John 4 - The New International Commentary
1 The narrative’s opening (vv. 1–3) is very cumbersome because of two things: first, the mention of the Pharisees (v. 1), and second, the abrupt parenthetical notice that Jesus himself was not literally baptizing anyone (v. 2). If the account had begun simply, “Now when the Lord realized that he was making and baptizing more disciples than John, he left Judea and went back into Galilee,” it would have gracefully resumed the preceding narrative without seeming awkward or overloaded with subordinate clauses. There we learned that Jesus was indeed baptizing in Judea (3:22), and that John’s disciples seemed to perceive his ministry as more successful than John’s (v. 26). Now we find that Jesus came to view things in much the same way, and consequently left the area. But the mention of the Pharisees complicates the picture. What seems to have troubled Jesus was not that he was having more success than John, but that the Pharisees had heard that this was the case. We have met the Pharisees once before as those who had sent delegates to question John about his ministry of baptism (1:24), and we can only assume that Jesus wanted to avoid a similar round of questions. The Gospel writer refers to Jesus as “the Lord,”* a term characteristic of Luke’s narrative material, but absent in Markan or Matthean narrative and used only sparingly in John’s Gospel.* Aside from the biblical quotation in 1:23, it is the first use of “Lord” in this Gospel, and may have been introduced here to reinforce John’s eloquent testimony (3:27–36) to Jesus’ supremacy (compare “above all,” v. 31). Yet “the Lord’s” knowledge is not supernatural (as in 1:47–48 or 2:24–25), for he is said to have “found out,” or “come to know,” of the Pharisees’ awareness of his and John’s ministry, presumably by being informed.*
The situation vaguely recalls Matthew’s account, where Jesus left for Galilee after his temptation in the desert because he “heard” that John had been imprisoned (Mt 4:12). Here John is not imprisoned, but merely “diminished” (3:30) in the public eye, and those who “hear” are first the Pharisees and only then Jesus. There is a similarity in that news about John triggers a change of scene for Jesus. Yet in contrast to Matthew (and the synoptic tradition generally) Jesus does not emerge from the obscurity of a forty-day retreat in the desert to begin a “public ministry” in Galilee. As far as the reader is concerned, Jesus has already been “revealed to Israel” (1:31), “revealed his glory” at Cana in Galilee (2:11), confronted “the Jews” in Jerusalem (2:13–22), performed “signs” there (2:23; 3:2), and conducted a baptizing ministry in Judea (3:22, 26). Many have “come to him” (3:26) and “believed in his name” (2:23). Even now he is “making and baptizing more disciples than John.” The terminology suggests that water baptism was the normal way by which a person became a “disciple,” whether of John or Jesus.* This is undisputed in the case of John, who is, after all, remembered in Christian tradition as “the Baptist” or “the Baptizer,” but not in the case of Jesus. It is commonly assumed that John baptized, and the earliest Christians baptized, but that Jesus did not. At his command after the resurrection, we are told (Mt 28:19), his followers reverted to the practice of John. The notice here (and in 3:22 and 26) seriously qualifies that widely held assumption. The reader already knows that at least two (probably more) of Jesus’ first disciples were drawn from among the disciples of John (1:35, 40), and can assume that as John’s disciples they had been baptized in water. Now for the first time Jesus is said to have added to their number,* and to have done so in the same way, by baptizing. The implication is that water baptism was the normative rite of initiation for Jesus no less than for John, for in baptism a person “comes to him” (3:26) and is made a “disciple.” But does our text imply that this was the case throughout Jesus’ ministry, or only for a brief interlude in Judea, presumably while he was still under John’s influence?* Arguments from silence cancel each other out. Jesus is never again said to have baptized, yet nowhere are we told that he gave up the practice either. Because he continued to “make disciples,” even though the precise phrase is not used again, and invited people to “come to me” (for example, 6:35, 45; 7:37), the distinct possibility remains that he also continued to baptize.*
A. Jesus and the Samaritans (4:1–42)
Now when the Lord found out that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John —although Jesus himself was not baptizing, his disciples were—he left Judea and went back again into Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria. So he comes to a town of Samaria called Sychar, next to the field Jacob gave to Joseph his son. There too was Jacob’s spring. So Jesus, weary from the journey, was sitting like this at the spring. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria comes to draw water. Jesus says to her, “Give me to drink.” (For his disciples had gone into the town to buy provisions). So the Samaritan woman says to him, “How come you, a Jew, are asking drink from me, a Samaritan woman? For Jews will have nothing to do with Samaritans.” Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” She says to him, “Sir, you have no bucket and the well is deep. From where, then, do you have this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, with his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never ever thirst. Instead, the water I will give him will become in him a spring of water rushing to eternal life.” The woman says to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not thirst and have to keep coming back here to draw.” He says to her, “Go call your husband. Then come back here.” The woman answered and said to him, “I have no husband.” Jesus says to her, “You have said it well, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have just said is true.” The woman says to him, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and yet you people say that the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus says to her, “Believe me, woman, that an hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. And yet an hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for those are the kind the Father is looking for to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.” The woman says to him, “I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus says to her, “It is I—I who am speaking to you.”
And at that his disciples came, and were surprised that he was speaking with a woman, though no one said, “What are you looking for?” or “What are you speaking with her about?” So the woman left her water jar and went into the town and says to the men, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” They came out of the town, and were coming to him. Meanwhile his disciples were asking him, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So his disciples were saying to each other, “Has anyone brought him anything to eat?” Jesus says to them, “My food is that I might do the will of the One who sent me and complete his work. Do you not say that there are still four months and then the harvest comes? Look, I say to you, Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest. Already the harvester is receiving payment and gathering a crop for eternal life, so that the sower might rejoice together with the harvester. For in this the saying is true that one is the sower and another the harvester: I have sent you to harvest that on which you have not labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
Now many of the Samaritans from that town had believed in him because of the woman’s word testifying that “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word, and they said to the woman that “We no longer believe because of your speech, for we ourselves have heard, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
The narrative resumes after John’s speech to his disciples (3:27–36), as the narrator returns to the subject of Jesus, his travels, and his baptizing ministry (see 3:22, 26). On his way back to Galilee he encounters first an individual woman at a well in Samaria (4:1–26), and then a whole village (vv. 27–42). He speaks to the woman first of water and eternal life, and then of true worship, and the woman becomes a messenger to the men of her village, who eventually learn that Jesus is “the Savior of the world” (v. 42). The story as it unfolds picks up certain themes both from John’s speech and from his own in the preceding chapter. For example, the imagery of bridegroom and bride (3:29) shows up, implicitly at least, in the dialogue between Jesus and the woman he meets at a well. Moreover, the theme of “believing” with the promise of “eternal life” (see 3:16–21, 36) surfaces again in Jesus’ promises to her (4:14), and to his disciples in connection with the prospect of a rich “harvest” among the Samaritans (see vv. 36, 39, 42), while his hope “that the world might be saved” (3:17) is echoed in the Samaritans’ confession of him as “Savior of the world” (4:42). That which was announced in discourse comes to expression concretely in this narrative of an otherwise unknown mission of Jesus and his disciples to a foreign and traditionally hostile community.
III. Jesus’ Self-Revelation to the World (4:1–12:50)
John has said that “the one God sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure” (3:34). In the next nine chapters Jesus will speak “the words of God” to an ever more hostile world, represented by the Jewish religious establishment in Jerusalem. He begins auspiciously among foreigners, revealing his identity to a woman in Samaria (4:26), and he is hailed as “the Savior of the world” (4:42); but after this he meets nothing but rejection, whether in Jerusalem (chapters 5, 7–12) or in Galilee (chapter 6). Unlike John, he validates his testimonies with a series of miracles (chapters 5, 6, 9, 11), but in the end the verdict is that “Even after he had done so many signs before them, they would not believe in him” (12:37). The revelation ends with another soliloquy like the last words of John (3:31–36), but this time on the lips of Jesus (12:44–50), and this time not saying farewell but reminding the reader that he has yet more to say because “the Father who sent me, he has given me a command what I should say and what I should speak; … so then the things I speak, just as the Father has told me, thus I speak” (12:49–50).
