Gospel of John 4:1–54 Catholic Bible study Lesson 5

The Gospel According to John:
An Encounter with Grace & Truth

Lesson 5 There Came a Woman of Samaria
the Gospel According to John 4:1–54

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)*
New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE)*
Catechism of the Catholic Church
ex libris (in our library)
glossary for the Gospel According to John
cross references in the Gospel According to John
next lesson: Do You Want to Be Healed?

This material coordinates with Lesson 5 on pages 27–32 in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth.

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”—the Gospel According to John 20:30–31

welcome to our in-depth study of the Gospel According to John
We invite interested groups and individuals to check out the sample first lesson from this 25-lesson Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study. These online study pages link to our free lesson videos, as well as to a glossary and cross references in the biblical text. Other study aids include maps, additional commentary, and prayers based on the primary Scripture in each lesson. The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth has been granted an imprimatur and can be purchased from our website shop. If you have a Bible-related question or comment, click on one of the “ask us your question” or “what do you think” buttons on any online study page.

open with prayer
It’s always wise to begin any Bible study with prayer, whether reading the Scriptures alone or meeting with others in a discussion study group. You can pray using your own words or use one of the opening prayers on our website. We especially like the following:

Lord Jesus, you promised to send your Holy Spirit
to teach us all things.
As we read and study your word today,
allow it to touch our hearts and change our lives. Amen.

let’s review—the Gospel According to John 3:1–36
In Lesson 4 A Man of the Pharisees, Named Nicodemus, Jesus encounters a Jewish religious leader who seeks to meet Jesus by night. Nicodemus fails to tell Jesus why he’s there, and Jesus opens their dialogue by telling Nicodemus that in order to see the kingdom of God, one must be “born anew”—a term better translated from the Greek as “born from above.” Jesus then launches into a lengthy monologue containing some of the most significant Gospel teaching about the sacrament of Baptism. A question arises a short time later among the disciples of Jesus’ cousin John and Jesus’ own disciples about the baptisms being performed at that time, and John in his role as a witness continues to point toward Jesus—identifying Jesus as a bridegroom and himself as the bridegroom’s friend.

map notes—Jesus in Samaria
Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well is considered by many scholars to be the most significant one-on-one conversation between Jesus and another person in all of Scripture, and it takes place in the unlikely location of Samaria. The Gospel According to John 4:4 records that Jesus “had to” pass through Samaria, an unusual choice of words. Many Jews who traveled north from Jerusalem chose a route east of the Jordan River to avoid entering Samaria. The Evangelist appears to be suggesting a theological reason why Jesus is in Samaritan territory. Sychar, mentioned in the Gospel According to John 4:5, is identified by scholars as the ancient city of Shechem. Samaria is the name given to the area that made up the former northern kingdom of Israel, which was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. At that time, descendants of Jacob living in the area were deported and settlers brought in from neighboring nations conquered by the Assyrians—Babylon, Cathah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim. Over time, their pagan worship practices became intermingled with worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Samaritans were looked down upon by Jews in Judea, who followed the law-based religion of Judaism built on traditional Hebrew and Israelite worship practices. It’s of great interest when Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that salvation is from the Jews—not the same thing at all as saying salvation is for only the Jews. Click on the image (right) to enlarge the map, which appears on page 29 in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth.

what gives with baptism in the Fourth Gospel? (01:24:00)
In the video for this lesson, Turning to God’s Word author Matthew Phelps discusses something that most commentaries ignore. Although the Gospel According to John contains some of the most important information in the New Testament about the sacrament of Baptism, the author of the Fourth Gospel appears to have carefully avoided including anything about Jesus being baptized by John, and John himself explains that his baptisms aren’t the same as the sacramental Baptisms that Jesus will perform. At the beginning of the fourth chapter, the Evangelist even goes out of his way to mention that while Jesus’ disciples were baptizing, Jesus was not. Matthew shares some thoughts about why the Evangelist covers baptism in this way.

