I Had the Samaritan Woman All Wrong
I’ve loved preaching John 4 over the years. It’s rich, dynamic, and can flow in all sorts of directions.
The problem is: I recently realised I’ve been portraying the Samaritan woman wrong this whole time.
You’ve probably heard the common portrayals too. You might have even preached them like I have:
She’s sinful – five husbands, and now living with a man who isn’t her husband.
She’s an outcast – forced to collect water alone in the heat of the day.
It preaches well. It connects with people’s shame and brokenness. It makes for a great altar call.
But something doesn’t add up.
If she’s such a notorious sinner and outcast, why does the whole village listen to her and believe her? That seems… unlikely.
“Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony.” (John 4:39)
Outcasts don’t usually get that kind of hearing.
The Moment My View Got Blown Up
Earlier this year, in a class for my Masters, my lecturer – the great Rev Dr Sean du Toit – gently (okay, not gently) challenged my assumptions about her.
I did not receive the challenge well.
I pushed back in my head: I’ve preached sermons on this… good ones. I’ve told her story as the sinful, scandalous, isolated woman at the well.
While he talked, I was furiously checking commentaries, scrolling articles, even jumping on ChatGPT to see what the broader scholarship said. In the end, I had to do the uncomfortable thing:
I had to change my mind.
Someone once said:
The best thing about realising you’re wrong is that now you’re less wrong.
That line felt uncomfortably true.
Two Big Assumptions Holding Up the “Bad Girl” Story
The usual case for the Samaritan woman being sinful and an outcast hangs on two main assumptions:
Her five husbands + current man must mean scandal and adultery.
Her collecting water at midday must mean she’s socially isolated.
Let’s pull on both of those threads.
A Little Background: Why This Scene Is So Radical
Before we dig into the assumptions, we need to remember how shocking John 4 already is without adding moral scandal.
Jews and Samaritans had a long, tangled, hostile history.
They disagreed about Scripture, the temple, the proper mountain of worship, and what “true Israel” even meant.
Jews travelling between Judea and Galilee typically avoided Samaria altogether.
So when Jesus — a Jewish rabbi — sits alone with a Samaritan woman, speaks kindly to her, engages her theologically, and reveals himself more clearly to her than to almost anyone else… this scene is already scandalous in all the right ways.
It’s a story about crossing boundaries, not shaming sinners.
1. “Five Husbands” and the Man She Now Has
Notice what John doesn’t say.
There is no explicit mention of sin in relation to the Samaritan woman. No sin category. No moral condemnation. Jesus doesn’t give the “go and sin no more” line, which he uses elsewhere (John 5:14; 8:11). He simply reveals that he knows her story.
And if she were notoriously immoral, it’s unlikely that:
Five men would have married her, and
A sixth man would now be in relationship with her
—especially in an honour/shame village context where a woman with that reputation would be socially and economically radioactive.
There are historically plausible alternatives:
She may have been widowed multiple times.
She may have been divorced repeatedly (almost always at the man’s initiative).
She may be in some kind of economic survival arrangement.
Several modern scholars argue that we’ve judged her too quickly and that John is highlighting her as a truthful, intelligent, spiritually curious dialogue partner — not the town’s moral pariah.
2. Water at Noon: Is She an Outcast?
The second assumption is that drawing water at noon = shame + avoidance.
But here’s the issue:
There’s no strong evidence that women in first-century Palestine strictly collected water only in the cool of the morning or evening. At minimum, the evidence isn’t strong enough to build an entire psychological profile around why someone is there at midday.
It is entirely possible people collected water simply:
when they needed it,
when they ran out,
or when the rhythms of the day demanded it.
Yes, there are earlier Old Testament scenes of women at wells — but those are 1500 years earlier and in different cultural settings. Using them as a universal rule is a stretch.
Could she still have been avoiding others? Sure.
But the text never says that. We’re filling gaps.
The Nicodemus Contrast We Miss
One of the most overlooked features of John’s Gospel is how intentionally he pairs stories.
John 3 and John 4 are meant to be read together.
In John 3 we meet Nicodemus:
Male
Jewish
Named
Educated
A religious insider
Comes to Jesus at night
In John 4 we meet the Samaritan woman:
Female
Samaritan
Unnamed
No social power
A religious outsider
Meets Jesus in broad daylight
And here’s the twist:
Nicodemus doesn’t understand Jesus.
But the Samaritan woman engages, asks questions, moves with the conversation, and becomes the first evangelist to her city.
So she’s not the “problem case” after all. She’s actually one of John’s model disciples.
What If We Just Took the Text at Face Value?
We will never know all the historical details of her backstory. John doesn’t give them to us.
But what if we just took what is there and read it without the lens of scandal and shame?
I actually think the passage gets richer.
What if…
What if this is a faithful woman waiting for the Messiah?
She knows the promises. She asks sharp theological questions. She’s thinking about worship in spirit and truth.What if she’s a kind of Samaritan Anna?
A woman with a deep, aching spiritual hunger, looking for redemption in the ordinary rhythms of life.What if her life simply hasn’t gone to plan?
Maybe she has known grief, loss, abandonment, economic vulnerability — an entire life of thirst without fullness.What if she was respected, not rejected?
The village listens to her. They believe her. That tells you something about how they saw her.
Does This Make the Story Better or Worse?
Honestly? Better.
Instead of a “naughty woman who finally gets her life together,” we might be looking at:
A weary, resilient seeker
A woman who has been let down repeatedly, yet still shows up
A woman who becomes the first missionary of her city
That’s not a softer story. It’s a deeper one.
Preaching This Passage Differently
When we preach John 4, instead of presenting her primarily as a moral failure, maybe we invite people to identify with her as:
People who feel like life hasn’t gone to plan
People who know the ache of disappointment
People who keep coming back to the well because something in them refuses to give up on hope
And then we preach the gospel:
If we remain open and keep seeking, we too will find living water in Jesus — not after our story becomes neat, but right in the middle of the mess.
Letting Scripture Challenge Our Assumptions
Whatever we conclude about her, we must admit: John leaves gaps.
And gaps invite assumptions.
Some assumptions help; others blind us.
This passage has become a reminder for me to let Scripture not just confront my behaviour, but my certainty. To let it pull the sermon out of my hands and write a better one.
I didn’t love that at first.
But I’m grateful for it now.
My hope is that you’ll let John 4 unsettle you too — that you’ll revisit the Samaritan woman not as the villain of the story, but as a thirsty, faithful seeker who may have understood Jesus more quickly than anyone expected.