2 In dealing with this issue, the commentator must decide whether to look at it from the standpoint of historicity (Was the historical Jesus in fact a baptizer like John?), or from the standpoint of the Gospel writer’s literary intention (Does this Gospel intend to present Jesus as a baptizer like John?). The two questions are not quite interchangeable. The Gospel writer adds an immediate qualification, signaling that whatever the answer to the first question, the answer to the second is “No. Jesus is not simply a baptizer like John.” Like certain other narrative asides in the Gospel, the disclaimer comes very belatedly, as if to say, “Oh, I forgot to tell you this before” (compare 1:24, 28; 3:24). Three times he has said Jesus “was baptizing” (3:22, 3:26, and now 4:1). He could have added the disclaimer at 3:22 or 3:26, but now he finally lets the reader in on the secret: “Jesus himself was not baptizing, his disciples were.”* The qualification could be read as a virtual retraction, and is routinely understood by some to be the work of someone other than the Gospel writer.* More likely, it comes from the Gospel writer himself (compare Paul’s self-correction in 1 Cor 1:16), for it is consistent with his practice of consistently downplaying Jesus’ role as a baptizer and accenting the distinctions between him and John. If it is the Gospel writer’s work, his belated comment is better read simply as an appeal to a technicality. If Jesus sponsored and supervised a ministry of baptism in Judea, it is fair to say he “was baptizing,” whether he personally anointed or dipped candidates in the waters of the region or whether his disciples did it for him. The comment is not a serious denial that Jesus baptized, but merely distinguishes him from John by deemphasizing that aspect of his ministry.* This leaves us with the question of whether or not the historical Jesus was in fact a baptizer like John. None of the other Gospels even hint at such a thing, yet the thrice-repeated notice that Jesus “was baptizing” in Judea is difficult to ignore—all the more difficult in light of the apparent effort to minimize its significance.
3 To avoid the Pharisees’ questions, Jesus now resumes his journey, leaving Judea (compare 3:22) and heading back to Galilee. “Back again” reminds the reader that he has been in Galilee before (see 1:43; 2:1–12),* and later, when he finally arrives (4:43–54), there will be further reminders of his previous visit (vv. 46, 54). The journey will take only two or three days in real time (4:40, 43), but it will seem like more in narrative time as the writer goes into considerable detail about what happened on the way. From the standpoint of Jesus’ itinerary verses 4–42 are a long digression, yet they are the heart and core of the unfolding story line, and in them Jesus will undertake his decisive self-revelation to the world.
4 The “digression” begins with a terse notice, “But he had to go through Samaria.” The “but” is a very mild adversative, as if to say, “But remember, ‘Judea to Galilee’ necessarily involves Samaria as well.” Much has been written about whether the necessity was geographical or theological. Did Jesus “have to” (
5 The town of Sychar (unlike such Galilean places as Bethsaida, Cana, and Capernaum) is introduced as if unknown to the readers of the Gospel.* All they need to know is that it is “a town of Samaria called Sychar,”* close to sites important in Samaritan tradition. The writer places it “next to the field Jacob gave to Joseph his son,” a place associated with Shechem, the Samaritan capital. In Genesis, Jacob was said to have given to Joseph “one portion more than to your brothers, the portion that I took from the hand of the Amorites with my sword and with my bow” (Gen 48:22, NRSV).* Even though Sychar is not Shechem (see n.
6 The naming of the country (twice) and the town, the allusion to Jacob’s gift of the field to Joseph, and the notice that “There too [
7 The narrative use of the present tense signals another exchange comparable to Jesus’ encounter with John’s disciples (1:35–51) or with Nicodemus (3:1–10): “A woman from Samaria comes to draw water,” and “Jesus says to her, ‘Give me to drink’ ” (italics added). The verb “comes” echoes verse 5: Jesus “comes” to Sychar, the woman now “comes” to the spring, and they meet. For a third time the country is named (compare vv. 4, 5) when the woman is introduced, somewhat redundantly, as “a woman from Samaria.”* Unlike Nicodemus (3:2), she does not “come to Jesus” as one professing allegiance, nor does she come “at night.” Knowing nothing of Jesus, she simply comes to the spring at high noon for water. To modern ears, Jesus’ request, “Give me to drink,” sounds abrupt, even impolite, but the narrative is bare, stripped of pleasantries and preliminaries.* His words are only slightly more abrupt than those of Abraham’s servant on meeting Rebekah: “Let me drink a little water from your jar” (Gen 24:17). If there is one biblical point of reference for Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman, it is probably that story, echoed here and at the same time transformed. A servant representing a bridegroom meets the virgin bride at a well by asking for a drink of water, and Rebekah quickly responds, “Drink, sir!” (Gen 24:18). In our narrative, Jesus has recently been identified as a bridegroom (3:29), but the Samaritan woman, we will shortly learn, is neither bride nor virgin, and is not so quick to grant Jesus’ request (v. 9). In the Genesis story, real thirst is not the issue, for the request is part of a conscious and prayerful plan to find a bride for Isaac (Gen 24:12–14). Here too it is tempting to suspect that Jesus has a plan to evangelize Samaria, that he is not really thirsty, and that his request for water is just a ploy (see 6:6, “He himself knew what he was going to do”). Yet all the clues point in the opposite direction. Jesus’ weariness, conveyed both by word and implied gesture, makes his thirst a wholly natural and inevitable part of the story. Those who knew of his passion would also know that his thirst at that time, again “about the sixth hour” (see 19:14, 28), was real and not feigned. Here too, when he says bluntly, “Give me to drink,” he does so for only one reason. He is thirsty. Nothing that he says later (vv. 10, 13–14) changes that.
8 As in several other narrative asides in John’s Gospel (1:24, 28; 3:24; 4:2), the notice that his disciples “had gone into the town to buy provisions” comes belatedly, as if it were an afterthought. We were not even told that the disciples had accompanied him from Judea to Samaria. Yet the notice serves a definite purpose in its present position, for Jesus has just met the woman, and the writer is taking the opportunity to tell us that the two were alone, accenting the drama of what is to follow. Beyond this, it sets the stage for the disciples’ later return, and their shock “that he was speaking with a woman” (v. 27). Jewish custom frowned on a man of God carrying on an extended conversation with a woman,* and it did not help that Jesus and this woman were alone.*
9 Instead of playing out the bride’s compliant role in a traditional well story (“Drink, sir!” Gen 24:18), the woman balks at Jesus’ request: “How come you, a Jew, are asking drink from me, a Samaritan woman?”* While she consciously identifies herself as a woman and as a Samaritan, she does not invoke Samaritan custom so as to refuse Jesus’ request outright. Instead, she wonders aloud why Jesus would ask her for water, given the customs of his own people. She* then adds an explanation, that “Jews will have nothing to do with Samaritans” (not that “Samaritans will have nothing to do with Jews,” which was equally true). To “have nothing to do with” can mean either to have no dealings in a general sense, or specifically to not “use [vessels] together” in situations where ritual purity is at stake.* The second option seems plausible because it is a question of drinking from the same cup or jar.* Yet the reader was probably not expected to understand all the particulars of ritual purity (it is mentioned only generally and vaguely in 2:6 and 3:25).* Therefore the translation, “have nothing to do with,” or “have no dealings with,” is preferable. The added comment is fully consistent with the woman’s question, and by it the writer assures us that in fact she had a point: Jesus is “a Jew,” and if “Jews will have nothing to do with Samaritans,” then he is in danger of violating Jewish custom.* Only here in the whole New Testament, ironically in the very act of doing what Jews do not normally do, is Jesus explicitly called “a Jew.”* The writer implicitly endorses this label, yet a further irony remains. Jesus comes as an outsider and stranger to the whole world: to the Samaritan woman he is “a Jew,” yet four chapters later, to “the Jews” in Jerusalem he is “a Samaritan” (8:48). At the end of the present scene, this stranger to the world will be revealed as “Savior of the world” (v. 42).