The Scripture ranges for the videos that accompany this Catholic Bible study match the Scripture ranges for the sets of questions in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth. You can follow along with the video overview as Turning to God’s Word author Matthew Phelps discusses Lesson 5, “There Came a Woman of Samaria,” on pages 27–32 in the study book.

an extremely significant encounter with Jesus
The third chapter in the Gospel According to John provided a glimpse of a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. In the fourth chapter, we eavesdrop on an intimate conversation between Jesus and a woman who’s identified only as a Samaritan. It’s something of a mystery that the Evangelist is privy to details of Jesus’ private conversations with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. Both talks appear to take place when there aren’t a lot of other people around. It’s possible that the Evangelist may have been nearby during Nicodemus’ visit. The biblical text specifies that during Jesus’ dialogue with the Samaritan woman, however, the disciples have gone into town to buy food. There’s no one at the well with Jesus except the Samaritan woman. It’s lucky for us that the Evangelist did learn the details of this encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. Their conversation forms the basis of the Church’s first scrutiny for adults preparing for the sacrament of Baptism. To learn more about this rite, read “Scrutiny” on page 30 in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth. (Tami Palladino’s illustration of Jesus and the woman at the well appears on the map, “Key Events in the Gospel According to John,” on page 146 of the study book.)

let’s compare the Samaritan woman & Nicodemus
One of the best ways to approach Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman is to contrast it to his conversation with Nicodemus. In both instances, Jesus appears to be talking about the sacrament of Baptism. There are some key differences, however. Nicodemus is a man of the Pharisees who’s been taught that following religious law is of utmost importance for those who wish to enter heaven, and he wants more evidence to support Jesus’ teaching about the need to be “born from above.” Nicodemus never asks to be born from above, however, he only questions the logistics of what Jesus is saying. The Samaritan woman also questions logistics, but she doesn’t hesitate to request that Jesus give her some of that living water.

? Consider whether Jesus acquiesces and gives the Samaritan access to living water.
? How relevant is it that the woman leaves her bucket behind when she returns to town to tell the people there about Jesus?

WHAT DO YOU THINK about other key differences?
There are other key differences between Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. Nicodemus visits Jesus intentionally, while the Samaritan woman’s encounter with Jesus appears to be completely by chance. Nicodemus restricts his questions to asking about the practicality of being “born from above.” The Samaritan woman quickly moves on from logistics to theology. She wants to know what Jesus thinks about the proper place to worship God. In the Gospel According to John 4:23, Jesus’ answer to her question is a shocker: “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth.”

? Jesus begins by saying that the hour is coming, but he immediately corrects his statement to say that the hour now is. The proper way to worship is changing, and it’s changing at the very moment that Jesus is at the well talking with this Samaritan woman. What’s the likely reason for this enormous change from Old Testament worship practice?
? What exactly does this change mean to present-day Christians?

what’s significant about the mountain the woman mentions?
In the Gospel According to John 4:20, the Samaritan woman asks Jesus’ opinion regarding her ancestors’ tradition of worshiping on “this mountain.” She’s undoubtedly referring to Mount Gerizim, which was the site of a temple built by the Samaritans in the fourth century B.C. to rival the Temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem (several centuries after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians in 722–721 B.C.). The Jews called Mount Gerizim “Mount Ebal.” The book of Deuteronomy 27:4 describes how Mount Ebal figures into the history of the descendants of Jacob.

does anybody know what time it is?
Although the synoptic Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke follow the Jewish practice for telling the time of day, a careful reading of the Fourth Gospel indicates that the Evangelist John most likely is following the Roman practice of marking time. The Jewish practice designates the hours beginning around sunrise, so the sixth and seventh hours would have been about noon and 1 p.m. Roman practice is the same as our current method of telling time, numbering 12 hours from midnight and another 12 from noon. Because there are no other people at the well and Jesus already is weary from his travels that day, that would make the sixth hour 6 p.m. in the Gospel According to John 4:6 and the seventh hour 7 p.m. in the Gospel According to John 4:52.

