spiritually thirsty as well. He does not answer her question, again, but instead takes the conversation in an entirely new direction, in vs. 16-18 we read, “He said to her, ‘Go, call your husband and come here.’ The woman answered and said, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.’” Have you ever had someone slap you unexpectedly or throw cold water in you face? Jesus might as well have dumped an entire bucket of ice water on this woman.
Now we know why she was alone at the well at noon. She had either been widowed or divorced five times and was now “shacked up” with a man to whom she was not married. (She was an outcast then but she would have been right at home in the world today.) “How did he know,” she asks herself. Did someone tell him? Her mind is reeling. This is not a subject she wants to discuss. Suddenly all the guilt and shame of her life comes crashing down upon her. When she finally catches her breath, she changes the subject. She states in vs. 19, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.” Now she says what she is thinking, this Jewish man who offers me living water that even Jacob did not know about has knowledge about me that only a prophet could know. But I don’t want to talk about me and my sorry life, I know, I’ll ask him a question about something else, anything else but me. So she looks at Mt. Gerizim in the distance and asks in vs. 20, “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you {people} say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Was she really interested in the correct place to worship? Probably not, but the question would serve to take the attention of this prophet away from her and the shame of her life.
This time Jesus answers her question and uses it to lead her ever closer to the truth. He says in vss. 21-24, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The time is coming when worship will not be limited to one particular place or another, not Jerusalem or Mt. Gerizim. Believers will be able to worship God in many other locations. Jesus then declares that the Samaritans are worshiping in ignorance. This probably refers to the comparative ignorance and corruption of the Samaritan worship. Though they received the five books of Moses, yet they rejected the prophets, and of course all that the prophets had said respecting the true God. Originally, also, they had combined the worship of idols with that of the true God. They had, moreover, no authority for building their temple and conducting public worship by sacrifices there. On all these accounts they were acting in an unauthorized manner. They were not obeying the true God, nor offering the worship which he had commanded or would approve. On the other hand, the Jews were worshiping according to the Law and in accordance with God’s will. More than that, the salvation of the world will come about through the Jews. But in the future, worship will not only be according to the truth but also “in the spirit” or with a sincere spirit and mind.
Now the woman’s understanding of Jesus and who he is, rises to a new level. In vss. 25-26 she says, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us. Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he.” Like the Jews, the Samaritans also knew of and expected the coming of the Messiah. As she had listened to Jesus, she began to ask herself, “Could it be? Could this Jewish man who offers me living water and has the speech and knowledge of a prophet, be the Messiah?” Not sure, she declares her belief in the coming of a Messiah. Jesus then speaks plainly to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
The reaction of the woman to this revelation is dramatic. In vss. 28-30 we read, “So the woman left her water pot, and went into the city and said to the men, ‘Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?’ They went out of the city, and were coming to Him.” In the short time she had spent at the well with Jesus, her life had changed forever. No longer the downcast outcast, she was running and shouting, “I have found the Messiah.” Vs. 39 tells us that as a result, “From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all the things that I have done.’” The Samaritans then asked Jesus stay in the city and after hearing him, many more believed.
At high noon one day in Samaria, a poor outcast Samaritan woman met Jesus at the well. Through their conversation, her perception of who he was changed from believing that he was just another Jew, to believing that he might have knowledge greater than Jacob, to believing that he was a prophet, until finally believing that he was the Messiah. That revelation prompted her to leave her water pot, run into the city and be responsible for bringing hundreds or perhaps even thousands to belief in Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah of God.
This encounter at Jacob’s well changed the life of this Samaritan woman forever. An encounter with Jesus will change our life as well. While we cannot encounter the physical Jesus as this woman did, we can encounter Jesus in the word of God and through faith, in our heart and soul. Have you met Jesus? Would you like to meet Jesus?