10 Jesus’ answer playfully engages the woman as a debate partner in much the same way he engaged Nicodemus (3:3), by mimicking her own words.* She had said, “How come you … are asking,” and he replies with a contrary-to-fact condition, “If you knew, … you would have asked.”* With this he exposes her ignorance of two things: first, “the gift of God,” and second, “who it is who says to you, ‘Give me to drink’ ”—that is, who Jesus is.* Both are things the reader of the Gospel should know, even though the woman does not. “The gift [
11 The woman answers with a little more respect, addressing Jesus as “Sir” (
12 Inevitably, her question about “the living water” leads to a question about Jesus’ identity: “Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, with his sons and his livestock?” In mentioning “our” father Jacob who gave “us” the well, she speaks as a Samaritan. The well is a Samaritan artifact and holy place,* linking the Samaritans to the patriarchs and the biblical narrative. Later, in Jerusalem, “the Jews” will ask Jesus a similar rhetorical question: “Are you greater than our father Abraham?” (8:53). The reader is expected to understand that he is in fact greater than both. The woman’s comment about the well cannot be verified from the biblical text (that is, from Gen 48:22), but expands on the Gospel writer’s introductory setting of the scene (v. 5). If “the field Jacob gave to Joseph his son” included the well (vv. 5–6), then Jacob’s well, no less than his field, was Jacob’s gift to Joseph, and consequently to the Samaritans, who considered themselves Joseph’s descendants.* If Jacob “drank from it himself, with his sons and his livestock,” it must be a water source of great abundance. The merits of the well become for the woman a matter of ethnic pride. What water source could be greater or more satisfying than that which “our father Jacob” left for his Samaritan children? Her remark reminds us, however subtly, that in contrast to Jacob and his sons, Jesus has not drunk from the well. His thirst remains unquenched (see 19:28).*
13–14 For the first time Jesus explains that the “living water” he has in mind is not from Jacob’s spring. “This water” (v. 13) is not the same as the water that “I will give.” “This water,” like any other, quenches thirst temporarily; the water Jesus gives quenches thirst forever. He tells her that “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never ever thirst. Instead, the water I will give him will become in him a spring of water rushing to eternal life” (v. 14). His extraordinary promise redefines both water and thirst. The point is not that he offers some magic water that quenches physical thirst forever (as the woman is quick to assume, v. 15), but that he offers a different kind of water to quench forever a different kind of thirst. His words make clear to the reader, if not to the woman, that the phrase with which he concluded his last speech, “living water” (v. 10b), was a metaphor. It is a very odd metaphor, in that only when it is taken literally (that is, as “living” rather than simply “running” water), does it disclose the reality to which it is pointing. If Jesus’ last two words before were “living water” (v. 10), his last two words now are “eternal life” (v. 14). “Living” water means “life-giving” water. Just as in the dialogue with Nicodemus, “eternal life” is the burden of Jesus’ message (3:15, 16).
The other notable feature of this pronouncement is the emphatic “I” (
“Eternal life” is future here. The phrase “to [or for] eternal life” (as in 4:36; 6:27; 12:25) signals its futurity.* But “future” does not mean “after death.” Death does not even enter into the equation for those who have “eternal life” (see 5:24; 6:50; 8:51; 11:25–26). Rather, “eternal life” belongs to the immediate future, so immediate that Jesus can speak of it as something the believer already “has” (3:36; 5:24; 6:47, 54). It is tempting to play down, as some have, the futurity of “eternal life,” emphasizing that what Jesus promised was not simply never-ending life but new life, a qualitatively different kind of life. Sometimes the question is asked, “Who would even want to go on living forever and ever?” The answer, I suspect, is quite a few of us,* but the question misses the point. Of course the life Jesus offers the Samaritan woman is a new, qualitatively different kind of life—but not because of the adjective “eternal” attached to it. “Life” in the Gospel of John is, by definition, not the physical life that God created through the Word, but the divine life that was “in him” (1:4) from the beginning, part and parcel of his own being. There is no “life” mentioned anywhere in the Gospel which is not by implication “eternal.”* But when the adjective is explicitly added, it does serve to accent the “endless” or “never-ending” character of divine life. Here it reinforces the point that whoever “drinks of the water that I will give him will never ever thirst” (my italics), just as Jesus’ sheep “will never ever be lost” (10:28), and those who believe in him will “never ever die” (11:26; compare 8:51–52). To the Gospel writer, “eternal life” is a redundant expression, but he is willing to risk a little redundancy to make the point that salvation is forever.
While the parallels with Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus are conspicuous, there is one major difference. Instead of telling the Samaritan woman again and again what is “impossible” (as with Nicodemus in 3:3, 5, and 12), he freely offers the Spirit and eternal life to whoever “drinks of the water that I will give him.” For the first time, he speaks openly as God’s messenger, offering salvation to this woman and to all who hear or read his words.
15 The woman is not put off by all the masculine pronouns (see n.
16 Jesus respects the woman’s recognition of her need, and responds to her as to a potential believer: “Go call your husband. Then come back here.” Any notion that this is literally a story about a bridegroom and a bride now disappears. In such a story the appropriate line would have been “Go call your father,” not your husband (see Gen 24:23; 29:12; Exod 2:21). Instead, Jesus takes on the role of missionary, or messenger of God, “bridegroom” to a whole people (compare 3:29). As the model for all Christian missionaries, he wants salvation for families or households, not just individuals (see 4:53, “he and his whole family”).* Therefore he says, “Go call your husband.”* At the same time, he echoes the woman’s own expression, “back here,” from the preceding verse: “Then come back here” (
17–18 When the woman says, “I have no husband,” Jesus repeats her own words, and heartily endorses her answer: “You have said it well, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands,* and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have just said is true.”* Whether she was in fact consciously telling the truth, or whether “I have no husband” was, as Lindars puts it, “a white lie,”* is another question. If she was lying, her lie adds a definite note of irony to Jesus’ commendation of her for telling the truth! The “five husbands” have lent themselves persistently to an allegorical interpretation, as the supposed five false gods of the five foreign tribes that the Assyrians brought into Samaria after destroying Israel’s northern kingdom (see 2 Kgs 17:24–32 and Josephus, Antiquities 9.288).* This interpretation reduces the woman to a mere symbol or representative of “Samaria,” whose present illegitimate lover is the God of Israel (see v. 22, “You people worship what you do not know”)! For some feminist interpreters, it may help avoid the distasteful notion that Jesus was exposing an immoral woman’s past, but it flounders on the stubborn fact that the woman herself heard Jesus’ words as a comment on her personal history, not on the history of her people (vv. 29, 39).* And her references to “our father Jacob” (v. 12), and later to “our fathers” who “worshiped on this mountain” (v. 20), give clear evidence that she knew the difference.*
This does not mean that Jesus’ words made her feel guilty, or even that he intended them to.* She is not so much convicted of sin as merely amazed at his knowledge of her past and present. In this respect, she is like Nathanael, whom Jesus identified as a “true Israelite” and said he had seen “under the fig tree” before they met (1:48). Yet the reader will also remember that sometimes Jesus’ supernatural knowledge does carry intimations of judgment, as in the reminder that “He had no need for anyone to tell him about any person, for he himself knew what was in the person” (2:25). Such intimations can be found here, but they do not add up to a picture of the sovereign Lord either condemning or forgiving a poor, helpless sinner. She is not one of the prostitutes or sinful women with whom we see Jesus dealing on some occasions (Lk 7:36–50; Jn 8:1–11). She is made of sterner stuff. While his exposure of her five husbands and her present lover does not reflect well on her character, it is still just part of the repartee, the lively give-and-take that has gone on for nine verses now between “you, a Jew” and “me, a Samaritan woman” (v. 9). Jesus the “Jew” has gained the upper hand, but she is by no means ready to plead, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner,” nor does Jesus ask her to. She has proved herself a worthy debate partner, and the debate continues.