There’s much commentary about the significance of the woman being at the well at the unlikely time of around noon, but that this wasn’t a normal time for drawing water suggests that the Evangelist John might not be following the Jewish practice for labeling the hours of the day. It also seems unlikely that Jesus and his party would have stopped traveling in the middle of the day.

There’s been one previous mention of time in the Gospel According to John 1:39: “He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying; and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.” The disciples of John who follow Jesus only can dwell with him for the day if the tenth hour is Roman time, 10 a.m. in this instance. If instead this is the tenth hour our of 12 hours of daylight, then there are very few hours left for the disciples to spend with Jesus before sunset.

The discrepancy between the time-of-day designations in the synoptic Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke and in the Fourth Gospel will pop up again and become much more apparent when we begin reading the Passion narratives. At that time, we’ll revisit whether it’s logical to assume that the Evangelist John is labeling hours of the day according to Roman practice.

WHAT’S THE NUMBER SIX got to do with anything?
Of perhaps more interest than where the sun is in the sky, Scripture suggests that references to six almost always are going back to the first chapter in the book of Genesis to remind us of the six days of Creation. The Gospel According to John 4:6 seems to take us back to the idea from the prologue (the Gospel According to John 1:1–18) in which Jesus is described as the Word of God present at Creation. If Jesus is God’s performative Word sent to finish God’s creative work, then the Evangelist’s mention of the sixth hour suggests a connection with the original sixth day of Creation.

? What happened on that day?
? How’s that different from the other days of Creation?
? If the fourth chapter in the Gospel According to John is so clearly about Baptism, how’s that sacrament related to Creation?
? How’s Baptism related to Jesus?
? What else from Scripture do we know about the number six?
? In the Gospel According to John 4:23, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that the hour is coming—and now is—when worship practices will change. At that point, the narrative moves from the sixth to the seventh hour, and the number seven becomes significant. What does God do on the original seventh day of Creation? You can learn more about the first account of Creation in Lesson 1 And God Said, Let There Be Light in the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study In the Beginning: The Book of Genesis.
? What are humans expected to do on the seventh day?
? What does any of this have to do with what Jesus and the Samaritan woman are talking about?

WHAT DO YOU THINK that Jesus is doing with a woman?
When Jesus is left alone with a woman at a well (the same type of site where most major Old Testament figures met their wives), something occurs to bring about a monumental change in the way that people worship. It’s probably high time to pay attention.

? What do we know from the Old Testament about marriage as an image of God’s relationship with the people of Israel?
? What kind of bride is Jesus seeking?
? What about the Samaritan woman might cause us to consider her to be unsuitable?
? What might this Samaritan woman represent that would make Jesus consider her as a potentially fitting symbolic bride?
? What might Jesus—and therefore God—love about this woman?
? Consider how Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman affects the relationship between Jesus and present-day Christians.

a significant lesson for present-day Christians
It can seem most unusual that Jesus comes right out and tells the Samaritan woman that he’s the Christ (Messiah). Their relationship, however, is founded on truth. She’s told him the truth about, or at least not denied, her various relationships. Although most people assume these have been somewhat sordid based on the number, the biblical text doesn’t address that—nor does Jesus. What Scripture does disclose is that Jesus tells the woman the truth about himself. There’s a strong lesson here for present-day Christians. Jesus may be used to people lying to him about this and that, but if we own up to the truth about our own situations, Jesus will share his truth with us.

