Copy of John 4:1-6, Jesus at the Well

1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), 3 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. 4 And he had to pass through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. 

John tells us that Jesus will not compete with John now that the Pharisees are apparently trying to cause some problems for them. Instead, he heads north to Galilee, going through Samaria on the way. Samaria had been the central city of the northern kingdom of Israel. Its most famous king was Ahab, who reigned there twenty-two years and did more evil than all who were before him. When the northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians around 740 B.C., the Assyrians deported the most educated of the Israelites, leaving the lower classes there and brought in a new ruling class. Over time the two groups mixed, meaning Samaria in Jesus’ time was a mixed race and mixed religious area. The Samaritans were thus frowned upon by the Pharisees, the religious elites. 

Yet this area had a rich history because Jacob had bought land here and set up an altar where he declared that God was Israel’s God. So Jesus, tired and thirsty at the noon hour, arrives at his family’s well. As “the Word made flesh,” his human limitations make him very relatable to the woman he will meet.  

Consider Jesus’ human limitations and your own. Does this make Jesus more relatable to you? Spend some time talking to him about this.