19–20 Jesus has scored a major point, and the woman acknowledges this by addressing him no longer simply as “a Jew” (v. 9) but as “a prophet” (compare 9:17).* Her recognition of him as “prophet” is preliminary, however, to a question she directs to him as a Jew: “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and yet you people* say that the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem.” Prophet he may be, but Jesus is still “a Jew,” and she “a Samaritan woman” (v. 9). It is a mistake to read too much into her expression, “I can see.” This verb for “see” (
“This mountain,” to the woman, was Mount Gerizim (Deut 27:4–8), based on the Samaritan version of the Hebrew Bible (known as the Samaritan Pentateuch; the Hebrew text has “Mount Ebal”).* The woman’s expression “our fathers” (in contrast to “you people”) suggests that in her eyes this history belonged to the Samaritans and not to the Jews.* According to Josephus (Antiquities 11.321–24), Alexander the Great gave the Samaritans permission to build a temple there, and the names of the builders (Sanbelletes and Manasses; see Antiquities 11.302) correspond rather closely to the names of the defectors from Nehemiah’s Jerusalem over a hundred years earlier according to the biblical account (see Neh 13:28). Little is known of that temple except that the Jewish ruler John Hyrcanus destroyed it two hundred years after Alexander, around 128
21 At first Jesus sounds like a prophet who stands above all partisan bickering. “Believe me, woman, that an hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father” (v. 21). “Believe me” is an expression solemnly attesting the truth of what one is about to say, more or less equivalent to “Amen, amen” (1:51; 3:3, 5, 11), but here the reader of the Gospel will see overtones of an outright invitation to “believe” in Jesus, as his disciples had done (1:50; 2:11), and as the Samaritan villagers would shortly do (vv. 39, 41).* Never is the woman explicitly said to “believe,” but her subsequent actions (vv. 28–29) strongly suggest that she did. Here she has already called him “prophet” because he knew her past (v. 19), and as prophets like to do, he now speaks of the future. It is the second time he has told a “woman” (
Two things are noteworthy about his promise. First, “you will worship” is plural, referring to the Samaritans, and echoing the woman’s distinction between “we” and “you” (v. 20). Second, in this promised future the Samaritans will worship “the Father.” For Jesus to call God “the Father” in speaking to a non-Jew is startling. To the woman, “father” is a title belonging either to Jacob (v. 12) or other human ancestors (v. 20), not to God. Barnabas Lindars is surely correct that Jesus’ words “should not be taken to mean worship of the universal Father in a non-sectarian (Jewish, Samaritan, or even Christian) way, which would be quite foreign to John’s theology, but worship in and through the Father-Son relationship which is made possible by incorporation into the Son.”* This is the first time in the Gospel that Jesus himself has mentioned “the Father” in this way (with the article but with no possessive pronoun, “my”).* Significantly, it will become his characteristic designation for God in all his discourses throughout the Gospel (75 instances in all). To call God “the Father” is tantamount to calling himself “the Son,”* and to say that the Samaritans “will worship the Father” is to imply that they will do so through Jesus the Son.* The Christian reader is supposed to understand this even though the Samaritan woman does not. It is no accident that Jesus begins to speak of “the Father” at about the same time he begins to use the emphatic “I” (
22 Having said that, Jesus nevertheless takes his stand within the religious divisions that still exist: “You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews” (v. 22, italics added). His words now echo even more sharply the woman’s distinction between “our fathers” and “you people” (v. 20).* Like the woman’s rhetorical “I can see” (v. 19), his pronouncement evokes Paul among the Athenians: “So what you worship unknowingly I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23). Even the noticeably neuter expression, “what you do not know,” corresponds to Paul’s “what you worship unknowingly” (italics added). The point is not that John’s Gospel presupposes either the Lukan account or the incident to which it refers, but that in a general way Jesus is addressing the Samaritan woman in the same manner in which Jews (and later, Christians) customarily addressed Gentiles. This is why the indictment of Samaritan worship sounds so harsh.* Jesus’ mission is not merely to a particular sect on the margins of Judaism, but to the whole Gentile world. Its conclusion will be that he is “Savior of the world” (v. 42), but on the way to this conclusion it must be shown that Gentiles either worship false gods as idols (see Acts 14:15; 1 Thess 1:9; Rom 1:21–23) or worship the true God in ignorance (as in Acts 17:23). In the case of the Samaritans, only the latter course is possible. They worship the God of Israel, but ignorantly. The Samaritan woman did not know “the gift of God” (v. 10), and now we learn that the Samaritans as a people did not know God. Consequently, Jesus insists, “Salvation is from the Jews.” This is the only time in any of the Gospels that Jesus explicitly mentions “the Jews,” and in doing so he takes his stand with “the Jews,” confirming the woman’s first characterization of him (v. 9). He sounds as harshly and narrowly Jewish here as in his encounter in Mark and Matthew with another Gentile woman, when he said, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs” (Mk 7:27; see also Mt 15:26).* Yet there is a certain irony in his pronouncement as well, given his repeated insistence elsewhere in the Gospel that “the Jews” did not know God either (7:28; 8:19, 55; 15:21; 16:3).
How heavy is the irony? Is Jesus mocking the whole “we”-against-“you” distinction by making himself its harshest spokesman? Probably not, because the last clause, “Salvation is from the Jews,” is difficult to read as anything but a straightforward, serious assertion. It is the only instance of the word “salvation” (
23 Having stated as bluntly and starkly as possible the present state of affairs between Jews and Samaritans (v. 22), Jesus nevertheless reiterates his promise for the future, and explains it further: “And yet an hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit* and truth” (v. 23). In one sense, Jesus is adding nothing to what he said in v. 21 about “worshiping the Father.” Worship “in Spirit and truth” is worship of “the Father,” and worship of “the Father” is worship “in Spirit and truth.” The two expressions are virtually interchangeable, and to that extent redundant when used together. Despite the present division and the inadequacy of the Samaritan religion, the promise of v. 21 still stands! It is here repeated, and at the same time transformed. Jesus transforms the promise by expanding “an hour is coming” (v. 21) with the added words, “and now is.”* He also defines the proper place of worship positively rather than negatively, answering the natural question: If “neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” (v. 21), then where? “In Spirit and truth” is his answer. Finally, instead of “you [Samaritans] will worship” (v. 21), he now says, “the true worshipers will worship,” uniting Jew and Samaritan alike in common worship of “the Father” (that is, through ‘the Son’).
Both expressions, the shorter “an hour is coming” (v. 21), and the longer one, “an hour is coming and now is” (v. 23), refer to the same future. The one is not sooner or more imminent than the other.* Both refer to a time present to the Gospel writer and his implied readers, but future to Jesus and the Samaritan woman within the narrative. It is an impending, even imminent future, for it is the goal toward which the narrative itself is moving (see vv. 35–36). It is a time in which the holy places now dividing Jew from Samaritan no longer matter. Just as the woman will not keep coming to Jacob’s spring for the water Jesus has in mind (v. 15), so her place of worship will be “neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem,” but “in Spirit and truth.” “Spirit and truth,” like “grace and truth,” are a hendiadys, that is, coordinate grammatically but not coordinate in meaning. Just as “truth” specified what “grace” or gift it was that Jesus possessed and brought into the world (1:14, 17), so “truth” here defines “Spirit” as “true” Spirit, or “Spirit of truth” (see 14:17; 15:26; 16:13; 1 Jn 4:6). Jesus told Nicodemus explicitly of being “born of the Spirit” (3:5, 6, 8), and has told the woman too about the Spirit without using the actual word. Instead he has spoken of “the gift of God,” or “living water” (v. 10), or “the water I will give” (v. 14). Now, finally using the word, he identifies “Spirit” with “truth,” essentially with the “grace and truth” that “came into being through Jesus Christ” (1:17). “The true worshipers” are those whose character reflects and embodies that “truth.”
24 Worship “in Spirit and truth” does not necessarily mean non-liturgical or noninstitutional worship, nor does it favor “inward” individual worship over “outward” corporate worship. Rather, it is worship appropriate to the nature and character of God, and if God’s nature is revealed only in “God the One and Only, the One who is right beside the Father” (1:18), then such worship is impossible until “the One and Only” has come. Now that the Revealer is present in the person of Jesus, such worship can and will become reality. The pronouncement “God is Spirit” (v. 24) is a rare instance in which Jesus actually reveals something about God, and not just that he himself is the Revealer.* What he reveals is not new (although it is never explicitly stated in the Hebrew Bible or LXX). To say “God is Spirit” is not so different from saying God is invisible (1:18; 6:46), incorruptible, not to be worshiped in the form of idols or images (Rom 1:22; Acts 17:29), and that God does not live in temples made with human hands (Acts 7:48–49; 17:24). Because he has just implied that Jews know this and Samaritans do not (v. 22), Jesus’ words at one level sound like a continuation of his polemic in favor of Judaism. Yet it is more, for he is summoning Jew and Samaritan alike to a new kind of worship, and this can only mean through a new Mediator. Small wonder that when the woman replies, her first words will be, “I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ” (v. 25).