Jesus’ first ‘I AM’ statement
Perhaps unintentionally, some translations of the fourth chapter in the Gospel According to John disguise the fact that in revealing who he is to the Samaritan woman, Jesus also makes his first “I AM” statement. In the original Greek, this is apparent. Jesus identifies himself with the name of God given to Moses at the burning bush recorded in the book of Exodus 3:1–14. This isn’t the first such “I AM” statement in the Fourth Gospel, although every instance of those words in English isn’t related to God’s description of himself as “I AM” in the Old Testament. (Our study materials will point out valid instances when the Evangelist appears to be using language that intentionally points to the name of God.) The first “I AM” statement was spoken by John (the witness) in the first chapter in the Gospel According to John. He used a negative form to convert what he said from the statement that Jesus makes in the Gospel According to John 4:13—”I who speak to you am he” (“I AM” he, or “I AM” the Messiah)—to a positive confession of “I AM not the Christ.” John (the witness) makes this point on two separate occasions—in the Gospel According to John 1:20 and again in the Gospel According to John 3:28.

‘I AM’—you could look it up in our archives
You can learn more about God’s mysterious name revealed to Moses in the third chapter in the book of Exodus—a name that Jesus appropriates in the New Testament—by reading Lost in Translation, an online column in which Turning to God’s Word author Matthew Phelps helps readers connect with ideas expressed in the original languages of the Scriptures. New Lost in Translation entries are posted on Mondays, and past entries are archived on our website. Contact us if you’d like to receive Lost in Translation by email every week.

Q&A—so who is this Messiah everyone’s expecting?
Participants in this Bible study had comments and questions about why people of Jesus’ time had differing expectations about who the Messiah would be.

Q: I was intrigued by the question about why the woman from Samaria would view the Messiah differently than the Jews from Judea. I’m sure it has to do with what her ancestors missed after the split 900 years prior, but what exactly did they miss? They knew about David, right?

A: [Here’s the question for the benefit of those who might not have access to the study book. Question 5—Read the Gospel According to John 4:25–26. The woman next brings up the subject of the Messiah. What does she expect the Messiah to do? How is this related to what she has learned about Jesus from their conversation so far? How might the fact that the woman is from Samaria cause her idea of the Messiah to differ from the commonly held Jewish view that the Messiah is going to be a king like David? Who has Jesus previously told that he is the Christ? Why might Jesus be so open with the Samaritan woman?]

You’ve asked a great question, and the answer can seem obscure to anyone unfamiliar with Old Testament history from around the time of the divided kingdom. That’s most people, so don’t feel bad. The Samaritans certainly knew of David. The big difference is that Samaria is in the former northern kingdom of Israel, while the vast majority of practicing Jews live in Judea, which is the former southern kingdom of Judah. Under Saul, David, and Solomon, all of the descendants of Jacob were united under a single kingdom. After Solomon’s death, the united kingdom split in two with descendants of Judah and Benjamin in the south forming the southern kingdom of Judah and the 10 northern tribes forming the kingdom of Israel. Jerusalem was the capital in the south, while the northern capital eventually ended up in the city of Samaria. You can read commentary on biblical prophecy from the time of the divided kingdom in the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible studies, Thus Says the LORD: God Speaks Through His Servants the Prophets—Volume I: A Kingdom Divided and Volume II: Restoration & Redemption.

let’s review a little Old Testament history—both kingdoms fell
Israel in the north was conquered by Assyria in 722-721 B.C. The Assyrians deported a lot of the descendants of Jacob living there, replacing them with people from other nations that they’d also conquered. In the south, the kingdom of Judah later was conquered by the Babylonians, who deported many of the descendants of Jacob living there to Babylon in two main waves. The first was in 597 B.C. and the second in 586 B.C.

worship practices grew farther apart
Part of the territory of the former northern kingdom began to be known as Samaria, and the worship practices of the descendants of Jacob became mingled with the idol worship of the people who were moved into the area by the Assyrians. (Some of the clearest biblical evidence of that is in the Second Book of the Kings 17:24–34.) Meanwhile, the descendants of Jacob who were exiled to Babylon took their scrolls with the law of Moses and the writings of the southern prophets with them. While in Babylon they started developing the law-based religion of Judaism, which didn’t exist as such before then, though it’s built on a foundation of Hebrew worship practices. When they returned to Judah, then called Judea, they continued to practice Judaism. Instead of being called Judahites, the name formerly given to descendants of the tribe of Judah, they started to be called Jews.

