Amen. Turn with me in your Bibles, please, to John 4, beginning at verse 16.
Jesus said to her, ‘Go call your husband and come here.’
The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’
Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.’
The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.’
From there, turn to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 2—sorry, chapter 22. Moses writes, ‘When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house. And if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or the latter man dies who took her to be his wife, the former husband who sent her away may not take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.’
From Deuteronomy, we turn to Matthew chapter 22, beginning at verse 23.
The same day, Sadducees came to him who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, ‘Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother; so too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.’
But Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God? I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.’
And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Father, we approach you humbly when we come to challenging and difficult subjects in your word. Help us to pause and to see and to hear you rightly, to find the things that you most need to tell us and remind us, encouraging us and building us up in faith through your word. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So who was this unnamed Samaritan woman, really? She is featured prominently in the Evangelist narrative, but actually, we know very little about her as a person. Instead, we make a lot of assumptions about her, and few of them are charitable.
John clearly included her in his gospel for a reason, because she’s not mentioned by the other gospel writers. Clearly, John thought that both she and her interaction with Jesus was important for us to know about, since at the end of the Gospel, he admits to having picked and chosen the stories about Jesus he told, writing, ‘Now there are also many other things that Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.’
So he abridged the story of Jesus’s life and ministry because he couldn’t have written everything. If she was so important, then why did he not tell us more about her specifically? He does not even give us her name. Was she merely window dressing, just someone for Jesus to talk to as a placeholder, just an opportunistic way to convey his teaching?
I don’t think so. I believe John thought she was important in her own right, despite her anonymity. I believe John told her story because he valued her as a person, as a woman. John told us her story because Jesus thought she was important enough to talk to, and she is certainly somebody now because really she was a nobody.
Because she was a nobody, she could be anybody. Any of us could be her. So who was she? Let’s examine what we know.
What does John tell us about her specifically? She’s a Samaritan woman, which tells us ethnicity, gender, and religion. She came to draw water from the well outside of town at noon, during the hottest part of the day, at an uncommon time. Yet John does not say that this was her habitual practice.
She has had five husbands and was presently involved with a man not her husband, but John doesn’t explain why she’s been married so many times, nor does he clearly define her present relationship status. Plus, she believed along with her fellow Samaritans that Messiah is coming—he who is called Christ—and that when he comes, he will tell us all things.
However, what 21st-century Christians like us do not immediately understand is that the Samaritans did not have the same expectations as the Jews did about what or who the Messiah would be. She also came to be convinced that Jesus and what he had to say was more important than her water jar on a hot summer’s day. Lastly, she was a believable, incredible person; her word was trusted by the townsfolk because she went into Sychar and told everybody about Jesus.
They came and followed her and then confessed, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves.’ They believed her first, and then they believed Jesus for themselves.
Now those are helpful pieces of information—good details to have—but they’re not enough to really give us a clear picture of her. They do not tell us who she is. But knowing what we know about our context, we can make some educated assumptions.
First off, the Samaritans were a minority group in first-century Israel, and she was here as part of a local majority culture there in Samaria. Yet John’s narrative seems to present her as a marginalized member of the community. People are social creatures by nature.
Drawing water was a necessary chore for every household, so it’s reasonable to suppose that because everyone needed to draw water from the well for their daily use, then people gathering around the city well was the perfect occasion and location for the easy spread of news and gossip.
Now the best time to draw water in the Middle East is at either the beginning of the day before it gets hot, or the evening after things cool down. Generally, evening was better so that you could draw enough water for your morning and daily needs, since it does make more sense to refill your water supply when it gets low from use rather than filling it immediately before you use it, instead of waiting to go get it when you need it.
Now, Jesus was alone here at the well until she came along, which prompts the question: why was she getting water then? Why was she not getting it at the same time as everyone else?
And this is where the negative assumptions begin to creep into our minds. We have been taught to think that she was getting water then because she wanted to avoid people, because she was a social outcast, that she was a woman of morally questionable character. However, I want us to give her more benefit of the doubt because Scripture does not clearly say that, and there are other possibilities.
The reason that many interpreters think this about her is this exchange with Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Go call your husband and come here.’ And the woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’
Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ for you’ve had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.’
Remember, John was not present to hear this; he was off in town with the other disciples buying their lunch. Yes, even though the Holy Spirit inspired his writing, ensuring that he conveyed the truth of the conversation, we do not believe that the Holy Spirit downloaded a direct transcript into his mind.
We cannot assume that this was the whole conversation. John even alludes to the fact that there was more, recording her testimony to the townsfolk: ‘Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?’ implying that things far beyond the scope of their recorded conversation were mentioned.
So now Jesus abruptly changes the subject from something spiritual with his ‘river of life’ to something more down-to-earth—relationships.
Why would Jesus command her to go fetch her husband and bring him back? There are three good reasons, and the best answer is likely all of the above. Culturally, Jewish and Samaritan women were not educated in religion and matters of the faith publicly; it was the responsibility, duty, and privilege of their husbands to teach them.
This practice is what Paul alludes to in 1 Corinthians 15 where he writes, ‘If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home.’ Culturally, it was not proper for a woman to be alone with a man who was not her husband or other near relation.
See, this is where we get the ancient Billy Graham rule from. This command then was more for social propriety to prevent allegations of immorality against either of them. Last, it seems that Jesus wanted to bring up specific facts about her relationship status, and this surely made her uncomfortable. I imagine it would make any of us uncomfortable too, and we can’t really blame her for answering Jesus, ‘I have no husband.’
It was short, sweet, matter-of-fact, and it was the truth from a certain point of view. It was meant to be a clear end to the conversation. It was a polite way to say, ‘I don’t want to talk about that because it’s none of your business.’ It was also a safe answer to give because a stranger should not know anything about her or her circumstances.
Her answer was ambiguous and could mean several different things. Because John does not provide us her age, she could have been a virgin youth like Rebecca or Rachel when they met Isaac and Jacob at a well. Perspectives also vary; she could have been a virgin spinster, a woman who was never married for any number of reasons.
She might be a widow, or she might be divorced. Still, Jesus wanted to have this conversation with her, and he was not going to let her avoid it. So he commended her honesty: ‘You’re right in saying, ‘I have no husband, for you’ve had five, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
But this is exactly where the negative interpreters think that this was a revelation of some great sinfulness in her. But to reach that conclusion so firmly requires that we ignore her first-century context and judge her according to our modern sensibilities.
The evidence they use to build their case is the simple fact that she was married five times and was presently in a non-married relationship, but only the last part might be morally negative. Now, there are only three reasonable probabilities for her present relational status: she had been widowed five times, she had been divorced five times, or had experienced some combination of divorce and widowhood.
But people want to load her down with an excess of personal guilt and shame, something that the text does not actually burden her with. We are willing to consider the less scandalous option of her being a widow—something that would be tragic and unfortunate, something beyond her control, something grievous and pitiable, but not a cause for shame.
When the Sadducees tested Jesus, they offered him the hypothetical situation of a woman who had married seven brothers in succession, just trying to keep and preserve family life. But their example suggests two things: first, that such a situation was not unheard of—it was known to happen—and second, that it was not scandalous. It was unfortunate, but it was not scandalous.
However, if she was widowed five times, then we would kind of expect John to mention that tragic detail. So I do rather doubt that that was her story, which leaves us with the likelihood of divorce.
Matthew Henry assumes that she was guilty and sinful, suggesting that she was an adulteress and divorced, or even more improperly a divorcer, because women were not permitted to initiate divorce in that culture.
Now she was living as someone’s mistress, but according to Moses, divorce was not a valid option in the case of adultery. We have to rule out the accusation of adultery, as someone was considered an adulterer if they were caught.
And if they were caught, then there was only one prescribed penalty: ‘Both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.’ Biblical scholar F.F. Bruce agrees that scandalous divorce was a possible reason, but he refused to definitively offer an opinion. Likewise, the Baptist theologian D.A. Carson assumes that her present relationship is evidence for her morally messy past.
So the suggestion that she was a social outcast merely because she drew water at noon instead of later in the day—assuming that she was on the fringes of society because of terrible moral shame and guilt—is very thin circumstantial evidence.
Then thinking that and knowing that the man she has now—her present provider and protector—is not her husband, leads us to assume the worst as we connect those two dots with a big broad black Sharpie, making a thick heavy line to what we think is the best explanation for who she is. But we forget or ignore her humanity and her person and we treat her worse than the people of Sychar ever might have.
She would not have been married five times if she was a wicked woman because she would have already paid the penalty for it. Nor was she likely quarrelsome or difficult to live with because that would have been well-known and undesirable unless the third, fourth, and fifth men were just such utter and absolute fools.
So you see, she was almost certainly married five times previously because of divorce, death, or a combination of both. In this case, I tend to agree that she was serially divorced. However, that does not address her present circumstance, which is the only opportunity to lay any charge of moral guilt against her.
‘You have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.’ But since her present relationship is not clearly defined, only implied, we jump to the conclusion that she was just shacking up with some guy, forgetting that that would not have been tolerated either in a Jewish or Samaritan town of the first century, because that was considered immoral and a form of adultery—something punishable by death.
This leaves us with four other legitimate relationship possibilities. Perhaps she was living with a male family member, like a brother or an uncle. That is the least likely option, but it’s possible, however unlikely based on the sense of the words used.
She could have been a concubine—a legitimate, legally recognized type of mistress but not as a wife. She could have been working as a servant in a household, and perhaps she was being taken advantage of and therefore was being abused in that relationship.
Or she could have been a professional woman of ill repute—an occupation filled in desperation, not desire or choice. Unfortunately, that last option is what most people uncharitably choose to assume. Scripture does not say that she was, so I believe that is unkind, unfair, and unwarranted.
So if we assume that she was probably divorced five times, then we got to look at what Jesus said about divorce. Jesus answered the Pharisees who were testing him, saying, ‘Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. From the beginning, it was not so.’
Legally, only men were allowed to initiate a divorce, enjoying the privilege of what amounted to a fault divorce. I mean, technically a guy could divorce their wife for any reason they wanted: “If then she finds no favor in his eyes because he’s found some indecency, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house.”
She just had to become somehow unfavorable in his opinion, considering her indecent or otherwise unsuitable as a wife. I’ve often heard this described flippantly, giving possible excuses for divorce, like her being a bad cook, or maybe she broke a dish, or maybe she refused to immediately submit and cater to all of his wants, or maybe she just was not pretty enough. Any excuse at all would suffice.
Since, as Moses continued, when describing a second potential husband, “And the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce,” a man must have really hated his wife to divorce her, because by divorcing her he was utterly destroying her life.
He would remove all security, social standing, and hope of provision from her, and her only acceptable choice would be to return to her father’s home or go live with another family member and hope to be married off again.
Few men would want as a wife a woman that another man had rejected, much less a woman that had been rejected by two, three, four, or five men—even for frivolous reasons. Who would want someone as their wife if five men had found some fault with her already?
A woman in such a state would surely have had a very low social reputation among everyone who knew her. Yet if she were truly guilty of so many terrible faults, then we would not expect her to be very welcome.
However, there is one probable fault that explains why five men might have been willing to try with her, but then cruelly discard her and still deserve her an upstanding place in society: the inability to have children.
Remember, first-century marriage did not necessarily begin with love. They were arranged for practical reasons. Their primary purpose and function were to build and grow families for the good of the clan, tribe, and nation, fulfilling God’s first command to humanity: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth.’
Children were the greatest blessings, and the male heir was important to most men. So if having a son was the most important thing to a man and his wife was incapable of giving him one, casting her off and divorcing her made a cruel form of logic. Just ask Henry VIII.
So this is my answer to the question of who this Samaritan woman was: I propose that she was actually a victim. She was a victim of her circumstances, culture, community, and every man she had called husband.