This new kind of worship is not something Jesus is urging on the woman, as if to say, “This is the way I would like you to worship.” It is not an option, but something that “must” occur (
In just four verses, Jesus has used the verb “worship” seven times and the noun “worshipers” once. He picks up the verb from the woman’s two uses of it in her question to him as “prophet” (v. 20) and repeats it again and again. The verb “worship” (
25–26 The woman grasps his meaning, at least in part, and pursues the discussion as best she can. Jesus had said, “You people worship what you do not know” (v. 22), and she replies by citing one thing at least that she can say, “I know.” She knows that “Messiah is coming, who is called Christ,” and that “When he comes, he will tell us all things.” She has heard Jesus say (twice), “an hour is coming” (vv. 21, 23), and she hears this as a messianic promise in fulfillment of Samaritan expectations. When she says, “he will tell us all things,” she still means by “us” the Samaritans in distinction from the Jews. Yet “Messiah” does not seem to have been a term used by the Samaritans, who (at least in the later sources that we have) called their coming Prophet or Teacher rather the
The notion that the Messiah “will tell us all things” is fully in keeping with Jesus’ role throughout this Gospel.* He is “the Word” who reveals God (1:1), or “God the One and Only” who reveals the Father (1:18). He speaks of both “earthly” and “heavenly” things (3:12), telling what he knows (3:11) and testifying to “what he has seen and what he heard” (3:32). As “the one God sent” he “speaks the words of God” (3:34). Carefully avoiding the first-person pronoun, he had identified himself to this woman at first simply as “who it is who says to you, ‘Give me to drink’ ” (v. 10), but then he began to promise water that “I will give” (v. 14), and now he embraces gladly the role of Messiah and Revealer: “It is I—I who am speaking to you” (v. 26). For the first time in the Gospel he adopts the formula, “I am” (
27 Jesus’ disciples have gone unmentioned since v. 8, when we learned that they “had gone into the town to buy provisions.”* Now they are back, interrupting Jesus’ conversation with the woman before she can respond to his abrupt claim that he is “the Messiah” she knows is coming. They are “surprised,”* not that he is speaking with a Samaritan (they, after all, had just come from shopping in a Samaritan town), but that he is speaking with a woman. Their reference to “speaking” echoes Jesus’ own “I who am speaking to you” (v. 26, italics added), accenting the irony that the One “speaking with a woman” is none other than “the Messiah, who is called Christ”! The Gospel writer seems to know that they were surprised even though they said nothing, and takes the liberty of supplying two questions which they might have asked but did not: “What are you looking for?” and “What are you speaking with her about?”* The implication is that they wanted to ask these questions but did not dare (compare 16:5, 19; 21:12).* The Gospel writer could not have known such a thing without being an eyewitness, and even then the disciples would have had to have voiced the questions, at least to one another (as they will in v. 33).* But eyewitness or not, this writer is quite capable of functioning as an omniscient narrator who (like Jesus himself) knows what his characters are thinking and what motivates them (see, for example, 2:24–25; 6:6; 11:51–52; 12:6). Here he assigns significance to questions not asked. “What are you speaking with her about?” reinforces yet again the notion of a “speaking” Messiah (v. 26), and “What are you looking for?” recalls Jesus’ comment to the woman that “the Father is looking for” those who will worship “in Spirit and truth” (v. 23, italics added).* The answer to the unspoken question is that Jesus is doing the Father’s work in “looking for” just such “true worshipers” as this woman (see v. 34, “that I might do the will of the One who sent me and complete his work”).
28–29 The woman’s actions speak louder than words. She “left her water jar and went into the town and says to the men, ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?’ ” The point is not that “such a jar would be useless for the type of living water Jesus has interested her in,”* for she still has no clear idea of what he meant by “living water.” Nor is it her way of finally giving Jesus the drink of water he had asked for (v. 7).* At this point the jar is empty, not full, for, as far as we know, she never drew the water for which she came to the well in the first place. Rather, to anyone who has read other Gospels, the woman’s action recalls that of Jesus’ first disciples in Mark, in “leaving” their nets to follow him (Mk 1:18; also Mt 4:20, 22). The difference is that Jesus has not called her or sent her on a mission. The initiative is hers.* She is in a hurry to get back to town with news of her encounter, and the water jar will only slow her down.* In a sense, her mission to the town is an extension of Jesus’ own mission, for just as he “left” Judea and “went” into Galilee (v. 3), she now “left” her water jar and “went” into town (v. 28).
She speaks “to the men” of Sychar (v. 28) about “a man” (
30 The men’s immediate response was to follow the woman back in the direction from which she had come. She “went into the town” (v. 28), and they promptly “came out of the town” (v. 30). The aorist tenses show that these actions are completed, but the added note that they “were coming to” Jesus (imperfect tense) describes an action in progress. As the scene is about to change, they are en route to Jacob’s well. Jesus and his disciples—and the reader—can expect them shortly. To “come to him” implies at least potential allegiance (as with Nathanael, perhaps, in 1:47; see also 1:29; 3:2, 26), and the reader is left to wonder whether or not the allegiance will become actual. Are they in fact (whether they know it or not) “coming to him” for baptism, as the Judeans before them did (see 3:26)? We are not told.
31–33 “Meanwhile” signals the change of scene back to the well, and to Jesus with his disciples. The writer links the two scenes with the use of another imperfect verb: even as the Samaritans “were coming,” Jesus’ disciples “were asking” him to eat some of the food they had bought in town. “Rabbi, eat” sounds just as abrupt as Jesus’ first words to the woman, “Give me to drink” (v. 7). Their request reminds us that Jesus never got his drink of water from the woman, and now we will see him abstaining from food as well. Food, like water, becomes a metaphor, but not one that the disciples understand. “I have food to eat,” he replies, “that you don’t know about.” He continues the emphatic “I” (
34 Jesus’ explanation of the food metaphor can be read either as a simple continuation of his original remark (v. 32), or as a response to what the disciples’ have just said (v. 33). Even though their question was not directed at him, he is still the One who “knew what was in the person” (2:25), and consequently what people want to ask before they ask it (see, for example, 6:43, 61; 16:5, 19). So he takes the opportunity to explain what he means by “food” (v. 34), and to add yet another, closely related metaphor, that of the “harvest” (vv. 35–38). “My food,” he explains, “is that I might do* the will of the One who sent me and complete his work.” This is Jesus’ first use of the phrase, “the One who sent me” (John had used it in 1:33),* or, more specifically, “the will of the One who sent me” (see 5:30; 6:38). Later he will explicitly define “the will of the One who sent me,” or of “my Father,” as gaining “eternal life” and resurrection for “all those he has given me” (6:39–40). For now this remains unspecified, but he will spell it out shortly in a similar way, as a “harvest,” or the gathering of “a crop for eternal life” (v. 36). If “living water” was a metaphor for the Spirit, “food” is a metaphor for obedience, or the fulfillment of a mission. In a very different setting in a different Gospel, Jesus is quoted as saying, “A person shall not live by bread alone, but by every word coming from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4, citing Deut 8:3).* The disciples will soon learn that Jesus’ “food”—that is, his “work,” in obedience to words coming from God*—will in certain ways become theirs as well (see 6:27).