two different frames of religious reference
By the time of Jesus, the Samaritans weren’t very big on the law of Moses and were unfamiliar with the writings of the southern prophets and the prophets sent to the descendants of Jacob in exile in Babylon. The Jews placed a ton of emphasis on the law of Moses because their prophets had told them that the reason they’d been conquered by the Babylonians was because they quit following God’s law. So right away the Samaritan woman has a considerably different frame of reference than she expects Jesus, a Jewish rabbi, to have.

what categories of people traditionally were anointed?
Although there was God’s promise that he would send a king like David in the line of David (the Second Book of Samuel 7:12–13), this isn’t the only Old Testament promise God made to his people concerning sending someone to fulfill a position that requires anointing. Besides king, there are two other classes that were distinguished by being anointed—priest and prophet. In the book of Deuteronomy 18:15, Moses promises “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you.” And in the First Book of Samuel 2:35, God promises he will raise up a faithful priest. Technically, the term Messiah could be applied to any of these three—priest, prophet, or king—or to all of them. You can learn more in Lesson 14 God’s Promise to David in the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study The United Kingdom of Israel: Saul, David & Solomon Foreshadow Christ the King.

Herod enters the picture
The Samaritans wouldn’t have been that interested in a Messiah who was a king like David because 1) they weren’t descended from the same line of Judah as David, though most of the Jews in Judea were, and 2) while Samaria was under the control of Rome, instead of a governor like Pilate, they already had a king, albeit not a very good one. Samaria was territory ruled by the figurehead king Herod. He’d been appointed by Rome, and Rome considered him the king of the Jews. This is a bit ironic, since Herod was an Idumean, which means he was descended not from Jacob, but from Jacob’s twin brother Esau. He wasn’t a Jew or Judahite at all. You have to go back to the book of Genesis to learn about Esau, whose descendants settled in Edom, called Idumea by the time of Jesus. The brothers didn’t get on well, and their family feud continues down through the centuries. You can learn more about the original relationship between the two brothers in Lesson 15 The Brothers Esau & Jacob in the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study In the Beginning: The Book of Genesis.

the woman first accepts Jesus as a prophet
So, the Jews really wanted a warrior king like David to come and get them out from under the thumb of the Romans. But the Samaritans would have expected the Messiah to be a prophet because their most recent experience of God sending someone to help them was in the form of the prophets sent to the former northern kingdom, especially the big-name prophets Elijah and Elisha. The Samaritans were aware of the law of Moses since they had the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament), but they didn’t place as much emphasis on the law as they did on the stories of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You can see evidence of that when the Samaritan women is aware that as a Jew Jesus shouldn’t be drinking water from the same bucket as a Samaritan because of Jewish religious law, but she cites Jacob as the ancestor she and Jesus have in common, thus claiming Israelite ancestry. She also tells Jesus she sees that he’s a prophet. Then she inquires in a roundabout way if he’s the Messiah—because she’s expecting the Messiah (or Anointed One) to be a prophet.

shared insight—a reader comments about the Samaritans
“I love that this lesson brings out what our group studied last year in Thus Says the LORD: God Speaks Through His Servants the Prophets—Volume I: A Kingdom Divided. It’s kind of like realizing why we did all that sentence-diagramming in grade school—sentence structure is important. We need to know the Old Testament to understand the New. I learned that the Israelites in the north were expecting a different type of Messiah than the Judahites in the south. Samaritans living in the former northern kingdom were looking for a prophet (like Elijah or Elisha), while Jews living in Judea, the former southern kingdom, expected the Messiah to come as a warrior king (like David). In terms of Scripture, the Israelites focused on the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) and had less familiarity with wisdom literature and the books of the prophets than did the Jews. Once the Samaritan woman realizes who Jesus is, she goes right into wanting answers to her questions about God.”

