John 4:16Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Therefore He reveals His power to her through His foreknowledge. Yet He does not immediately rebuke her. What does He say? "Go, call your husband, and come here."

Christ acted in the same way with Nathanael. He did not immediately show His foreknowledge. He did not at once say, "When you were under the fig tree, I saw you."

He said this only after Nathanael asked, "How do You know me?" (Jn 1:48). Christ wished both His predictions and His miracles to take their beginning from those who came to Him.

He did this both to draw them closer to Himself and to avoid suspicion of vainglory. He acts in the same way here.

"Go, call your husband." Seeing that she insists on receiving, and urges Him to give, He says, "Call your husband." It is as though He were showing that he too should share with you in this gift of Mine.

With complete justice one may say that the thoughts of the female sex are, as it were, feminine, and that the mind dwelling in women is weak, wholly incapable of deep understanding of anything.

The nature of men is more inclined to learning and far more capable of reasoning, since it has a spirit directed toward inquiry, so to speak, ardent and manly.

For this reason, I think, He commanded the woman to "call her husband." He was covertly reproving her for having a coarse heart, incapable of receiving wisdom.

At the same time, He was ordering in the divine economy something else that was most beautiful; cf. the commentary on Jn 4:29.

When the Samaritan woman persistently asked and desired to receive living water, Jesus Christ said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." He was showing that this gift needed to be communicated to him also.

As the all-knowing One, He knew that she had no lawful husband. Yet He wished her herself to say that she had none, so that, using this occasion, He might reveal the circumstances of her life and act toward her correction.

Jesus Christ always deigned to take the occasion for prophecies and miracles from those who came to Him. In this way He both avoided suspicion of vainglory and drew them still closer to Himself.

To say beforehand, You have had many husbands and now have an unlawful husband, would have seemed unnecessary and untimely. But to say this when she herself had given the occasion was most consistent and timely.

"If you want Me to give you streams of pure water, go and call your husband. I will not imitate you and ask, You are a Samaritan woman, so how did you ask for water?

I do not weaken your thirst. I have drawn you by thirst toward thirst. I pretended to be thirsty and suffering from thirst, in order to make you thirsty. Go, call your husband, and return."

The woman answered, "I have no husband, alas." And the Creator said to her, "Indeed you do not. You had five, and you do not have the sixth, so that you may receive joy and forgiveness."

What wise allegories! What wise images! By this the life of the Church is painted in truthful and unfading colors, with faith in her holiness.

The Lord, wishing to reveal Himself a little more, commands her to invite her husband also.

Here is another means. "Call your husband," He says, "and come here with him." As the Knower of hearts, He foresees that when she hears this, she will tell Him she has no husband. Taking occasion from this, and revealing to her her hidden deeds, He shows Himself to be the Knower of hearts, that by this He might bring her to faith in Him. And this very thing happened. For

The Samaritan woman did not understand these words. She thought that the water Christ promised to give her would only free her from bodily thirst and from the need to draw water from Jacob's deep well. She still looks at Jesus as an ordinary man and therefore cannot understand the true meaning of His words. Wishing to bring her to an understanding of these words, Jesus first commands her to call her husband. Then He directly exposes her, saying that, after having had five husbands, she is now living in an adulterous relationship.

In order to indicate more precisely and definitely to the Samaritan woman the meaning of His words, Jesus Christ commands her to bring her husband to Him.

This demand may be explained, on the one hand, by Jesus' desire to awaken in her the awareness that present life is unsatisfying and insatiable, even in what she had experienced in various forms, namely dissatisfaction with family life.

On the other hand, it may be explained by Jesus Christ's intention to show Himself as a prophet able to give her living water, proving to her His knowledge of hearts.

Indeed, Jesus Christ's demand that she bring her husband revealed that she had no lawful husband, and that she had had five of them.

"Call your husband." The Knower of hearts knew that this woman had no lawful husband, and that the man now considered her husband was not her husband (Jn 4:17-18). Yet He speaks in this way in order to awaken her faith in Himself still more, and He indeed achieved this (Jn 4:19). The Lord touched the most sensitive string in her life. Painfully, yet healingly for the woman's heart, that string sounded. Struck both by the unexpected turn of the conversation and by its very subject, the woman was troubled. She said what perhaps she herself had not expected: that she had no husband.

Verses 16-18. The Knower of hearts turns to another way of directing the Samaritan woman's thoughts toward eternity. He seems to agree to give the water she desires and says, Call your husband.

The woman answers with embarrassment that she has no husband. Then the Savior reveals the history of her life to her.

"Jesus says to her, You have spoken truly, that you have no husband. You have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly."

Whether the woman received a bill of divorce from five husbands, because of the looseness of Samaritan morals, or whether they quickly died one after another, the Savior says only that the last one, with whom she lives, is not her husband.

The others He calls husbands. The woman herself, with reproach of conscience, speaks of her state: "He told me all that I ever did," v. 29.