35 Food is the product of a “harvest,” which “comes” at a certain time of year, any time between April and June depending on the crop and the rainfall.* Six months between sowing and harvest were normal, but “four months” seems to have been a kind of best-case scenario.* In a parable in another Gospel, Jesus made the point that patience is required in waiting for “the harvest” (
“White for harvest” (or “white unto harvest,” KJV) seems to have come into our language as an expression for “ripe” or ready for harvest almost solely on the basis of this text.* No clear evidence exists that “white” (
36 “Already” aptly sums up the message of the preceding verse, so aptly that some interpreters want to place it at the end of that verse instead of the beginning of this one (that is, “white for harvest already”).* But this adverb normally precedes the verb it modifies, both in John’s Gospel and in the New Testament generally.* Here it effectively links the metaphor of fields now “white for harvest” to two closely related images, “the harvester” and “the sower.” “Harvest” requires a “harvester,” which in turn implies a “sower.” Together they comprise what looks like a brief parable: “Already the harvester is receiving payment and gathering a crop for eternal life, so that the sower might rejoice together with the harvester.” The picture of a harvester “receiving payment” and “gathering a crop,” and of the sower and harvester “rejoicing together” is the stuff of which parables are made, but one phrase is out of place: “for eternal life” (compare v. 14). Here the symbolism intrudes into the telling of the story, confirming that the “harvest” is to be a harvest of souls. A “crop for eternal life” is no ordinary crop, just as “a spring of water rushing to eternal life” (v. 14) is no ordinary spring. If Jesus is telling a parable here, he is in the same breath supplying it with an interpretation.*
Moreover, the order of clauses is odd. “Receiving payment” precedes “gathering a crop,” which could imply that the harvester is paid in advance. Alternatively, if “payment” (
37–38 At this point the question resurfaces: Are we dealing with a parable here, or something else? If it is a parable, there is no need to ask, “Who is the harvester, and who the sower?” All we need to know is that “The harvest is at hand; the reaper has overtaken the sower. This is the promised age of fulfillment.”* If it is allegory, those characters cry out for identification. In an actual harvest, the sower and the harvester could be the same person, or different people. Without making an immediate identification, Jesus draws on a traditional proverb or saying to differentiate the two: “For in this the saying is true that one is the sower and another the harvester.” The “saying” (
The pronouncement still bristles with difficulties. Who are the “others” (
Jesus’ pronouncement offers the disciples (and us) an important caution about religious conversion, and perhaps about water baptism in particular. “Conversion” (if there is such a thing in the Gospel of John) is a complex process, not a single event in a moment of time. Those who “come to the Light” are those who already “do the truth,” and by their coming they reveal that their works have been “wrought in God” (3:21). A variety of factors have brought them to Jesus, and no one person can claim credit for “converting” them or “winning them to Christ.” There are no “soul winners” in this Gospel, only “harvesters,” and the harvester must not forget the labor of “others.” As for these “others,” they remain (and should remain) indefinite. To identify them is to limit them. They are “all of the above,” and more—Moses and the prophets, John, Jesus, the woman, even the Samaritans themselves! But salvation is the work of God (see v. 34); to borrow Paul’s imagery, one person may plant a seed, another may water the crop, yet neither the one nor the other amount to anything, but only “God, who makes it grow” (1 Cor 3:6–7).
At this point, just as he calls them to the great “harvest,” Jesus’ disciples seem to disappear. His pronouncement goes unanswered. We will not meet them again (at least not explicitly) until a certain Passover in Galilee, when he will sit with them on a mountain and once again “lift up his eyes and see a great crowd coming toward him” (6:3). Yet it is probably fair to assume that they accompanied him to Galilee (v. 43) and Jerusalem (5:1), even though they are not mentioned. Can we also assume that they stayed two days in Sychar (vv. 40–42) and baptized the Samaritans? This can be posed either as a historical question (Did Jesus’ disciples in fact baptize during his public ministry? If so, did they baptize Samaritans?), or as a literary question (Does the Gospel writer mean to imply that they did so? Is baptism in any way part of the Gospel’s story line?). Either question is difficult, but the first is outside the scope of a commentary—at least of this commentary! The second is not. Clearly, Jesus’ speech to his disciples about doing God’s will and reaping a harvest (vv. 34–38) is calling them to do something in relation to the Samaritan townspeople—something about which the ensuing narrative (vv. 39–42) is noticeably silent. The reticence of this Gospel about baptism—even Jesus’ own baptism—suggests that what is not told, yet implied, is that Jesus’ disciples did baptize the Samaritans, just as earlier they had baptized many Judeans (v. 2; compare 3:22, 26; 4:1). But because the Gospel writer wants to present Jesus as one who will baptize “in Holy Spirit” (1:33), not in water like John, he avoids the language of baptism, adopting instead that of the “harvest” (vv. 35–38), and of “coming to Jesus” and “believing” in him (vv. 30, 39–41).
39 The scene shifts back to the Samaritan townspeople on their way, with the woman, back to Jacob’s well. The notice that “many believed in him” (aorist tense) should perhaps be read as a pluperfect: they had “believed in him because of the woman’s word testifying that ‘He told me everything I ever did.’ ” While this verse is not normally classed as one of the Gospel’s so-called “narrative asides,” it is somewhat parenthetical, a belated explanation of why the Samaritans had responded so quickly to the woman’s invitation when “They came out of the town, and were coming toward him” (v. 30). They came, we are now told, because they “believed” her word, and to that extent “believed in him” as their “Christ,” or Messiah. Other than the disciples themselves (1:50; 2:11, 22), they are the second group explicitly said to have “believed” in Jesus, the first being “many” at the Passover in Jerusalem (2:23).* In contrast to those Passover “believers,” to whom he “would not entrust himself” (2:24), Jesus does entrust himself (temporarily at least!) to these believing Samaritans (vv. 40–42). As for the Samaritan woman, her invitation to them (v. 29) is now called her testimony, identifying her as a woman of faith by placing her alongside John and Jesus, and all who “speak what we know, and … testify to what we have seen” (3:11).
40 The Samaritans’ faith explains not only why they were “coming to Jesus” (v. 29), but also, now that they had come, why they asked him “to stay [
41–42 What happened during the two days? All we know is that Jesus taught the Samaritans in person, and consequently that “many more believed because of his word” (v. 41). “Because of his word” stands in contrast to “because of the woman’s word” (v. 39). The Samaritans say nothing to Jesus, but are quick to remind the woman of the contrast. “We no longer believe,” they tell her, “because of your speech, for we ourselves have heard, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world” (v. 42). Their comment could be read as a disparagement of the woman, suggesting that her “word” is not as good as the “word” of Jesus. Some interpreters point to the Samaritans’ use of the term “speech” (
We do not, of course, know exactly what Jesus said to the Samaritans during the two days, but we can infer something of his message from what he said to the woman, and from his discourses elsewhere in the Gospel. Whatever it was, it led them to conclude that he was “truly the Savior of the world.” The phrase recalls on the one hand Jesus’ reminder to the woman that “Salvation is from the Jews” (v. 22), and on the other his earlier pronouncements that “God so loved the world that he gave the One and Only Son” (3:16, my italics), and that “God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him” (3:17; compare 12:47).* The universality is hard to miss. The Samaritan community speaks for all Gentiles, acknowledging Jesus as “Savior” not simply of Samaritans in addition to Jews, but of the whole world. While “Savior,” or being “saved,” is not necessarily limited just to eternal or heavenly salvation (see 11:12; 12:27), the accent on “eternal life” in Jesus’ earlier pronouncements (3:14–16) suggests that the Samaritans are looking to Jesus for more than temporary help or deliverance. They are embracing nothing less than the hope of “eternal life.” On such a basis they are good candidates for baptism, and Jesus’ disciples may well have baptized them, but the Gospel maintains its silence on this issue.
43–44 In keeping with the notice that he stayed “two days” at Sychar in Samaria (v. 41), we are now told that “after the two days” he left (v. 43). What immediately follows (v. 44) is best understood as an explanation (introduced by
The reason given is that “Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his hometown” (v. 44).* The writer presents this in a narrative aside, as something Jesus himself once “testified,” not necessarily at this time, but in his teaching as remembered and recorded by his followers.* In fact, sayings to that effect are found in each of the other Gospels: “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown” (Mt 13:57; Mk 6:4),* and “Truly, I say to you that no prophet is acceptable in his hometown” (Lk 4:24).* In each instance the saying is found in the setting of a visit of Jesus to his actual hometown (or
The difficulties surrounding every proposed identification of Jesus’ “own country” or “hometown” suggests that a precise identification is not the point. The saying, after all, is a generalization. Its subject is not Jesus, but “a prophet,” any prophet.* Instead of explaining why Jesus was rejected in his actual hometown of Nazareth, the saying simply explains why he kept moving instead of settling down in one place.
