Abstract: Many literary critics have described how the events of John 4 fit the pattern of a Hebrew narrative betrothal-type scene. This article explores one possible reason why John uses this literary framework. Its central argument is that John 4 draws attention to Old Testament allusions and echoes to assume and transform the ancient Israelite origin story. Yahweh promised Israel’s patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would bless all the families of the world through their physical offspring, who were born of women they encountered at wells. Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at a well and consequently welcomes spiritual offspring. He assumes and transforms the story of their patriarchs and begins to bless all the families of the world.

Please Note: This publication is an abridged version of an essay submitted by Kristal Toews for her Master of Arts in Theological Studies at Regent College (Vancouver, BC) in November 2019. Approximately 2000 words examining the history of interpretation, ranging from the early Church Fathers to the present day, were removed for this submission.  

Key Words: John 4, Samaritan Woman, betrothal type-scene, figural reading, living water

     The Samaritan woman whom Jesus encounters in John 4 has a questionable reputation among recent biblical scholars. One individual describes her as a loose, coquettish woman with provocative intentions. Another calls her a “five-time loser currently committed to an illicit affair” and, even more bluntly, a “tramp.” JI Packer shows more restraint but draws attention to her “shady past,” and DA Carson writes, “John may intend a contrast between the woman of this narrative and Nicodemus…[Nicodemus] was learned, powerful, respected, orthodox, theologically trained; she was unschooled, without influence, despised, capable only of folk religion…And both needed Jesus.”  

     Weighty descriptive words form readers’ expectations, and therefore it is important to evaluate these characterizations and their implications on biblical interpretation. Did John include Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman in his gospel solely to demonstrate how Jesus interacted with a sinner, or did he have a greater purpose? In his book entitled, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, Richard Hays asserts that John consistently embeds the identity of Jesus in the temple liturgy, feasts, and festivals to assume and transform Israel’s story. I will argue that, in the Samaritan woman narrative, John similarly embeds the identity of Jesus into Israel’s origin story to assume and transform their story.

     Literary critics almost unanimously agree that the events of this pericope fit the pattern of a Hebrew narrative betrothal-type scene. Three times in the Old Testament a man meets a woman at a well, and the meeting eventually leads to a betrothal and marriage. While many scholars describe how John employs the betrothal type-scene, by figural reflection on the larger biblical narrative to which John alludes, I hope to offer a new explanation for why he uses this literary framework. The women at the well type-scenes of the Old Testament focus on the lives of three significant individuals (Isaac, Jacob, and Moses) through whom the promises and covenant of Yahweh were fulfilled.  Isaac and Jacob’s marriages and offspring were the method by which God would ultimately bless the whole world. In John 4, Jesus assumes and transforms this ancient Israelite origin story. An encounter with the woman at a well produces spiritual offspring who declare Him to be the Saviour of the World.  

      I will use type-scene categories to work through the text to investigate the Old Testament allusions and echoes in each scene to demonstrate how John depicts Jesus assuming and transforming the story of Israel’s patriarchs.

     In Hebrew narrative, betrothal type-scenes begin with the future bridegroom or his emissary travelling to a foreign land. In John 4:1–42, Jesus journeys through a foreign area. We learn immediately that Jesus’ ministry was producing a spiritual harvest among the Jews which aroused the concern of the Pharisees. Jesus decided to return to Galilee and, consequently, “had to pass through Samaria.” The meaning of the imperfect tense of the verb δει (it is necessary) in this sentence has been debated by commentators. Is the route geographically necessary or is this journey integral to his purposes? Jo Ann Davidson argues that Jesus uses the word ἔδει for His mission, and also to convey a sense of divine necessity. This perspective is supported by Louw and Nida, who note that ἔδει is used to signify “something which should be done as the result of compulsion, whether internal (as a matter of duty) or external (law, custom, and circumstances).” Jesus, like Jacob and Moses, travels to a new location to distance Himself from hostile people and, likewise, John seems to indicate that Jesus travels through this foreign area intentionally, out of compulsion and missional necessity.   

