John

¹Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John—

²(although it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples)—

³so he left Judea and went back to Galilee.

⁴He had to go through Samaria.

⁵So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

⁶Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

⁷A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."

⁸(His disciples had gone into town to buy food.)

⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

¹⁰Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

¹¹"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?"

¹²"Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?"

¹³Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,"

¹⁴"but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst again. The water I give will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

¹⁵The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

¹⁶He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

¹⁷"I have no husband," she replied. Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband."

¹⁸"The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

¹⁹"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet."

²⁰"Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."

²¹Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem."

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

²³"Yet a time is coming—and has now come—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. These are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks."

²⁴"God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

²⁵The woman said, "I know that the Messiah is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

²⁶Then Jesus declared, "I, the one speaking to you—I am he."

²⁷Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"

²⁸Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people,

²⁹"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?"

³⁰They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

³¹Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."

³²But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."

³³Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"

³⁴Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work."

³⁵"Don't you have a saying, 'It's still four months until harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest right now."

³⁶"Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together."

³⁷"Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true."

³⁸"I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."

³⁹Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony: "He told me everything I ever did."

⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days.

⁴¹And because of his words many more became believers.

⁴²They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."

⁴³After the two days he left for Galilee.

⁴⁴For Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.

⁴⁵When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.

⁴⁶Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum.

⁴⁷When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

⁴⁸"Unless you people see signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe."

⁴⁹The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies."

⁵⁰"Go," Jesus replied, "your son will live." The man believed what Jesus said and left.

⁵¹While he was still on his way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was alive.

⁵²When he asked them the hour when his son got better, they said to him, "Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him."

⁵³Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and his whole household believed.

⁵⁴This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.