learn more Old Testament history
To learn more background history about the Samaritans and the Jews, and what’s behind their animosity toward each other, read “Who Are the Samaritans?” on page 32 in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth. You also can learn more from our study book, as well as from our online commentary and video related to Lesson 21 Israel’s Sins Lead to Deportation in the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study Thus Says the LORD: God Speaks Through His Servants the Prophets—Volume I: A Kingdom Divided.

geographical bias in the Bible
It’s interesting that while the Jews look down on Galilee and Samaria because those regions were part of the former northern kingdom, that doesn’t seem to prevent Jesus from spending a lot of time in those places. This flies in the face of the pro-southern bias apparent in the First and Second Books of Samuel, the First and Second Books of the Kings, and the First and Second Books of the Chronicles. The idea that the southern kingdom was superior to the northern began when David moved the ark to Jerusalem and Solomon then built the Temple there. As long as all the descendants of Jacob were united in one kingdom, this didn’t pose a huge problem. When the kingdom divided at the death of Solomon, however, many people living in the north quit journeying to Jerusalem to observe the mandatory religious feasts. Much of the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study The United Kingdom of Israel: Saul, David & Solomon Foreshadow Christ the King focuses on David’s kingdom. Thus Says the LORD: God Speaks Through His Servants the Prophets—Volume I: A Kingdom Divided looks closely at the northern and southern kingdoms in the time before the Babylonian Exile.

geopolitical differences
It didn’t take long for traditional Hebrew worship practices to deteriorate in the north. The people living in the southern kingdom of Judah eventually followed suit, but even when abandoning religious tradition they clung to the idea that they were favored by God because of the Temple in their capital city. The fall of both kingdoms was seen as a failure of the people to keep God’s law, and so the law-based religion of Judaism developed among captives from the south who’d been deported to Babylon. When the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great allowed those captives who wished to return to Jerusalem, it served to reinforce the idea that God was discriminating in favor of the southern kingdom of Judah. Many residents of the former northern kingdom had been deported to a variety of locations. Because no large-scale return ever occurred and those descendants of Jacob never regained political and religious identity, they came to be referred to as the lost tribes of Israel.

Galilee is Jesus’ home base
The pro-southern bias that had developed in and around Jerusalem carried over to the time of Jesus, although Jesus himself exhibits a strong and contradictory bias in favor of all of the descendants of Israel, spending much time in Galilee and Samaria. The synoptic Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke even show Jesus only traveling to Jerusalem once right at the end of his ministry. In the Gospel According to John, Jesus sets up his home base in Galilee, but he frequently travels to Jerusalem to attend religious feasts. Many sincere Christians are surprised to find that while the Gospels indicate that Jesus was a Jew, he focused his ministry on all of the descendants of Jacob.

what no one expected of the Messiah
What we miss because of the passage of 2,000-plus years is that no one expected the Messiah to be priest, prophet and king—and no one at all expected the Messiah to be God. The idea that a human being would be God would have been unthinkable to anyone whose religion was based on the monotheistic worship practices of the ancient Hebrews, which allowed only one God—and this God wasn’t like any of the other gods worshiped elsewhere in the world. You couldn’t see the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and live. That’s a huge theme throughout the Old Testament. The Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study In the Beginning: The Book of Genesis examines what Scripture teaches about the early patriarchs.

that’s a big problem for Jesus
Therein lies the problem the Evangelist John sets up in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel. If God comes to earth in human form as the Word made flesh, how on earth is anyone going to be able to recognize him as God? Even when people see Jesus as the Messiah, they aren’t thinking that means he’s God. The Jews are thinking it means he’s gonna be a military/political leader like David. Jesus has refused to accept that role. When the Samaritan woman suggests that the Messiah will show the people all things, she hits the nail on the head about what Jesus has come to do. He’s here to show people God. The Samaritan woman couldn’t possibly understand it at that level, but what she says is correct and Jesus acknowledges that he’s indeed that kind of Messiah.

