He Asked Her for a Drink

The hour is the first thing John tells us, and he does not explain it.

Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.John 4:6, King James Version

The sixth hour is midday. Noon.

Nobody drew water at noon. Water was drawn in the early morning and again in the evening, when it was cool, and it was drawn communally, because the well was where the women of a village stood and talked for half an hour every day. Going at noon means walking further in the heat and carrying a full jar back in the sun.

You do that when the half hour at the well costs more than the heat does.

John does not say why she came then. He tells us the hour and lets it stand, and any reader in that world would have understood the hour perfectly well.

And then Jesus, who is tired and sitting on the well because He is tired, says the first thing.

Give me to drink.John 4:7, King James Version

Four words. It is not a greeting, it is not a question about her life, and it is not an offer. It is a request for a favor, made by somebody with no bucket to somebody who has one.

He put Himself in her debt first

I want to stay on the shape of that opening, because it decides everything after it.

He does not open with what He can do for her. He opens by needing something she has.

That is not a technique. He is genuinely thirsty, genuinely tired, and genuinely without a bucket, and He says so. And in doing it, He hands the first move to a woman who has spent years arranging her life so nobody has to interact with her.

You are not being approached with a question about your record. John 4:7 is a request for water and nothing else, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that from being read as an opening move in a longer strategy.

Her reply is not warm, and John keeps that too.

How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.John 4:9, King James Version

That is not a spiritual question. It is a woman pointing out, fairly bluntly, that people like Him do not talk to people like her, and asking what He thinks He is doing.

He does not apologize and He does not lecture her about prejudice. He goes straight to what He actually came to say, and the conversation opens up into living water and a well springing up into everlasting life.

You were allowed to be short with Him at the start, and the conversation carried on regardless. John 4:9 records a defensive reply and John 4:10 answers it without a correction, and the same Spirit who kept that exchange is the reason nobody has to be gracious to begin a conversation with God.

Now the part everyone remembers, and I want to read it carefully because it is often turned into an exposure.

He says: go call thy husband. She says: I have no husband. He says: thou hast well said, I have no husband; for thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.

Two things about that.

First, He begins His response with thou hast well said. He tells her she is telling the truth, twice, in one sentence. The thing He affirms is her honesty, and then He fills in what she did not say.

Second, He does not ask what happened. Five husbands in that world is not necessarily a story of a woman's choices. Widowhood, divorce initiated by a man for almost any reason, being passed along within a family: these were things that happened to women and not usually things they chose. John does not tell us which, and I am not going to invent it.

You have been read accurately and never accused, and John 4 keeps those two apart. The written word says in that saidst thou truly rather than anything about blame, and it is His Spirit who protects that distinction from a reader who has been braced for the other version.

And then look at what she does with the information, because this is the part I love.

She changes the subject. She asks Him about where people ought to worship, which is a genuine question and also, transparently, a way of moving the conversation off herself.

And He goes with her. He answers the question. He tells her about worship in spirit and in truth and about the Father seeking such to worship Him.

He does not drag her back.

You have been followed where you moved the conversation to, rather than held in the place that hurt. John 4:21-24 answers the question she asked instead of the one He had raised, and the same Spirit who kept that in the account is the reason nobody has to be pinned to be told the truth.

Then the sentence that closes it, and it is the largest claim He makes about Himself to anybody in the Gospels before the trial.

Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he.John 4:26, King James Version

She is the first person He says it to in plain words. Not to a council, not to a crowd, not to a disciple. To a Samaritan woman at a well at noon, on her own.