The meaning is that no prophet should stay in one place so long that it becomes his “hometown.” In the immediate context it is the Samaritan town of Sychar, but under other circumstances it could have been Bethany, Cana, or Capernaum. The point is simply that Jesus’ ministry was an itinerant one.* He did not stay in any one place long enough to make it his home. To do so would have been to wear out his welcome and have “no honor” there.* The same principle comes to expression in the rules laid down in the second-century Didache regarding Christian prophets or missionaries: “Let every apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord, but he shall stay only one day, or if necessary a second as well. But if he stays three days, he is a false prophet” (Didache 11.4–5). These instructions belong to what the writer calls “the ways of the Lord” (Didache 11.8), suggesting a basis in Jesus’ own practice during his ministry.*
None of this is explicit in John’s Gospel. Despite Jesus’ frequent travels—from Bethany (1:28) to Cana (2:1) to Capernaum (2:12) to Jerusalem (2:13) and Judea (3:22), and back again to Galilee (4:3) by way of Samaria (4:4)—the itinerant nature of his ministry has not been a major theme. If we look at “A prophet has no honor in his own hometown” within the Gospel’s literary framework, its background is theological. It echoes what we have known all along—that Jesus “came to what was his own, and his own did not receive him” (1:11). What we now learn is that he does not come as a poor beggar looking for “honor” or “acceptance,” or a “home” in this world. In coming into the world, he does not give himself unreservedly to any one place. Rather, he sets his own agenda. Like the Spirit, he knows “where he comes from and where he is going” (3:8; compare 8:14). The first hint of this was at the first Passover in Jerusalem, when “many believed in his name” but the writer intervened to tell us that “Jesus himself did not entrust himself to them, for he himself knew them all” (2:24). Specifically, “he himself knew* what was in the person” (2:25). The writer’s comment here is similar, except that instead of simply telling us what Jesus “knew” within himself, it cites as evidence something he actually said. In contrast to the Passover scene in Jerusalem, he did “entrust himself” to the Samaritans (v. 40), but what “Jesus himself testified”* was that he could do so only temporarily, or he would wear out his welcome. He who comes “from above,” or “from heaven” (3:31), has only “encamped among us” (1:14). He cannot make a permanent home anywhere on earth. “Honor” requires that “the Savior of the world” (v. 42) move on to fulfill his mission to the world.*
B. Jesus in Galilee Again (4:43–54)
So after the two days he went out from there into Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown. Now when he came to Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all that he did in Jerusalem at the festival, for they too had come to the festival. So he came back again to Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. And in Capernaum there was a certain royal official whose son was sick. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked that he might come down and heal his son, for he was about to die. So Jesus said to him, “Unless you [people] see signs and wonders, you will never believe.” The royal official said to him, “Lord, come down before my little child dies!” Jesus said to him, “Go, your son lives!” The man believed the word Jesus said to him, and he went. Already, while [still] on his way down, his slaves met him, saying that his child lived. So he inquired of them the hour at which he got better, and they told him that “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” The father knew then that it was that very hour at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son lives,” and he believed, he and his whole family. And this Jesus did again as a second sign when he came from Judea to Galilee.
The long digression (vv. 4–42) is over, and Jesus resumes his journey from Judea “back into Galilee” (v. 43; see v. 3). There he receives a warm reception from Galileans who, like others at Jerusalem (2:23–25) had witnessed what he had done at the Passover festival (v. 45). One concrete example is given: when Jesus returns to Cana, the scene of his first miracle, “a certain royal official” comes to him from Capernaum to ask healing for his son (vv. 46–47). Instead of going there, Jesus abruptly points out the characteristic need people have for verification or visible proof (v. 48), yet when the man persists, he sends him back alone with the assurance, “Go, your son lives!” (v. 50). The official takes him at his word and goes home. Having believed without verification, he is given the verification as his slaves come out to meet him with the news that his son got better at the very moment Jesus spoke those words. Consequently, “he believed, he and his whole family” (v. 53). This the Gospel writer calls Jesus’ “second sign” (v. 54; see 2:11)
45 The echo of Jesus’ first Passover, and of those who “believed in his name” there (2:23), quickly becomes explicit. We now learn that “the Galileans” had been there too and had seen “all that he did in Jerusalem at the festival,” that is, the driving of the money changers and their animals from the temple precincts (2:13–22).* Consequently, on his return to Galilee, they “received him.”* The notice should be taken at face value. Most modern interpreters fail to do so, partly because of Jesus’ rejection of those earlier “believers” in Jerusalem (2:24–25), and partly because of his skeptical reaction three verses later to the royal official’s plea for healing for his son (v. 48).* But no such negative reaction is recorded here, no reaction at all in fact, and none should be assumed.* As far as the reader can tell, to “receive” Jesus is a good thing. If it does not imply saving faith, it implies hospitality at least, comparable to that of the Samaritans (v. 40), and an atmosphere in which faith can (and for the Samaritans did) grow and flourish. But who were these Galileans who “received him”? Are all Galileans meant? Surely not everyone in Galilee had been in Jerusalem for Passover. Or are they the citizens of one unidentified Galilean town that Jesus passed through on his way back to Cana (v. 46)? We are not told. Perhaps the best way of reading verse 45 is as a sort of heading to the whole narrative of Jesus’ encounter with the royal official and the healing of his son. That is, the writer makes the general observation that “the Galileans received him” (v. 45), and then provides us with one specific illustration of this (vv. 46–54), possibly with the implication that further examples could have been given if needed (see 20:30–31; 21:25).
46 Jesus’ journey “back again into Galilee” (v. 3) is now complete, as he comes “back again to Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine.” Right on the heels of a reference to what “he did [
The “royal official” is literally a “royal,” the adjective being used as a noun.* “Royals” were not necessarily the royal family, as in British usage today, but could be servants (military or otherwise) of the “king” (
47 If Jesus were to retrace his earlier steps, he would have “come down” in due course to Capernaum (see 2:11–12),* but the royal official cannot count on such an itinerary. Instead he takes the initiative to find Jesus at Cana. The news he heard that Jesus had come “from Judea to Galilee” (compare vv. 3, 54) suggests that he knew Jesus had been in Judea, evidently because he, or other Galileans, had seen Jesus there (v. 45). Yet he is not said to have remembered the miracle at Cana, nor would we expect him to, given that only Jesus’ disciples and a few servants knew what had happened there. That memory is for the reader alone (v. 46). Nevertheless, knowing that Jesus was there, the royal official “went to him* and asked that he might come down and heal his son, for he was about to die.” Why did he think Jesus had the power to heal? Had Jesus performed healings in Jerusalem? As we have seen, the text gives no evidence of that. A better answer is that he had acted with authority in Jerusalem (see 2:14–20), and the royal official assumed that his authority extended to physical healing as well. But more to the point, the reader knows he has the power to heal simply because of who he is, and will regard the royal official’s plea for healing as a normal and expected thing—as normal and expected, say, as a centurion pleading for his ailing servant, or a Gentile woman for her possessed daughter. Because the royal official’s request is given in indirect rather than direct discourse, it is difficult to tell whether the information that his son “was about to die” is part of what he actually said to Jesus, or whether it is supplied for the reader’s benefit to explain the urgency of his request.* Probably the latter, for when he then makes it explicit in direct discourse (v. 49), he seems to be heightening the note of urgency as far as Jesus is concerned.
48 Jesus at first seems to balk at the royal official’s request, just as in the case of the Canaanite or Syro-Phoenician woman, and (possibly) the centurion in Matthew.* The difference is that he does not do so because of the royal official’s race, as in the case of the woman. The likelihood, in fact, is that the royal official is a Jew, for the comment that “Unless you [people] see signs and wonders, you will never believe” is at least as applicable to Jews as to Gentiles (see 1 Cor 1:22). Yet the plural is probably not intended to place the royal official in any ethnic group, Jew or Gentile, Judean or Galilean.* Rather, Jesus’ skepticism is about human nature and human motivation in general, just as it was earlier in Jerusalem (2:25) when “he had no need for anyone to tell him about any person.” It is a matter of human characteristics generally, not those of any one group.
