4:1 | The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, |
4:2 | although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. |
4:3 | When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. |
4:4 | Now he had to go through Samaria. |
4:5 | So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. |
4:6 | Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. |
4:7 | When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" |
4:8 | (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) |
4:9 | The 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.) |
4:10 | Jesus 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." |
4:11 | "Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? |
4:12 | Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?" |
4:13 | Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, |
4:14 | but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." |
4:15 | The 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." |
4:16 | He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back." |
4:17 | "I have no husband," she replied. Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. |
4:18 | 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." |
4:19 | "Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. |
4:20 | Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." |
4:21 | Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. |
4:22 | You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. |
4:23 | Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. |
4:24 | God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." |
4:25 | The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us." |
4:26 | Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he." |
4:27 | Just 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?" |
4:28 | Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, |
4:29 | "Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?" |
4:30 | They came out of the town and made their way toward him. |
4:31 | Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something." |
4:32 | But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." |
4:33 | Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?" |
4:34 | "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. |
4:35 | Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. |
4:36 | Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. |
4:37 | Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. |
4:38 | 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." |
4:39 | Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did." |
4:40 | So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. |
4:41 | And because of his words many more became believers. |
4:42 | They 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." |
4:43 | After the two days he left for Galilee. |
4:44 | (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) |
4:45 | When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there. |
4:46 | Once 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. |
4:47 | When 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. |
4:48 | "Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe." |
4:49 | The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies." |
4:50 | Jesus replied, "You may go. Your son will live." The man took Jesus at his word and departed. |
4:51 | While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. |
4:52 | When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, "The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour." |
4:53 | Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed. |
4:54 | This was the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed, having come from Judea to Galilee. |
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