This biblical chapter contains one of the most beautiful conversations of the Lord. The incident that precedes this passage is when Jesus was still in Judaea, the district that surrounds Jerusalem, and felt that there is a machination from the Pharisees so He decided to move to Galilee, his land. Therefore, He had to pass on his way through Samaria. He arrived in a city named Sychar which is very close to Nablus, the city that still exists in our days. In that village, Jacob’s well (or spring) existed and also this well still exists today and an Orthodox Church is built there.
It was the sixth hour, i.e. noon, when a Samaritan woman came. In our country, when I was a child, they used to use this timing and call it “the Arabic clock”. The woman had a pottery jar and the well was 32 meters deep and she was able to draw water. Jesus had no bucket to draw water. The Lord asked her to give Him a drink but she refused because He was Jewish and Samaritans were a sect that split from the Jews for dogmatic and racial differences as their race was mixed with foreigners. When she refused to give Him water to drink, He told her: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water”. The woman replied: “Where can you get this living water?” Then Jesus said: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst”. What water did He mean? She didn’t understand anything.
The Lord wanted to wake her up spiritually and asked her to call her man (the word used in the American translation is “husband”). Our translation is better because she had no husband but had lived in the past with five men and now she lives with another one. She saw that Jesus knows her situation, so she said: “I can see that you are a prophet”. She also asked Him a theological question: “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain (Mount Gerizim), but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem”. Then, He explained to her that worshiping God is neither here nor in Jerusalem. God doesn’t care about the location. “God is worshiped in the spirit and in the truth”; which means in the heart and in the depth of human entity. The expression “in the truth” means worshiping in God Himself; i.e. a direct worship that needs neither the hill of Zion (where there Temple was) nor this mountain that used to have a temple for the Samaritans (It was destroyed before Christ’s coming to this world).
This conversation is the most important part in today’s Gospel. The woman left her jar which was the reason she came for (getting water) and started preaching her people and prepared them for the preaching of the apostles that is mentioned in the Book of Acts. The Church named this woman “St. Photini” and our Arabic usage for the name is “Photin” which means “enlightened”.
May God help us to be guided from all our hearts, as this woman did.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “السامرية” –Raiati 20- 13.05.2012