the saints inspire us—about that abandoned water jar
Because the Samaritan woman in the Fourth Gospel accepted Jesus as the Messiah and shared that news with others in her hometown, she’s been readily accepted by scholars as both a believer and the first missionary. St. Augustine interpreted the woman’s abandoned water jar in the Gospel According to John 4:28 as the fallen desire of humanity that draws pleasure from the dark wells of the world yet fails to receive lasting satisfaction. The account of the Samaritan woman moves other men and women to faith in Jesus, which in turn leads Christians to renounce the world, leaving behind the desires of its earthen vessels and following a new way of life that begins with the re-Creation of Baptism.

for additional reflection
Jesus will continue to use “I AM” statements throughout the Fourth Gospel, and we should be on the lookout for these as well and for any situations in which someone other than Jesus might be using an “I AM” statement. Not all appearances of the words “I am” in English reflect the Hebrew form that indicates God’s name, however. Our study materials will point out valid instances when the Evangelist appears to be using language that intentionally points to the name of God. The following questions are designed to help readers begin to form their own thoughts and ideas related to the Gospel According to John 4:1–54. For more reflection questions, refer to the introduction to Lesson 5 on page 27 in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth.

? What options other than “I AM” might Jesus have chosen to identify himself?
? How many ways has Jesus referred to himself so far in the Gospel According to John?
? Which of these titles seems to carry the most power?
? What do the various titles of Jesus have in common?
? How do they differ?
? How is it that belief in Jesus’ name can bring about salvation?
? Why are Christians required to believe “in the name” rather than to believe “in” Jesus, or even more simply, to believe Jesus—to trust him?
? In what way does the name of Jesus figure into regular present-day worship?

the best Catholic commentary about Scripture
To find out more about how Church teaching is supported by Scripture passages in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth, check out the Index of Citations in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Links to the primary Scripture passages in the lesson (Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition [RSVCE*]) and relevant paragraphs in the Catechism are provided here. Not every passage in the biblical text for this study is referenced in a Catechism paragraph, however.

ways our glossary might prove helpful
In addition to providing extra information about geographical locations, our glossary also points out persons and places mentioned in the biblical text under multiple names or spellings. If you can remember a name but aren’t sure in which lesson it shows up, you can find it in the glossary, which lists every proper noun that appears in the primary biblical text for The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth.

to learn more, read more Scripture
If you’re having difficulty with a passage of Scripture, it can be helpful to read the relevant cross references—but looking these up can take time. To make that easier, we’ve compiled the cross references from the Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition (RSV2CE)—the translation that we reprint in our study books. That list can be found at the top of every online study page accompanying this study, and it includes links to each of the cross references in the primary biblical text for The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth.

don’t forget about our indexes & extra online material
If you’re trying to locate information about a specific Scripture passage, you can look it up in the index at the back of the study book or sample lesson. If you want to find a particular commentary, you can look up its title in the topics index. To learn more about another book of the Bible for which there’s a Turning to God’s Word study, visit the online study directories to read the commentaries and watch any accompanying videos. Finally, if you have a question or would like to make a comment about any of our studies, you can use one of the “ask us your question” or “what do you think” buttons to email our authors.

ex libris—Church documents & books about religious topics
You can find links to magisterial documents referred to in Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible studies at ex libris—magisterial documents. This page includes a listing of significant recent encyclicals as well as a number of historical Church documents. Recommended books related to Scripture study can be found at ex libris—main bookshelf.

wondering how to pronounce some of these words?
The following link is to a reading from the New International Version (NIV) Bible. To listen, click on the audio icon above the printed text. Although not taken from the translations used in our study materials, the NIV reading provides an audio guide to pronunciation of words in this lesson’s primary biblical text. A close online version of the translation of the Bible used in Catholic liturgy in the United States as well as an audio guide for daily Mass readings for the current month can be found on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

the Gospel According to John 4:1–54 (NIV)

close with Bible-based prayer related to this lesson
Many of our Catholic study groups like to conclude their discussions with a prayer based on the scriptural focus of their lesson, and some participants include Scripture-specific prayer in their individual study. If you’re uncomfortable composing your own Bible-based prayers, you can follow our four easy steps, or you can use the following prayer based on this lesson’s text from the Gospel According to John.

