Dual Panel1NEWS now reached the Pharisees that Jesus was winning and baptizing more disciples than John; although, in fact, it was his disciples who were baptizing, not Jesus himself. When Jesus heard this,
2(4:1)
3he left Judaea and set out once more for Galilee.
4He had to pass through Samaria,
5and on his way came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the plot of ground which Jacob gave to his son Joseph;
6Jacob's well was there. It was about noon, and Jesus, tired after his journey, was sitting by the well.
7Meanwhile a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
8His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.
9The woman said, “What! You, a Jew, ask for a drink from a Samaritan woman?” (Jews do not share drinking vessels with Samaritans.)
10Jesus replied, “If only you knew what God gives, and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11“Sir,” the woman said, “you have no bucket and the well is deep, so where can you get ‘living water’?
12Are you greater than Jacob our ancestor who gave us the well and drank from it himself, he and his sons and his cattle too?”
13Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;
14but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never again be thirsty. The water that I shall give will be a spring of water within him, welling up and bringing eternal life.”
15“Sir,” said the woman, “give me this water, and then I shall not be thirsty, nor have to come all this way to draw water.”
16“Go and call your husband,” said Jesus, “and come back here.”
17She answered, “I have no husband.” Jesus said, “You are right in saying that you have no husband,
18for though you have had five husbands, the man you are living with now is not your husband. You have spoken the truth!”
19“Sir,” replied the woman, “I can see you are a prophet.
20Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place where God must be worshipped is in Jerusalem.”
21“Believe me,” said Jesus, “the time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
22You Samaritans worship you know not what; we worship what we know. It is from the Jews that salvation comes.
23But the time is coming, indeed it is already here, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. These are the worshippers the Father wants.
24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
25The woman answered, “I know that Messiah” (that is, Christ) “is coming. When he comes he will make everything clear to us.”
26Jesus said to her, “I am he, I who am speaking to you.”
27At that moment his disciples returned, and were astonished to find him talking with a woman; but none of them said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you talking with her?”
28The woman left her water-jar and went off to the town, where she said to the people,
29“Come and see a man who has told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”
30They left the town and made their way towards him.
31MEANWHILE the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, have something to eat.”
32But he said, “I have food to eat of which you know nothing.”
33At this the disciples said to one another, “Can someone have brought him food?”
34But Jesus said, “For me it is meat and drink to do the will of him who sent me until I have finished his work.
35“Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then comes harvest’? But look, I tell you, look around at the fields: they are already white, ripe for harvesting.
36The reaper is drawing his pay and harvesting a crop for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.
37That is how the saying comes true: ‘One sows, another reaps.’
38I sent you to reap a crop for which you have not laboured. Others laboured and you have come in for the harvest of their labour.”
39Many Samaritans of that town came to believe in him because of the woman's testimony: “He told me everything I ever did.”
40So when these Samaritans came to him they pressed him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days.
41Many more became believers because of what they heard from his own lips.
42They told the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard him ourselves; and we are convinced that he is the Saviour of the world.”
Jesus the giver of life
43WHEN the two days were over Jesus left for Galilee;
44for he himself had declared that a prophet is without honour in his own country.
45On his arrival the Galileans made him welcome, because they had seen all he did at the festival in Jerusalem; they had been at the festival themselves.
46Once again he visited Cana-in-Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. An officer in the royal service was there, whose son was lying ill at Capernaum.
47When he heard that Jesus had come from Judaea into Galilee, he went to him and begged him to go down and cure his son, who was at the point of death.
48Jesus said to him, “Will none of you ever believe without seeing signs and portents?”
49The officer pleaded with him, “Sir, come down before my boy dies.”
50“Return home,” said Jesus; “your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said and started for home.
51While he was on his way down his servants met him with the news that his child was going to live.
52So he asked them at what time he had begun to recover, and they told him, “It was at one o'clock yesterday afternoon that the fever left him.”
53The father realized that this was the time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he and all his household became believers.
54This was the second sign which Jesus performed after coming from Judaea into Galilee.