     In the following verses, John completes the setting for this type-scene. Jesus stops in Sychar and sits beside Jacob’s well. John Chyrsostom and Thomas Aquinas note that the location corresponds to the Old Testament city of Shechem, where the rape of Dinah resulted in the sons of Jacob killing all the men of the city, and which was bequeathed by Jacob to Joseph. This information has been validated by archaeological excavations. Shechem is also significant because it is the first location where Abraham built an altar upon entrance to the promised land, and where Jacob worshipped after his return to Canaan. Joshua renewed the covenant between Yahweh and Israel at Shechem, and buried Joseph’s bones there.  Jesus rests at a location that evokes memories of covenant promises as well as sexual and racial violence. If John is embedding the identity of Jesus into Israel’s origin story, how will Jesus’ words and actions in Sychar assume and transform what has happened at this location in the past? The next movement of a betrothal type-scene is the encounter between a man and a woman. In John 4:6–7a, Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman. According to several literary theorists, this framework sets the tone for how readers should understand the ensuing dialogue.  Consequently, as Conway notes, “the way in which the pattern is used becomes crucial for perceiving the construction of the story’s female character.” A brief recollection of the three Old Testament betrothal scenes of Rebekah, Moses, Jacob, and Rachel, after which this story is patterned may help set expectations.  Although all three encounters result in marriage, none of the original scenes were marked by flirtation. Rebekah met Abraham’s servant who proposed on behalf of Isaac, Moses met Zipporah at the well in the company of her seven sisters, and, while Jacob kissed Rachel and wept he was also kissed by her father Laban immediately afterward.  To discern the tone of the encounter accurately readers should pay attention to how the narrative unfolds, to the echoes and allusions evoked from the larger scriptural story.

     Commentators have argued that the circumstances of Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman are also critical to understanding the story. They met at the sixth hour (noon) and the woman was alone, which suggests that she was a social outcast since women tended to fetch water in groups in the mornings and evenings. However, if John intended to remind people of previous type-scenes, this detail takes on a different significance. Both Rebekah and Rachel came to the well alone and Jacob met Rachel in this location when it was “high day.” Yahweh would bless the nations through the physical descendants of Jacob (renamed Israel) and God will bless the world through the spiritual descendants of Jesus.  

     After a woman and man met at a well, generally one of the characters drew water. In John 4:7b–26, Jesus and the Samaritan woman discuss water, but no one actually drinks.  Instead, the type-scene deviates into two unexpected conversations regarding the nature of true water and the nature of true worship. As a result of these two discussions, Jesus points forward to a time in which all nations will be blessed through Him.  

     When the Samaritan woman questions why Jesus, a Jew, asks for a drink from her,Jesus replies, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you ὕδωρ ζῶν [living water].” A survey of scriptural usage of this phrase and its Hebrew equivalent,  מַ֥יִם חַיִּ֖ים [living water] demonstrates that it has various levels of meaning.  

     On a literal level, ὕδωρ ζῶν refers to spring water or running water. This term assumes a figurative meaning when Levitical texts called for priests to use ὕδωρ ζῶν as part of the ritual to purify leprous people and their homes. In Numbers 19:17, ὕδωρ ζῶν is used to purify people who become ritually unclean as a result of contact with a dead body.  On a third level, ὕδωρ ζῶν contains a salvific and eventually eschatological meaning. Jeremiah records that the Lord laments that His people have forsaken him, the fountain of living waters.  Zechariah prophesies that, in the future, “living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea. It shall continue in summer as in winter. And the LORD will be king over all the earth.  On that day the LORD will be one, and his name will be one.” Zechariah continues, “Everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths.” 

     As Jesus offers the Samaritan woman ὕδωρ ζῶν, therefore, John’s readers, who are familiar with this Old Testament language, could hear Him offer her literal water, as well as the opportunity for purification and salvation, as well as a place among the nations in the eschatological kingdom as they celebrate the Feast of Booths. In contrast to the patriarchal encounter at Shechem, which created discord between people groups, Jesus’ encounter at Shechem suggests a future reality in which nations will be united. The link between John’s gospel and Zechariah 14 is further strengthened in John 7:38 when, on the final and greatest day of the Feast of Booths, Jesus cried out, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” John goes on to explain that Jesus equates the living waters to the gift of the Spirit who will be given after Jesus is glorified.   

     Water imagery is also prevalent in Isaiah and Ezekiel. In the “future age envisioned by the prophet, people ‘will neither hunger nor thirst’ (Isa. 49:10; cf. 44:3), and Yahweh will make ‘an everlasting covenant’ with all those—Jews as well as believing representatives of ‘the nations who do not know you’ (Isa. 55:4–5)—who follow his invitation to ‘Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters…that your soul may live’” (Isa. 55:1-3). Ezekiel 47:1–12 recounts a vision of water that flows from under the threshold of the temple and brings life to all living things and perpetual fruit bearing.

     The literal, figurative, and eschatological meanings of living water noted above are not acknowledged by Lyle Eslinger, who argues instead that this term is included in the text to communicate a double entendre and to suggest that the Samaritan woman is a provocative flirt. In his reader-response approach to John 4, he highlights two Old Testament texts that use images of cisterns and flowing water as sexual euphemisms. In Proverbs 5:15–16, the teacher warns his son, “Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad?” Song of Solomon 4:15 describes the virgin as “a garden fountain, a well of living water, and flowing streams from Lebanon.”  While these texts reference flowing water and, in one case, living water, I would argue that the links between John 4 and the Old Testament passages which highlight purification and salvation are more numerous and linguistically stronger than those provided by Eslinger. A reader who is familiar with the use of this term throughout Scripture would not necessarily deduce that John includes ὕδωρ ζῶν to negatively characterize the woman at the well. 

     Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman takes another turn when she asks Him to give her water and Jesus, in reply, asks her to call her husband and return. Their ensuing dialogue stretches the type-scene. In the patriarchal stories, men encounter marriageable maidens, but the audience quickly learns what Jesus has known all along, that this woman has had five husbands and currently lives with a man who is not her husband. Commentators use this information to cast dispersion on her character, but is this necessarily what John is trying to communicate?

     Women were not depicted as prostitutes in Scripture simply because they had multiple husbands. Tamar was a victim of three selfish husbands and an unrighteous father-in-law. Ruth lost her first husband and remarried Boaz. Abigail acted wisely while married to a fool. David’s first wife, Michal, was given to another man in marriage because of King Saul’s spite, and finally, Bathsheba was summoned by King David and lost her first husband and child as a result. When the Sadducees attempt to trap Jesus by imagining a hypothetical scenario in which a woman was married seven times to seven brothers, their only question at the end of the story is whose wife she will be at the resurrection. John Calvin describes the Samaritan woman as a “forward and disobedient wife [who probably] constrained her husbands to divorce her.” Lynn Cohick, however, reminds readers that first-century women could not initiate a divorce. The relationships may be questionable but, as Boers notes in his monograph on John 4, this discussion primarily serves to reveal Jesus’ miraculous knowledge. The conversation does not turn into an examination of the woman’s living arrangements, but rather it opens up a new topic: the nature of true worship.

     As Jesus discloses that He knows her history, the Samaritan woman exclaims, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.” She then asks Him to adjudicate a dispute between the Jews and Samaritans regarding the correct location of worship.  Jesus replies, “The hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father…The hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”

     During His encounters with the Jews and with Nicodemus, Jesus has already claimed that his body will replace the temple as the focus of worship and that people must be born of water and the Spirit before they can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. With these conversations in mind, readers of John’s gospel will understand that Jesus invites the Samaritan woman to join the dialogue to reconstitute His people and their worship practices. While salvation is “from the Jews,” it is now extended to all true worshippers. The covenantal relationship that God initiated with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to bless the whole world is brought to fruition in Him.  

     This connection is solidified when the woman replies, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” In response, Jesus says, “Ἐγώ εἰμι, ὁ λαλῶν σοι” (I am [he], who am speaking to you). In this choice of words Jesus reveals Himself to her by use of the same covenant name which Yahweh used to introduce himself to Moses in Exodus 3:13–15:  “Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν [I am who I am]…the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.  Once again Jesus is assuming and transforming the story of the patriarchs. He truly is one greater than Jacob, who offers the Samaritan woman living water, so that she can worship Yahweh in spirit and truth.

     At this point in the conversation the disciples return and the next two phases of the type-scene are initiated. In the patriarchal models, the girl rushes home to tell her family about the arrival of a stranger, he is invited to a meal, and a betrothal is arranged shortly afterward. In John 4, the Samaritan woman returns to the city rather than to her home. The disciples and Jesus discuss a meal, but no food is eaten, and Jesus is asked to stay with the people of the city. As the woman departs, the disciples offer food to Jesus, but Jesus responds that food is to do the will of the Father. Jesus tells His disciples to lift their eyes and see the great opportunity for harvest.  In John 4:29, the Samaritan woman invites her townspeople, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did,” and, as a result, in John 4:41, “many more believed because of his word.” As the people of Samaria stream out to meet Him, Jesus perhaps sees a foretaste of the true worship of all nations envisioned in Isaiah 2:2–4: 

It shall come to pass in the latter days

    that the mountain of the house of the Lord

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

    and shall be lifted up above the hills;

and all the nations shall flow to it,

  and many peoples shall come, and say:

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

    to the house of the God of Jacob,

that he may teach us his ways

    and that we may walk in his paths.”

For out of Zion shall go forth the law,

    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

     The pericope ends with the townspeople of Shechem acknowledging Jesus as the Saviour of the world. In Genesis 12:2–3, Yahweh promises Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” As he entered the promised land, Abraham worshipped Yahweh at Shechem.  Abraham’s descendants were betrothed to women encountered at wells and through these marriages, Yahweh partially fulfilled this promise: Israel became a great nation. In John 4, as Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at a well in Shechem, He assumes and transforms this patriarchal story. Through their spiritual offspring, the Jewish Messiah has begun to bless the world.