The Other Woman at the Well: A Supplement to Aimee Byrd’s “Women, Wells, and Weddings”
Rescuing the Bible’s material on women from past misreading and neglect is an ecumenical endeavor. Aimee Byrd is a Presbyterian theologian whose previous books include Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and No Little Women. Her recent work, The Sexual Reformation, on a scriptural theology of the sexes, describes how the story of Jesus and the woman at the well in John 4 echoes the stories of Rebekah, Rachel, and Zipporah meeting their bridegrooms (or the groom’s representative) at a well (see Gen. 24; 29:1–20; Exod. 2:15–21). It’s a fascinating insight! Yet there’s room at the well for one more woman from Scripture’s early chapters, and her story sheds further light on John 4. What follows is my bid to both compliment and complement Byrd’s study by rounding out her coverage of women, wells, and weddings.
To set the scene, let’s review the common elements in Rebekah’s, Rachel’s, and Zipporah’s well-to-wedding tales. According to Robert Alter (The Art of Biblical Narrative [2011], 51-52), there are five such elements:
The future bridegroom or his proxy takes a trip.
By a well he meets a woman described as a maiden or as someone’s daughter.
Water is drawn from the well.
The woman hastens home to announce the man’s coming.
A betrothal ensues.
Turning to the Fourth Gospel, we find that Jesus journeys to Samaria, meets a woman at a well, asks for a drink of water, and makes such an impression that she rushes into town to announce him (John 4:4–7, 28–29). Alter’s first, fourth, and half of his second elements clearly play their parts in this episode. But the Samaritan woman isn’t identified as a daughter or maiden—in fact, she’s already been married multiple times and is currently cohabiting (John 4:16–18). Rather than getting water from the well, Jesus promises better water and better worship, too (4:13–14, 21–24). The incident concludes not with a betrothal but with a townful of Samaritans owning Jesus as “the Savior of the world” (4:42). To track down the Old Testament backstory of these deviations from Alter’s script, we need to look to a different woman at a well.
Before Zipporah, Rachel, or Rebekah, there’s Hagar. Twice in the book of Genesis, she shows up at a well. The first time comes after she’s first introduced in Genesis 16 and has become Abraham’s concubine due to Sarah’s effort to produce a child through a surrogate, her maidservant. As Sarah had hoped, Hagar conceives, but her ego swells along with her belly. She treats her mistress disrespectfully and Sarah reacts by mistreating her. Hagar runs away and ends up by a well: “The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert” (Gen. 16:7). He asks her what she’s doing, listens to her, then sends her back to Sarah with a promise of many descendants. Hagar’s response? “I have now seen the one who sees me” (Gen. 16:13). Hagar even names the spot “well of the Living One who sees me” (Gen. 16:14).
The second time she’s at a well is at the opposite bookend of her history. Genesis 21 opens with the miraculous birth of Isaac to a geriatric Sarah. Before long, though, Hagar’s boy Ishmael follows in his mom’s footsteps by showing contempt for Sarah’s son. True to form, Sarah retaliates, this time by giving both Hagar and Ishmael their walking papers. They wander until they run out of water. Hagar weeps over her son’s impending death by dehydration. Suddenly, “the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven” (Gen. 21:17) to reassure her of the divine promise of descendants, and God reveals a hidden well that will save their lives.
These twin narratives offer an alternative to Alter’s account. In them, 1) a woman who’s not called an unmarried maiden or daughter goes where there’s a well. 2) There she encounters God or God’s proxy. 3) From him she receives expressions of divine favor. Notice how these three elements from Hagar’s life compare with John 4.
