Just at this moment a Samaritan woman came to the well, with her water-jar upon her head, and her rope in her hand.  Jesus looked at her, and in one glance read her soul, and saw all her life.

He knew that Jews did not often speak to Samaritans, but he said to her: 

“Please to give me a drink?”

The woman saw from his looks and his dress that he was a Jew, and she said to him: 

“How is it that you, who are a Jew, ask drink of me, a Samaritan woman?”

Jesus answered her: 

“If you knew what God’s free gift is, and if you knew who it is that says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him to give you living water, and he would give it to you.”

There was something in the words and the looks of Jesus which made the woman feel that he was not a common man.  She said to him:  “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep.  Where can you get that living water?  Are you greater than our father Jacob, who drank from this well, and who gave it to us?”

“Whoever drinks of this water,” said Jesus, “shall thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life.”

“Sir,” said the woman, “give me some of this water of yours, so that I will not thirst any more, nor come all the way to this well.”

Jesus looked at the woman, and said to her, “Go home, and bring your husband, and come here.”

“I have no husband,” answered the woman.

“Yes,” said Jesus, “you have spoken the truth.  You have no husband.  But you have had five husbands, and the man whom you now have is not your husband.”

The woman was filled with wonder as she heard this.  She saw that here was a man who knew what others could not know.  She felt that God had spoken to him, and she said: 

“Sir, I see that you are a prophet of God.  Tell me whether our people or the Jews are right.  Our fathers have worshipped on this mountain.  The Jews say that Jerusalem is the place where men should go to worship.  Now, which of these is the right place?”

“Woman, believe me,” said Jesus, “there is coming a time when men shall worship God in other places besides on this mountain and in Jerusalem.  The time is near; it has even now come, when the true worshippers everywhere shall pray to God in spirit and in truth; for God himself is a Spirit.”

The woman said:  “I know that the Anointed one is coming, the Christ.  When he comes, he will teach us all things.”

Jesus said to her: 

“I that speak to you now am he, the Christ!”

Just at this time the disciples of Jesus came back from the village.  They wondered to see Jesus talking with this Samaritan woman, but they said nothing.

The woman had come to draw water, but in her interest in this wonderful stranger, she forgot her errand.  Leaving her water-jar, she ran back to her village, and said to the people: