On one of His travels Jesus had to go across Samaria. The Samaritans had built a temple on a mountain in Samaria as a rival to the Temple in Jerusalem. The Jews hated them for this.
It was about noon. Jesus was tired from traveling, and He sat down by a well. Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give Me a drink." His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.
The Samaritan woman said to Him, "What! You are a Jew, and You ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?"
Jesus replied, "If you only knew what God is offering you and Who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have been the one to ask. He would have given you living water."
"You have no bucket, Sir," she answered, "and the well is deep. How could you get this living water?"
Jesus replied, "Whoever drinks this water will get thirsty again. But anyone who drinks the water I will give will never be thirsty again. The water I will give will turn into a spring inside him, welling up to eternal life."
"Sir," said the woman, "give me some of that water, so that I may never get thirsty and never have to come here again to draw water."
"Go and call your husband," said Jesus to her, "and come back here."
The woman answered, "I have no husband."
He said to her, "You are right to say, ' I have no husband'. Although you have had five, the one you now have is not your husband. You spoke the truth there."
"I see You are a prophet, sir," said the woman. "Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place to worship."
Jesus said, "Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour will come - in fact it is already here - when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; that is the kind of worshipper the Father wants. God is spirit. Those who worship must worship in spirit and truth."
The woman said to him, "I know the Messiah, the Christ, is coming. When He comes He will tell us everything."
"I Who am speaking to you," said Jesus, "I am He."
At this point the disciples returned. They were surprised to find Him speaking to a Samaritan woman, but none of them asked about it. The woman put down her water jar and hurried back to the town. She told the people, "Come and see a man Who has told me everything I ever did. I wonder if He is the Christ?" This brought people out of the town and they started walking toward Him.
Meanwhile, the disciples were urging Him, "Rabbi, do have something to eat." But He said, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples asked one another, "Has someone been bringing Him food?"
But Jesus said, "My food is to do the will of the One Who sent me, to complete His work."
Many Samaritans of that town believed in Him on the strength of the woman's testimony when she said, "He told me all I have ever done." So when the Samaritans came up to Him, they begged Him to stay with them. He stayed for two days. When He spoke to them many more came to believe. They said to the woman, "Now we no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard Him ourselves and we know that He really is the Savior of the world."
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