John 4:8Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Yet, having no food with them, they were not anxious about it beforehand or from the beginning of the day. They went to buy it at the time when everyone usually had already dined.

But we, as soon as we rise from bed, care about this before all other things. We summon cooks and table servants and give them orders with great concern.

Only after this do we proceed to other matters. Yet we always care for the things of life before spiritual things, and we regard as necessary what should be counted superfluous.

Thus everything among us is perverted. We ought instead to direct all attention to spiritual matters and, after fulfilling them, then attend to the things of life.

Why, finally, did the Lord send away His disciples? "His disciples," says the Gospel, "had gone away into the city to buy food."

This poor woman, as we have already explained, was timid and would not have dared to raise her eyes before a large gathering.

If she had seen the teacher surrounded by disciples, the disciples themselves, a crowd of people, or anything special, important, imposing, or brilliant, she would immediately have fled. In that way the catch would have been lost.

She would not have dared to approach. The fish would have escaped from the nets, would not have been caught, but would have leapt out.

This is why He sent the disciples into the city. Go, He says, and buy food. You go and buy for yourselves, but I have another dinner.

"My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work" (Jn 4:34).

They also thought that they would fall into every impurity if they came together with Samaritans in anything at all.

In the end, the estrangement between them reached such a degree that they even feared to partake of water and food brought by the hands of foreigners.

Therefore, to move the woman by the unusual nature of His conduct toward conversation and knowledge of who He is, whence He is, and why He disregards Jewish customs, He says that He thirsts.

Thus He directs the discourse toward its goal, addressing her with these words: "Give Me a drink."

But she said, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask water to drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." Jesus answered and said to her...

"And they marveled that He talked with a woman" (Jn 4:27). He sent His disciples away so that they would not hinder Him.

He gave bait to the dove so that by this He might catch a whole flock. He questioned her indirectly so that she would answer directly.

"Give me this water." And this became the beginning of the encounter. He asked for water and then promised the water of life.

He asked and left His request, just as she left her pitcher. He left behind the coverings, because the truth for whose sake the coverings were used had already become clear.

As He always used every moment and every occasion for His divine ministry, so now He strives to communicate to this woman the seed of divine truth.

He adapts Himself as much as possible to the disposition of her heart and to the degree of her education.

He conceals this truth under an image that now presented itself of its own accord. It was so close to her present situation and to her more sensory character that it could awaken in her desire for the great good of which He hinted.

He intended to impart this good to her, though she did not yet understand wherein it consisted.

Indeed, how curious it must have been for her to hear of water that anyone could have within himself, and that would only increase from day to day.

The one who has this water would no longer need to take as much trouble as now to obtain it. He would not need to go for it several times each day and draw it.

Thus the Lord described the new divine life whose source is contained in Himself. It alone can quench the thirst of the spirit and bring rest to all its needs.

In every person who receives it, it becomes an ever-flowing source of peace and joy.

Thus He hinted at it under the image of a living spring, forever gushing forth as a living fountain. The one who has this spring will never suffer thirst and will not wish to drink other water.

In His answer, the Lord makes her understand that this is His condescension toward her. "If you knew," the Savior says to her, "with whom you have been deemed worthy to converse, you yourself would ask Him, and He would give you living water."

The Samaritan woman's carnal understanding could not rise to comprehend the Lord's last words in a spiritual sense.

By "living water" she understands either flowing water, which she supposed Christ intended to take from the bottom of this well, from a spring flowing deep underground and filling this well among others.

Or else she understands water from some other spring, much better than the water in Jacob's well.

In the first case, she could not understand how Christ hoped to get water at such a depth, having no vessel, when even the surface of the water was far away.

In the second case, she wonders whether her interlocutor can give better water than that in this well. Jacob himself drank from it, and even he could give and leave to others no better water.

Could her interlocutor really be greater than Jacob himself? Then the Lord reveals more clearly what water He is speaking of, and at the same time lets her understand that He truly is greater than Jacob.

This material water, more and better than which Jacob could not give his descendants, like everything sensory, cannot give decisive satisfaction. Whoever drinks it will thirst again.

But the water that I shall give will grant the one who drinks it complete satisfaction of life. Within him it becomes a source of that which gives man eternal life.

Clearly, here the Savior speaks of the grace of redemption granted to man.

This was either ancient Shechem (Gen 33:13), called Neapolis in the time of Christ and now Nablus, or a suburban village near Shechem.

In any case, the mention of Jacob's well makes it certain that the event took place near Shechem.

Let us remember the women who followed the Lord (Lk 8:2). Let us remember the sinful woman who washed the Lord's feet with tears (Lk 7:37), the woman with the flow of blood (Mt 9:20; Mk 5:25), and the Syrophoenician woman.

Let us remember the two sisters, Martha and Mary (Jn 11), and Mary anointing the Lord's feet (Jn 12:3). Let us remember Mary sitting at the Lord's feet (Lk 10:39).

Let us remember the women who wept and lamented when the Lord was led to crucifixion (Lk 23:27), the women standing near the Cross (Mt 27:56), and the myrrh-bearing women (Mt 27:61; Lk 23:55; 24:1).

They were the first counted worthy to learn of the Lord's Resurrection. Let us remember Mary Magdalene, who wept at the tomb and was the first to have the joy of seeing the Risen One and hearing from His lips, “Mary” (Jn 20:16).

To Christian men belonged the difficult ministry, with deprivation, exhaustion, and many sufferings joined to the preaching of Christ's teaching. But Christian women were the fruitful field where the gracious seed was most quickly received and bore fruit.

For the first time, the significance of woman is raised in the East. Her influence grows and expands until woman is recognized by Christian society as a being equal to man before God.

“There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). If she is somewhat limited, this is only because of the divine ordering of the family, which requires unity on earth.

Yet from the beginning no one in the Christian world doubted the complete equality of all souls before God, whatever their earthly covering might be.

If woman in general stood low in the public opinion of the Jews, a woman from the despised Samaritan people stood even lower. Yet the Lord speaks with her, teaches her, and reveals to her the mysteries of the Kingdom of God.

This woman was not only poor, for she herself went for water, but also of irreproachable life she was not. She had changed five partners. Yet the Lord did not abhor her.

By turning to her with a request to give Him a drink, the Lord already proves that He does not treat her with contempt. He addresses her as a being equal to Himself according to humanity.

Thus, by His conversation with the Samaritan woman, the Lord once for all destroys by His sovereign word all ritual, tribal, national, and customary barriers between people.

He shows that for Christianity there is no closed world, and that all humanity belongs to it.

Apparently the Lord's disciples, who had entered the Samaritan city to buy food, were already morally developed enough not to abhor, like other Jews, bread and supplies bought from Samaritans.

From Jewish Christians and from all tribes and peoples, under the life-giving influence of the Spirit of God, one common type of man is formed. He is a brother to all other people in the holy Name of Him who, being God, did not abhor becoming man.

How great is the life-giving grace of the Spirit of God when it is received not with doubt and arrogance, but with faith in simplicity of heart.

This is clear from the fact that the Samaritan woman understands the Lord's words about worshiping the Father in Spirit and truth more quickly than the learned Jew Nicodemus understands the mystery of rebirth.

Nicodemus could not at once free himself from his false knowledge, which he had drawn from the schools of Judea.

In the introduction we have already said that the Samaritans, in the time of the Lord Jesus Christ, were most probably no longer pagans.

In religious terms they represented only a sect separated from Judaism by recognizing the Mosaic Law alone, by rejecting all the other books of the Jewish canon, and by being separated from Jerusalem.

They had a cult of worshiping Jehovah on Mount Gerizim. That their morals in general were not pure is seen from the fact that a woman could be married in succession to five husbands, who apparently were alive.

Therefore one must suppose that the moral environment of these descendants of settlers “from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim” (4 Kgs 17:24, 30, 31) partly preserved the customs and moral looseness of the pagans.

Yet the Samaritans most probably honored the one God proclaimed in the Old Testament Revelation.