First, Hagar already has a husband when she goes to the well the first time, and she’s lost him by her second journey: Abraham has dismissed her, ending her concubinage to him. The Samaritan woman has had a similar experience multiplied several times over. We don’t know how she has lost her five husbands. Maybe each of them sent her away like Abraham did to Hagar or like the twice-divorced wife in Moses’ case law (Deut. 24:1–4). Or perhaps they each died, one after another, like the seven husbands of the widow in the apocryphal book of Tobit (Tob. 3:7–8) and in the puzzle the Sadducees posed to Jesus (Matt. 22:23–28 and parallels). Or it could be that the Samaritan woman has been through a tragic mix of divorces and funerals (see Caryn Reeder, The Samaritan Woman’s Story [2022], 149-51). Whatever the exact details of her marital background, like Hagar centuries before, she arrives at the well carrying a much heavier load than just a water jar.
Second, both times Hagar reaches the vicinity of a well, God unexpectedly intervenes in her life. Hagar has the distinction of being the first biblical character said to encounter the mysterious “angel of the Lord,” whose identity throughout the Old Testament seems so interchangeable with God himself that the line between proxy and principal becomes blurry (see, for instance, Gen. 22:11–18; Judg. 6:11–24; Zech. 3:1–5). He engages her in conversation and gives her hope. In light of God’s attention, Hagar stands amazed at the One who sees her (Gen. 16:13–14)—that is, the God who both knows her and sees to her needs.
The Samaritan woman has a similar experience in John 4. Jesus initiates a conversation with her, shows knowledge of the intimate details of her life, and offers her hope. She goes from thinking of him as just another Jewish man (4:8) to recognizing him as a prophet (4:19) to entertaining the astonishing thought that he might be the Messiah (4:29). She becomes the first person in the Fourth Gospel to whom Jesus self-identifies as the Christ (4:25–26). But Reeder (Samaritan Woman’s Story, 160-67) points out that there’s even more going on under the surface: when the woman calls Jesus “Sir” (4:11, 15, 19), it’s the same word as “Lord.” She only means it as a generic term of respect, but she is the first character in John’s Gospel to (inadvertently) confess Jesus as Lord. Even more profoundly, when Jesus tells her, “I am he” (4:26), this is the first of his signature “I am” sayings in this Gospel, sayings that his hearers eventually associate with a claim to deity (John 8:58–59). As with the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, the line between God and his proxy blurs as Jesus’ contemporaries interact with him.
Third, God does her a threefold favor:
A) Hagar twice receives God’s pledge that he will make of her son a great host of descendants (Gen. 16:10–11; 21:18).
B) God also foretells Ishmael’s future: he (and by extension his offspring) will be at odds with the neighboring nations (Gen. 16:12).
C) Lastly, the Living One (Gen. 16:14) provides water to save her son’s life and her own (Gen. 21:19).
Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman reverses this order and transcends its content:
C´) He begins by offering her living water that grants eternal life (John 4:14).
B´) Then he tells of a true worship that overcomes the old neighborly antagonism between Jew and Samaritan (4:21–24).
A´) In the end, his ministry makes the Samaritan woman the spiritual mother of a great host of converts as she becomes his evangelist to her village (4:39–42).
These parallels between Hagar and the Samaritan woman don’t mean that we should ignore Alter’s betrothal tropes when interpreting John 4. In fact, John’s Gospel frames the meeting at the well with nuptial themes: before the curtain opens on this chapter, Jesus has performed his first miracle at a wedding banquet in Cana (John 2:1–11) and John the Baptist has just finished comparing him to a bridegroom (3:29). After Jesus leaves Samaria, there’s a reminder of the Cana wedding miracle (4:46; see Reeder, Samaritan Woman’s Story, 154-60). There’s more than marital meaning here, but certainly not less!
To appreciate most fully the grand gospel story in John 4, we need Rebekah’s, Rachel’s, and Zipporah’s stories . . . and Hagar’s . . . and yours and mine. However we’ve succeeded or failed in life; whatever our religious past or marital status; whether we’re Jew or Gentile, male or female, one thing is sure. There’s room for each one of us at the well and in the Savior’s heart.
Jerome Van Kuiken is Professor of Christian Thought at Oklahoma Wesleyan University. He serves on the editorial board of Firebrand.