God and Father of all humankind,
you sent your Son to teach us how to worship in spirit and in truth.
Help us to be like the Samaritan woman and the official at Capernaum,
who were able to believe in Jesus’ power over life and death
without the necessity of seeing signs and wonders.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lesson 6 Do You Want to Be Healed?—the Gospel According to John 5:1–47
Lesson 4 A Man of the Pharisees, Named Nicodemus—the Gospel According to John 3:1–36

you also may like our two-part study of the prophets
Thus Says the LORD: God Speaks Through His Servants the Prophets—Volume I: A Kingdom Divided examines the prophets in their historical context using the First and Second Books of the Kings and other Old Testament passages written before the Babylonian Exile in 586 B.C. Volume II: Restoration & Redemption looks at the post-exilic prophets. This 51-lesson Catholic Bible study builds on The United Kingdom of Israel: Saul, David & Solomon Foreshadow Christ the King. Click on the books’ covers to view a sample lesson from each volume.

start a Turning to God’s Word Bible study
Thank you for your interest in The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth. Information about beginning a Turning to God’s Word Bible study can be found at start a Bible study. Tami, Matthew, and I are available to answer questions and offer support. Contact us if you’d like to start one of our studies or have your schedule listed with other TtGW study groups on our website. —Jennifer

*There are seven deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament—the Books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and First and Second Maccabees, as well as some passages in the Books of Esther and Daniel. Protestants usually refer to these works as “apocryphal,” a word that means “outside the (Protestant) canon” because they’re excluded from most Protestant Bibles. The word “deuterocanonical” means “second canon”; Catholics use that word to refer to any section of the Catholic Old Testament for which there are no extant, or existing, Hebrew manuscripts. All of the deuterocanonical books appear in the Septuagint, the earliest remaining versions of which date to the 1st century B.C. This Greek translation of the Old Testament was in common use by Jews at the time of Jesus. Learn more by reading How Do Catholic & Protestant Bibles Differ?

Turning to God’s Word printed Bible studies use the 2006 Revised Standard Version Second Catholic Edition (RSV2CE) translation for all Scripture references except those to the Psalms, which are taken from The Abbey Psalms and Canticles, prepared by the Benedictine monks of Conception Abbey and published in 2020 by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). All Scripture links for the online study pages for The Gospel According to John: An Encounter with Grace & Truth are to the 1966 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE) translation. The New International Version (NIV) audio recordings follow the same chapter and verse numbering as the RSV Catholic translations, but the NIV translation doesn’t include the deuterocanonical books and passages.

The 1966 RSVCE uses archaic pronouns and verb forms such as “thee,” “thou,” “didst” in the Psalms and in direct quotations attributed to God. The 2006 RSV2CE replaces these with more accessible English. The few significant translation changes in the RSV2CE include rendering almah as “virgin” in the Book of Isaiah 7:14 and restoring the term “begotten” in the Gospel According to John 3:16.

Numbering varies for some passages in this Bible study. Turning to God’s Word studies (print and digital) follow the numbering in the Revised Standard Version Catholic translations (RSV2CE and RSVCE). Discrepancies in the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) are noted in the Index of Scripture Citations in the study book and the online sample.

You can learn more about the Psalms by viewing a sample lesson from the Turning to God’s Word Catholic Bible study Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume I: Lauds & Vespers. The second part of that study, Sing a New Psalm: Communicating with God Through the Prayers of the Church—Volume II: Vigils, Day Prayer & Compline, is scheduled for publication in 2025. Some verse numbers may vary in different translations of the Psalms.