She was a victim of the cruelty of men who valued her for only one thing, and when she could not provide it, they discarded her. She was the victim of a culture that taught that kind of valuation. She was the victim of a society that limited her opportunities and denied her self-reliance, forcing her to depend on a man.
She was the victim of a society that shamed and caused her to feel guilty for something beyond her control, for an ability which the Lord, in his wisdom, had not providentially granted to her. But what she could now will turn towards the Good by drawing her to himself and removing the pain and shame with his love.
I do not believe that this woman went to the well at noon that day because she was a scorned and despised woman. I think she went there then because she did not want to be around her neighbors and experience their pity regarding her unwarranted shame for something beyond her control.
This was not a chance encounter. It was not a coincidence because Jesus never did anything without purpose. I think Jesus had to pass through Samaria so he could be sitting there beside that well on that day at that time just so he could ask for a drink of water.
I believe he went there for her with great intention because she was one for whom he left the ninety-nine in Israel to go rescue. Because she was a sheep not of Israel’s fold, yet one who belonged to Jesus’s Father, he knew that she would listen to his voice.
Jesus did this to show us the effort and the length that God will go to redeem his beloved elect children. I mean, Jesus loved this woman so much. Jesus wanted this woman so much. Jesus desired this woman.
But unlike all the other men she’d ever known, Jesus did not want her for what she could give him. He wanted her because the Father had given her to him; therefore, he wanted to give her everything. Jesus wanted her in his kingdom, so he went into Samaria to go get her and bring her to his Father.
Unlike everyone else she knew, Jesus did not speak to her with condemnation. Jesus did not judge her; Jesus did not reject her, nor did Jesus offer her pity. Instead, Jesus offered her the hope of God’s promises. Jesus wanted her merely because she was herself and because she was his.
Although John does not tell us that Jesus called her to repent of her sins and be changed, her response shows us that that is what Jesus, God the Son, did. Regardless of what he may or may not have expressly said, this is love. Jesus searched and sought for the lost wherever they were to lead them out of the world’s darkness into the light of God.
Understand, Jesus’s love is different from that of the world. Jesus’s values are different from the world’s values. Jesus saw her as a woman, as a person of worth and great value.
Jesus did not see her as someone to be pitied for their misfortune, but as someone beloved by God who did not know it. And how did she respond to Jesus? She abandoned her water jug and immediately went to town to tell everybody the good news about Jesus.
The woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, ‘Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?’ And they all went out of town and were coming to him.
This unnamed woman responded to Jesus with faith and excited proclamation. Although John never mentions her again, I think we should be encouraged thinking about asking, even, where is she now? Because just after she left Jesus, he explained to his disciples, ‘Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest.’
Already, the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life—implying that she had just been reaped and gathered by the Holy Spirit for eternal life in Christ.
So we may be encouraged because this unnamed nobody—this Samaritan woman living on the fringes of society, victimized by the world—was so loved and valuable enough to Jesus that he went to her. He went where she was, meeting her deep within the pain of her circumstances so that we can believe and know that Jesus will do the same work for all that our Father in Heaven gives us.
If God calls someone, there is no one beyond the reach of Jesus’s Holy Spirit. And while our personal circumstances are different, each of us are like that anonymous woman. We’re all rejected by others; we all feel shame and guilt—not only for the wrong that we’ve done as we are, but we also feel it for the wrongs that are done to us, wrongly blaming ourselves, assuming that we deserve the cruelty others do to us.
Falsely believing that we are to blame, trapping us in a hell of our own devising, we falsely believe that we are beyond saving. But no one is beyond the power of God and the redemption of Jesus Christ if they truly believe in him.
While life remains, there is hope for all of us. So I urge you: come, meet Jesus for yourself. Open your Bible to read and hear him speak to you. Open your heart and pray that he will enter in. Turn to him in faith and ask him for the living water that he stands ready to give you.
Do not let your past stand in the way of a future with Jesus Christ. Repent, believe, remember: this Samaritan woman was so important to Jesus, although no one else thought her of any worth.
You may know that you are loved and desired by him. Know and believe that if you ask him, then he will give you all that he’s promised here in his holy word, because everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.