These characteristics are not all bad. “Unless you … see signs and wonders, you will never believe” is not so much a rebuke or an insult as a simple fact. Near the end of the Gospel, one of Jesus’ disciples (Thomas in 20:25) will use exactly the same grammatical structure to say it again and embrace it as his own: “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will never believe” (italics added). Humans want evidence; they want verification, which is not in itself a bad thing. Jesus invited his first disciples to “Come and see” (1:39). Philip invited Nathanael to do the same (1:46), and the Samaritan woman told the Samaritans, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did” (4:29). Each time, sight and hearing led to faith. “Signs and wonders,”* as distinguished from “signs” in a more general sense for things Jesus did, are visible miracles accompanying and accrediting the ministries of either Jesus himself (Acts 2:22) or his apostles (Acts 2:43; 4:30; 5:12; 6:8; 14:3; 15:12; Rom 15:19; 2 Cor 12:12; Heb 2:4), or of false prophets (Mt 24:34; Mk 13:22; 2 Thess 2:9).* “Sign” (
49 Unlike the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mk 7:28), the royal official has no clever answer. All he can do is repeat his plea with renewed urgency: “Lord, come down before my little child dies!” The writer signals the urgency with a shift from indirect to direct discourse, with the royal official now referring to his “son” (v. 47)* affectionately as “my little child,”* and addressing Jesus as “Lord” (
50 Instead of “coming down” from Cana to Capernaum with the royal official, Jesus simply tells him, “Go, your son lives!”* The repetition of “your son lives” two more times, once in indirect discourse (v. 51) and once verbatim (v. 53) gives it the character of a healing formula. The point, of course, is not that the child still clings to life as by a slender thread, but that he will recover. He is healed. Most English versions translate it idiomatically as a future, “Your son will live” (RSV, NRSV, NIV, NEB, REB, NLT), but if it is future, it is an immediate future. There is value in retaining the present tense of the Greek, for it captures this Gospel’s accent on “life” as a present possession. Jesus’ power to save physical life becomes here a metaphor for his gift of eternal life (see 3:15, 16, 36; 4:14, 36). “Go” (
With this, the faith of “the man”* becomes explicit. He has seen no signs or wonders, yet he believes. His faith is in Jesus’ word, and in that alone. Some commentators conclude from this that it is in some way incomplete, or at least preliminary to the full-blown faith expressed when the healing is verified (v. 53).* Yet at the corresponding point in the synoptic story of the centurion Jesus says, “I have not found such faith in Israel” (Mt 8:10; Lk 7:9), and in the story of the Gentile woman, “Great is your faith” (Mt 15:28). While there is no such commendation here, the man’s action is an eloquent response to Jesus’ remark about “signs and wonders” (v. 48). Perhaps the commendation comes indirectly and belatedly near the end of the Gospel when Jesus says to Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who did not see, and believed” (20:29).* Like these unnamed beneficiaries of Jesus’ last beatitude, the royal official believes without having seen. To this extent his faith, like theirs, surpasses that of Thomas.
Clearly, there are stages of faith here, as elsewhere in the Gospel. For example, Jesus’ disciples believed in him at first because he “revealed his glory” in a miracle at Cana (2:11), but only later, “when he rose from the dead,” did they “remember” and “believe” his word (v. 22). Our closest precedent is the case of the Samaritans, who first “believed in him because of the woman’s word” (v. 39), but later heard Jesus for themselves and “believed because of his word” (vv. 41–42). The contrast there was not between faith and sight, but between a secondhand and a firsthand report. The narrative moved from faith (genuine faith, as far as we can tell) to its subsequent verification, but at both stages it was a matter of hearing the word, not of seeing anything in particular. Here the movement is from faith to sight: when the royal official took Jesus at his word (v. 50), he exercised genuine faith, verified later by what actually happened (v. 53). This is similar to the presumed situation of the Gospel’s readers as well. The royal official is someone with whom they can identify, for their faith in Jesus’ word, the word written down in this Gospel, will eventuate in “life” in Jesus’ name (20:30–31).
51 Yet another similarity between this story and that of the centurion (in Luke) is that a journey is interrupted. They are quite different journeys, however. In Luke it is Jesus’ journey from the gates of Capernaum to the centurion’s house: “Already, while Jesus was [still] not far* from the house, the centurion sent friends, telling him, ‘Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I don’t deserve for you to come under my roof’ ” (Lk 7:6). Here it is the royal official’s much longer journey from Cana to his home in Capernaum: “Already, while [still] on his way down,* his slaves met him, saying that his child lived.” In Luke (as in Matthew) the initiative for the healing to take place at a distance comes from the centurion himself. In John’s Gospel, as we have just seen, it comes from Jesus (v. 50).* The slaves’ good news “that his child lived” is reported in indirect discourse, confirming but not repeating word for word Jesus’ pronouncement, “Your son lives” (v. 50).* A fondness for synonyms is apparent in the use of “child” (
52 What remains to be verified is the exact time of the child’s recovery. The man seems to have taken Jesus’ assurance, “Your son lives” (v. 50), literally (as our translation has done), not as a promise that he would get better but as a declaration that he was healed from that very moment. Consequently the man is curious about the timing. The relevant narratives in one Gospel (Matthew) show a similar interest, but to a lesser extent: the centurion’s servant was healed “in that hour” (Mt 8:13), and the Canaanite woman’s daughter was healed “from that hour” (Mt 15:28; see also Mt 9:22; 17:18). John’s account is much more specific: “he inquired of them the hour at which he got better, and they told him that ‘Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.’ ”* Here the account switches back to direct discourse, for the slaves’ precise testimony is important to the story. Yet the “seventh hour” (that is, one o’clock in the afternoon)* means nothing to the reader because the time of the royal official’s encounter with Jesus (vv. 47–50) was not given. All it tells us is that the child’s recovery can be linked to a specific moment when “the fever left him.” The belated mention of “fever” is the closest the writer comes to indicating the nature of the illness.*
53 For the first time the “royal official,” or “the man,” is called “the father,” possibly because we will see him shortly as head of “his whole family.” Through him the reader learns the significance of the seventh hour, for it was he who “knew then that it was that very hour at which Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son lives.’ ” The verb “knew” in the aorist tense here suggests that he just now realized this or found it out, and the reader learns it with him. Consequently, “he believed, he and his whole family.”* His initial faith (v. 50) is confirmed in what sounds like a formal act of conversion or religious commitment. The expression “he and his whole family” corresponds to a number of incidents of conversion in the book of Acts where someone with his or her “family” or “household” (
What is different from the book of Acts is that no missionary is present to recognize or preside over these “conversions.” In Acts it was either Peter (11:14) or Paul (16:15, 31–33; 18:8), but here Jesus has not come down to Capernaum. There is no sojourn here to match the two-day stay with the Samaritans at Sychar (v. 40). The whole point of the story was that the healing took place at a distance, evidently in order to place Jesus at Cana to correspond with the earlier miracle at the wedding (vv. 46, 54). But what about Jesus’ disciples? If we can infer that they may have reaped a harvest by baptizing the Samaritans, can we also infer that they did so in Capernaum? Probably not. Filling in gaps is well and good, but as we move further and further from what is explicit, such theories become more problematic. But Jesus is no stranger to Capernaum (2:12). He will get there eventually (6:17), and he has sufficient standing there to teach in its synagogue (6:59). The very existence of this story and the story of the centurion in Matthew and Luke is evidence that someone in Capernaum took due note of the fact that a local dignitary “believed, he and his whole family.”
54 The Gospel writer’s comment on the incident, “And* this Jesus did again as a second sign when he came from Judea to Galilee,” accomplishes two things for the narrative. First, it marks the completion of the journey that began when Jesus “left Judea and went back again into Galilee” (v. 3). The journey, long delayed in Samaria (vv. 4–42),* has brought him “to Galilee” (vv. 43, 45), and in particular “back again to Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine” (v. 46). Second, it provides a sequel to the notice given just after that miracle: “This Jesus did in Cana of Galilee as a beginning of the signs, and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him” (2:11). The repetition of “again” or “back again” (
This “second sign” is as important for what it is not as for what it is. It does not represent a widening or extension of Jesus’ ministry from Jews to Gentiles or to the whole world. That took place already among the Samaritans (v. 42). Rather, it represents a return to familiar places and people, perhaps to his own mother and brothers (see 2:1, 12). It is a tacit acknowledgment of what the synoptic tradition makes very clear, that Jesus was a Galilean, and that Galilee was the primary scene of his ministry. Moreover, this “second sign” should not be read as promising a whole series of signs up to seven, or whatever number the interpreter finds in the Gospel. The numbering stops at two.* “Second” simply reinforces the adverb “again” (
Finally, what of the “significance” or revelatory value of this healing? It lies in the repeated word of healing, “Your son lives” (vv. 50, 53; compare v. 51). The healing highlights Jesus’ power to give life, whether physical or eternal life (see 3:15, 16, 36; 4:14, 36), and this will be the overriding theme of the chapters to follow (for starters, see 5:21, 25, 26). If revelation of Jesus’ glory was the message of the first sign (2:11), the gift of life is the message of its sequel, and as the Gospel story unfolds the reader will learn that revelation and eternal life amount to much the same thing (see 17:3). Within the story, “Your son lives” is a kind of refrain accomplishing the child’s healing, but in the Gospel’s larger framework the association of “son” and “lives” evokes the notion that “the Son” and “life” go together (see 3:36; 1 Jn 5:12, 20). Freed from its immediate narrative context, it becomes a word of praise to God (“Your Son lives”), proclaiming nothing less than the resurrection of Jesus himself (see 5:26; 6:57; 14:19). Is it too much to suspect that such a thought might have crossed the minds of some of the story’s first readers?
About this Study Bible
