1 Now then, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was making and baptizing even more disciples than John, 2 (although actually it wasn’t Jesus himself who was baptizing, but his disciples), 3 he left Judea and set out once more for Galilee. 4 Now it was God’s will for him to make the journey using the alternative route through the region of Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan town called Sychar, near the piece of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and so Jesus, worn out from the journey, sat down near the well. It was about noon.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to the well to draw some water, Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink of water.” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy some food.)

9 “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan,” replied the Samaritan woman. “So how can you possibly request a drink of water from me?” (Jews typically refuse to use cups or bowls that have been touched by Samaritans, you see.)

10 “If you had recognized the gift of God and who it is that is asking you for a drink,” replied Jesus, “you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said to him, “you don’t have a thing with which to draw water, and the well is deep. Where then are you going to get this ‘living water’? 12 Surely you aren’t greater, are you, than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock?”

13 “Anyone who drinks this water,” replied Jesus, “will become thirsty again. 14 If someone drinks the water that I will give him, however, he will never be thirsty again. In fact, the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up unto life in the coming age.”

15 “Sir, please give me this water,” said the woman, “so that I won’t become thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

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

17 “I don’t have a husband,” answered the woman.

“Right you are in saying, ‘I don’t have a husband,’ ” said Jesus.18 “The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with right now isn’t your husband. What you’ve just told me is very true.”

19 “I can see that you are, sir, a prophet,” the woman said to him. 20 “As for our ancestors, this mountain is where they worshiped. ᵖYou Jews, however, claim that Jerusalem is the place where people are required to offer worship.”

21 Jesus said to her, “Trust me, dear woman, a time is coming when ᵖyou will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 ᵖYou Samaritans comprehend very little about the one you worship; we Jews worship him with knowledge and understanding, because it is from the Jews that salvation comes. 23 Yet a time is coming, and is here even now, when the true worshipers will worship the Father by the Spirit+ and in truth. The Father is searching for people of this kind, you see, to be his worshipers. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must do so by the Spirit,+ yes, and in truth.”

25 “I know that the Messiah is going to come,” the woman said to him, “the one who is called ‘the Anointed One.’ When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 “I AM,”+ said Jesus, “the one who is speaking with you.”

27 Just then his disciples returned, and they were shocked to find him talking with a woman. Yet no one asked, “What do ˢyou want?” or, “Why are ˢyou talking with her?”

28 So the woman left her water jar and went back into the town. 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done!” she said to the people. “This man himself can’t possibly be the Messiah, can he?” 30 So the people left the town and started making their way toward Jesus.

31 In the meantime, the disciples were begging Jesus, “Rabbi, please eat something!”

32 “I have a kind of food,” Jesus answered, “that ᵖyou disciples don’t know anything about.”

33 At that, the disciples began to say to one another, “Could someone else have brought him something to eat? Surely not!”

34 “My own food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work. 35 ᵖYou know this saying, do you not: ‘ Four months more, and then the harvest comes’? Listen, I tell ᵖyou this: Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, how ripe they are for harvest! 36 The reaper is already receiving his wages and gathering a crop for life in the coming age, so that the one who sows and the one who reaps may rejoice together. 37 In this, you see, the saying is true, namely, that ‘it is one who sows and another who reaps’: 38 I have sent ᵖyou to reap a harvest in a field where you yourselves haven’t done any work. It is others who have done the initial work. And as for ᵖyou, it is the fruit of their hard work that ᵖyou now get to enjoy.”

39 From that town many, many of the Samaritans placed their faith in him because of the woman’s testimony, when she said to them, “He told me everything I’ve ever done.” 40 When the Samaritans came to him, therefore, they kept begging him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And so even more people, many more, believed because of the things he said. 42 And they kept saying to the woman, “Now it isn’t just because of your own testimony that we believe. Indeed, we have heard him ourselves, and we know that this man truly is the Savior of the world.”

43 After those two days, Jesus left that place for Galilee. 44 (Jesus himself, you see, had solemnly stated that a prophet doesn’t receive, in his own hometown, any honor.) 45 When he arrived in Galilee, then, the Galileans welcomed him, because they had seen everything that he had done in Jerusalem during the festival. (They, too, had themselves gone to the festival, you see.)

46 So Jesus went back to Cana of Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. Meanwhile, there was a certain royal official whose son was sick in the town of Capernaum. 47 This official, when he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, went to him and began to beg him to come down and heal his son, who was about to die. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless ᵖyou see these—miraculous signs and wonders— ᵖyou will most certainly not believe.”

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

50 “ˢYou may go on home,” Jesus said to him. “Your son is going to live.” The man believed what Jesus told him and started on his way.

51 Now while the official was still on his way down, his slaves met him and told him that his son was going to live. 52 He asked them, therefore, what time it was when his son’s health had begun to improve.

“It was yesterday,” they replied, “at one in the afternoon. That’s when the fever left him.”

53 At that, the father remembered that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son is going to live.” And so the official and his entire household believed.

54 This Jesus did, after coming from Judea to Galilee, as his second miraculous sign.