The Woman at the Well (John 4:5-42, Part 1)

John 4:5-42 tells the story of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at the well. It’s one of the longest conversations Jesus has with anyone in the Gospels, and it happens to someone who least expected to be noticed by him.

The woman came to the well at noon, perhaps when she thought no one else would be there. But Jesus was waiting for her. He asked her for a drink, and in that simple act, he broke barriers—between men and women, Jews and Samaritans, the righteous and the outcast.

We often make a lot of assumptions about this woman. We often assume she must have been a woman of questionable morals. Why did she have so many husbands? And now she isn’t married to the man she is living with. Don’t we love a good scandal?

Perhaps there is a little more to the picture than what we have been told to see. Why DID she have so many husbands? Levirate marriage gives us one possible, compassionate lens for seeing the Samaritan woman’s story, but it is not the only way to understand her situation, and Scripture itself does not tell us exactly why she had “five husbands.”

Levirate marriage was the practice where, if a man died without children, his brother (or next male relative) was expected to marry the widow so that the dead brother’s name and inheritance would continue within the family, as laid out in Deuteronomy 25:5–6. [See also here.] This law was meant to protect vulnerable widows and preserve family lines, not to shame them. You can see a beautiful example of this in the book of Ruth.

Some scholars suggest that the Samaritan woman’s five husbands could reflect this kind of situation—she may have been widowed repeatedly and “trapped in the levirate regulations,” moving from brother to brother in obedience to the law, rather than because of promiscuity. In that world, such a pattern, while tragic, could still be “entirely possible” for a woman who had married young and was later around middle age.

Because, historically, many preachers and commentators have assumed she was immoral, they have used her five marriages as proof that she led a “loose moral life.” But the text in John 4 never actually says why she had five husbands, or whether death, divorce, abandonment, or custom lay behind her story. Some possibilities people have raised include:

• Repeated widowhood, perhaps tied to levirate marriage.
• Being divorced multiple times for reasons that did not necessarily reflect moral failure on her part (barrenness, for example, could justify a husband sending away his wife in that culture).
• Economic vulnerability that left her dependent on a man who, for whatever reason, had not formally married her.

Seeing levirate marriage as a possibility softens the rush to judgment. Instead of picturing a shameless sinner, we may be looking at a woman who has suffered a long string of losses and rejections, and who has done what she needed to survive within the limits of her culture.

When Jesus says, “You have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband” (John 4:18), he names her reality with piercing accuracy—but he does so without harshness. His words lead her to recognition: “Sir, I see that you are a prophet” (4:19). The focus in the story is not on shaming her but on revealing who Jesus is and opening her heart to living water.

Whether her situation grew from levirate marriage, serial divorce, or some mixture of grief and brokenness, the good news is the same:

• Jesus meets her where she is, with full knowledge of her past.
• He treats her as a serious theological conversation partner.
• He turns her from isolation into witness; her testimony leads many in the town to faith, and they come to confess Jesus as “Savior of the world” (John 4:42).

For Lent, this reading invites us to let go of easy labels. Instead of assuming we know why someone’s life looks the way it does, we remember that only God sees the whole story. Levirate marriage reminds us that cultural and legal forces can shape a life in ways that are hidden from outside eyes.

At the well, Jesus does not ask, “How did you get yourself into this mess?” He offers himself: living water, truth, and welcome. Our call is to do the same—to see others not first as a scandal to fix, but as a neighbor to love, a person whose story may be far more complex than we know, and someone for whom Christ has already come and already died “while we still were sinners” (Romans 5:8).

During Lent, let us reflect on how we may be too quick in our judgments of others.

Let us pray...

Loving God, thank you for meeting us at the wells of our daily lives. Where we are weary, give us your living water. Where we feel unworthy, remind us that you know us and still love us. Fill us with your Spirit, that we may share your grace with others in word and deed. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

All scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.