John 4:16-20 16He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” 17The woman answered and said to him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have spoken correctly, ‘I have no husband’; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have spoken truthfully.” 19The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.”
Whereas the human Jesus is shown in his tiredness and thirst in verse 6, now his divinity is shown in verse 16 when he asked the woman to call her husband. He knew what was in her heart and knew her past struggles. As in other parts of his Gospel, John records the perfect balance between Jesus’ humanity and divinity. The Samaritan woman had not understood that Jesus was pointing to her deepest need. He had what she needed, but she had to realize this for herself. Her response in verse 17 shows her honesty but also her effort to get around the question.
Jesus got right to the heart of the matter for this woman. She had had a lot of problems with men, with five husbands and living with a man whom she had not married. The text does not say what happened to the five husbands. The more typical situation would have been that they all died and she remarried, but divorce was easy at that time, so she may have been passed from one man to another. Perhaps she gave up on the marriage idea and just decided to live with a man without the formal blessing of a marriage. In a small town like Sychar, surry details of a woman like this may have been the source of gossip. She had a lot going again her. Perhaps her only refuge was to go out to the well in the middle of the day when no one else was around.
The woman immediately saw that there was something special about Jesus. No one could have known such details of her life, especially a strange Jewish man who spoke kind words and showed her respect. She interpreted him to be a prophet, but Jesus wanted her to go deeper in her faith. Obviously God was with him if he knew so much about her. Jesus was able to speak to people of all types of backgrounds, from the highest rulers to the outcasts of society. As the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (1:29, 34), he came to people like the Samaritan woman with the message of forgiveness and new life. The woman needed to come to terms with her past and present in order to move into the future Jesus had for her. What he offered would change her life.
For older posts, click here.