| 章 |
| 4:1 |
The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John,
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| 4:2 |
although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples.
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| 4:3 |
When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
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| 4:4 |
Now he had to go through Samaria.
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| 4:5 |
So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
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| 4:6 |
Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
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| 4:7 |
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?"
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| 4:8 |
(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
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| 4:9 |
The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
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| 4:10 |
Jesus answered 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."
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| 4:11 |
"Sir," the woman said, "you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water?
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| 4:12 |
Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"
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| 4:13 |
Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,
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| 4:14 |
but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
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| 4:15 |
The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."
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| 4:16 |
He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."
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| 4:17 |
"I have no husband," she replied. Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband.
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| 4:18 |
The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."
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| 4:19 |
"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet.
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| 4:20 |
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem."
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| 4:21 |
Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
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| 4:22 |
You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.
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| 4:23 |
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
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| 4:24 |
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."
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| 4:25 |
The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."
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| 4:26 |
Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am he."
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| 4:27 |
Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, "What do you want?" or "Why are you talking with her?"
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| 4:28 |
Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people,
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| 4:29 |
"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?"
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| 4:30 |
They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
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| 4:31 |
Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."
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| 4:32 |
But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."
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| 4:33 |
Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"
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| 4:34 |
"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
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| 4:35 |
Do you not say, `Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
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| 4:36 |
Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.
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| 4:37 |
Thus the saying `One sows and another reaps' is true.
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| 4:38 |
I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."
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| 4:39 |
Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me everything I ever did."
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| 4:40 |
So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days.
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| 4:41 |
And because of his words many more became believers.
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| 4:42 |
They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world."
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| 4:43 |
After the two days he left for Galilee.
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| 4:44 |
(Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.)
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| 4:45 |
When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there.
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| 4:46 |
Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum.
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| 4:47 |
When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.
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| 4:48 |
"Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders," Jesus told him, "you will never believe."
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| 4:49 |
The royal official said, "Sir, come down before my child dies."
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| 4:50 |
Jesus replied, "You may go. Your son will live." The man took Jesus at his word and departed.
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| 4:51 |
While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living.
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| 4:52 |
When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, "The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour."
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| 4:53 |
Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he and all his household believed.
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| 4:54 |
This was the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed, having come from Judea to Galilee.
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