Chapter 4

1Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John.

2Jesus himself, however, was not baptizing them; his disciples were.

3So Jesus left Judea and returned to Galilee.

4He needed to travel through Samaria.

5He came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the piece of land Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

6Jacob’s well was there. Jesus was tired from the journey, so he sat down beside the well. It was about noon.

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

8His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.

9The Samaritan woman asked him, “How can you, a Jewish man, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” Jews did not associate with Samaritans.

10Jesus answered, “If you knew what God is offering, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

11The woman replied, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket, and the well is deep. Where will you get this living water?

12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob? He gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

13Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks this water will become thirsty again.

14But whoever drinks the water I give will never be thirsty again. The water I give will become within that person a spring of water welling up into eternal life.”

15The woman said, “Sir, give me this water so I will not become thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16Jesus told her, “Go call your husband, and then come back here.”

17The woman answered, “I do not have a husband.” Jesus said, “You are right to say, ‘I do not have a husband.’

18You have had five husbands, and the man you are with now is not your husband. What you said is true.”

19The woman said, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet—someone who speaks for God.

20Our ancestors worshiped God on this mountain, but you Jews say Jerusalem is the place where people must worship.”

21Jesus told her, “Believe me: the time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.

22You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We Jews worship what we know, because salvation comes from the Jews.

23But the time is coming—and is already here—when true worshipers will worship the Father spiritually and in truth. The Father is looking for people who will worship him in this way.

24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship spiritually and in truth.”

25The woman said, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ, or Anointed One. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26Jesus said, “I am he—the one speaking with you.”

27Just then his disciples returned. They were surprised that he was talking with a woman, but no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

28The woman left her water jar, went back into the town, and told the people,

29“Come and see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he be the Messiah?”

30The people left the town and began making their way toward Jesus.

31Meanwhile, the disciples urged Jesus, “Teacher, eat something.”

32But he told them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

33So the disciples asked one another, “Did someone bring him something to eat?”

34Jesus told them, “My food is to do what God, who sent me, wants and to complete his work.

35You say, ‘Four more months, and then comes the harvest.’ But I tell you, lift your eyes and look at the fields. They are already white and ready for harvest.

36The person harvesting receives pay and gathers a crop that leads to eternal life, so that the one who planted and the one who harvests can celebrate together.

37The saying is true: ‘One person plants, and another harvests.’

38I sent you to harvest what you did not work for. Others have done the hard work, and you have entered into the results of their labor.”

39Many Samaritans from that town trusted in Jesus because the woman kept telling them, “He told me everything I have done.”

40So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they asked him to stay with them. He stayed there for two days.

41Many more came to trust in him because of what he said.

42They told the woman, “We no longer believe merely because of what you told us. We have heard him ourselves, and we know that this man truly is the one who saves the world.”

43After those two days, Jesus left there for Galilee.

44Jesus himself had stated that a prophet receives no honor in his own homeland.

45When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him because they had seen everything he had done in Jerusalem during the festival. They too had attended the festival.

46Jesus returned to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. A royal official was there whose son was sick in Capernaum.

47When the official heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and begged him to come down and heal his son, who was about to die.

48Jesus told him, “Unless all of you see miraculous signs and wonders, you will never believe.”

49The royal official said, “Sir, please come down before my child dies.”

50Jesus told him, “Go. Your son is alive.” The man believed what Jesus told him and started home.

51While he was on his way down, his servants met him and said that his son was alive.

52He asked them when the boy had begun to recover. They replied, “The fever left him yesterday at about one in the afternoon.”

53The father realized that this was the exact time when Jesus had told him, “Your son is alive.” So he and everyone in his household trusted in Jesus.

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