Theology Thursday

by Dave Holzhauer

You have likely heard the phrase “bread and water”. You have also likely heard it used in context of prison or privation. It is a metaphor that has become a byword or shorthand for giving someone only just enough to keep them alive. But it is also a metonymic phrase, where bread is a poetic stand in for food, and water likewise. Both would have been would have been important to your average traveler in first century Judea, since it is difficult to carry substantial supplies of either on one’s back while walking the rugged roads. Since you couldn’t carry all the water you needed and surface sources of water were rare, you were reliant on the hospitality of others to give you water. This is the backdrop of the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman.

“Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John(although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples),he left Judea and departed again for Galilee.And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 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.

 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”(For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”’ (John 4:1-15, ESV)

            An important bit of context before we proceed: there were three basic types of water in the first century Near East. There was cistern water, which came from a purposely dug hole in the ground; fancy cisterns would have been dug into non-permeable rock. These relied on water running down into them during a rain. Since there was no filtration system, these were essentially cesspools, filled with water, dirt, and decaying organic matter, among other things. Well water tapped into aquifers, a better source of water, since the permeable rock above the aquifer acted like a rough version of a Britta filter. However, like their modern counterparts, these wells could become contaminated. Living water was running water, whether from a spring, an open system fountain, a stream, etc. Living water was the best type, since it was least likely to contaminated.

            With that background in mind, let’s zoom in on the metaphor Jesus is using. He’s at a well, talking to a woman with the tools to draw water. But he offers her water that’s better than the water he just asked her to give him. It’s akin to asking a complete stranger at a restaurant to buy your dinner and then telling them that you have three Michelin star food. When the woman tries to call him out, Jesus begins to describe something tantalizing indeed, water that will satisfy the thirst of one’s soul. If you’ve ever been thirsty for very long, you know how it is a sensation that refuses to be ignored or suppressed, and the longer it goes, the worse it becomes. 

            I suspect that the woman was intrigued, but not entirely sold. But, she tells Jesus ‘…“Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”’ (John 4:15). Might as well see if Jesus can deliver the goods, right? Jesus’s response takes an unexpected tack: ‘”…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.”’(John 4:16-18). 

Think back to how thirst refuses to be ignored or suppressed. Now imagine being surrounded by only sea water. Sure, you can drink it, but it will only make you exponentially thirster. The Samaritan woman had been drinking the incorrect water, and it had only made her soul thirstier. She had gone through five husbands and was now on a man who was not her husband, but her soul was still thirsty. What she tried to quench with men could only be quenched by God. I think she suspected, somewhere inside, that this was true, because her next question to Jesus is about where people should worship God (verses 19-20). It’s a test of what Jesus would say, since Samaritans and Jews disagreed vehemently about where one should worship, but there’s the kernel of awareness that she was trying to put a round peg in a square hole. Jesus confronts her on her most pressing issue, that she was attempting to anesthetize her spiritual needs. The Samaritan woman attempts to defuse the conversation by saying that when the Messiah comes, he will explain everything (v.25). Jesus puts the onus back on her, saying “I who speak to you am he.” (v.26).

            It’s very easy to stretch a metaphor too far, to over-conceptualize it and lose sight of its actual point. But if you have a craving that has not been sated by all that you’ve thrown at it, you are likely in the same place as the Samaritan woman in verse 29: “Come, see a man who told me everything that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?”

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