For most of the women in the village, the day had begun at least six hours earlier, before the morning sun had even appeared. Stirring in the cool darkness before dawn, they had lit fires from coals kept overnight. There had been breakfasts to fix, torn clothes to mend, bread to bake in the village ovens, and a thousand other chores demanding attention.
But most important of all was the early-morning trek to Jacob’ s Well, to fetch the day’s water.
They talked, and that could be bad enough; but when they stopped talking, that could be even worse. Fotoni had been at the well too many times when the voices fell silent and the whispers replaced them. She had felt the eyes of the other women linger on her as she walked past, and she had bled when haughty eyes and upturned chins had cut her deep.
Fotoni no longer went to Jacob’s Well in the morning to gather her water when the air was cool and comfortable. She went instead when it was noon and the air baked like the village oven. She went at noon when she could get water in peace, and she could be alone. There was never anyone else at the well at midday.
And then one day, there was.
* * *
Fotoni saw the man before he saw her. He was a Jew in his late 20s or early 30s, and he sat near the well by himself, doing nothing in particular. His face and his robe were coated in the dust of the road, and he looked tired enough that he posed no greater threat than the usual insults Jews and Samaritans hurled at one another. She could handle those; she already had endured far worse.
She stepped closer, and the man heard her. He turned, and to Fotoni’s shock, he spoke to her.
“Can I have a drink?” he asked, and with that simple request, Jesus began the longest recorded conversation in the gospel with a woman.
It was a conversation that would end with Fotoni returning to the village and telling everyone she could about the strange man she had met by the well. She told them how he had looked right through her as if he could peer into the deep parts of her soul, and she shared the strange conversion they had shared.
“He told me everything I had ever done,” she said.
And when she had finished talking and saw that they were as intrigued by her reports of this enigmatic man, Fotoni dropped the question that had been burning like a coal in her heart the entire time.
“Could he be the messiah?”
* * *
There’s a lot we don’t know about the Woman at the Well. The Orthodox Church canonizes her under the name Fotoni, but the Bible never even tells us that much. All we do know is what she and Jesus establish in their conversation; She’s Samaritan, she has had five husbands, and at the time the story takes place, she is living with a man she is not married to.
Into the silence of the biblical record, the church has whispered details that could have come from the village gossips and scolds. Married five times, and don’t you know that divorce is a sin? The man you are with now is not your husband. This is a brazen hussy, boys, a sinner who leaves one husband after another, and now shamelessly shacking up with a sixth man.
Loose, the tongues say at the Bible study.
A prostitute, preachers declare from the pulpit.
Bad character, everyone agrees. A lost sinner, in need of a savior.
Even the time she went to the well testifies against this woman. The evangelist specifies that the Samaritan woman went to draw water from the well at noon. “The sixth hour was when loose women went to the well,” I recall one college Bible study leader sharing.
I’ve no idea how normative my experiences are, but it seems that every time I’ve heard a sermon or read a commentary on the woman at the well, the preacher or the writer always wanted to make sure we understood what a wretched sinner the woman was. The message is that no matter how bad your sin, no matter how far you’ve fallen, you’re not beyond the reach of God’s love. Just make sure you appreciate what a sinner you are.
But what if that’s not the message of the story? There’s what the gospel says, after all; and there’s how we interpret it. Standing in the middle of the two is all the layers of narrative we’ve repeated so many times that we just take it for granted that it’s part of the text.
We do this all the time. It’s a problem we have with this story, but in truth it’s part of a larger problem in the church and how we read the Bible.
Popular view in the church makes Eve responsible for the Fall of Humanity, even though Scripture teaches otherwise. The Apostle Paul puts responsibility for the Fall on Adam, telling us that “death entered the world through sin, and sin entered the world through one man” (Romans 5:12). To make it absolutely clear, Paul explains that Eve was deceived, but Adam flat-out disobeyed (1 Timothy 2:14).
The Bible tells us that David abused his royal position to summon Bathsheba to the royal palace and have sex with her. The incident gets so bad that it ultimately destabilizes the throne, and the Bible lists it as David’s one major failing (1 Kings 15:5). Look around and you’ll find no shortage of apologists looking to excuse David of sexual assault and instead accuse Bathsheba of laying a trap to lure him into adultery.
The gospels describe Mary Magdalene as someone from whom Jesus once cast seven demons (Luke 8:2), and suggest she was a wealthy and important woman. Meanwhile, the most popular detail people know to share about her is that she was a prostitute – a slander first told in the sixth century during a sermon by Pope Gregory, who identified her seven demons with the Seven Deadly sins.
And the Woman at the Well, whatever her name is, gets caught in this same net of shaming and is dragged through the mud.
What do we know about her? She was married five times. Was she widowed? Was she divorced? The Bible doesn’t say, leaving us to make our best guess. But as a Samaritan woman in the first century, Fotoni would have had little say in either situation.
The first century was a bloody period in Samaria, Galilee and Judea, and it was all too common for men to die at the end of a Roman sword or spear. The death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE led to an uprising against Roman rule that saw the city of Sepphoris burned and hundreds of men crucified to enforce obedience to Roman law. Before his term as governor ended, Pontius Pilate would bring a bloody end to another uprising in Samaria itself in 36 CE.
Loose, the tongues say at the Bible study.
A prostitute, preachers declare from the pulpit.
Bad character, everyone agrees. A lost sinner, in need of a savior.
Even the time she went to the well testifies against this woman. The evangelist specifies that the Samaritan woman went to draw water from the well at noon. “The sixth hour was when loose women went to the well,” I recall one college Bible study leader sharing.
I’ve no idea how normative my experiences are, but it seems that every time I’ve heard a sermon or read a commentary on the woman at the well, the preacher or the writer always wanted to make sure we understood what a wretched sinner the woman was. The message is that no matter how bad your sin, no matter how far you’ve fallen, you’re not beyond the reach of God’s love. Just make sure you appreciate what a sinner you are.
But what if that’s not the message of the story? There’s what the gospel says, after all; and there’s how we interpret it. Standing in the middle of the two is all the layers of narrative we’ve repeated so many times that we just take it for granted that it’s part of the text.
We do this all the time. It’s a problem we have with this story, but in truth it’s part of a larger problem in the church and how we read the Bible.
Popular view in the church makes Eve responsible for the Fall of Humanity, even though Scripture teaches otherwise. The Apostle Paul puts responsibility for the Fall on Adam, telling us that “death entered the world through sin, and sin entered the world through one man” (Romans 5:12). To make it absolutely clear, Paul explains that Eve was deceived, but Adam flat-out disobeyed (1 Timothy 2:14).
The Bible tells us that David abused his royal position to summon Bathsheba to the royal palace and have sex with her. The incident gets so bad that it ultimately destabilizes the throne, and the Bible lists it as David’s one major failing (1 Kings 15:5). Look around and you’ll find no shortage of apologists looking to excuse David of sexual assault and instead accuse Bathsheba of laying a trap to lure him into adultery.
The gospels describe Mary Magdalene as someone from whom Jesus once cast seven demons (Luke 8:2), and suggest she was a wealthy and important woman. Meanwhile, the most popular detail people know to share about her is that she was a prostitute – a slander first told in the sixth century during a sermon by Pope Gregory, who identified her seven demons with the Seven Deadly sins.
And the Woman at the Well, whatever her name is, gets caught in this same net of shaming and is dragged through the mud.
What do we know about her? She was married five times. Was she widowed? Was she divorced? The Bible doesn’t say, leaving us to make our best guess. But as a Samaritan woman in the first century, Fotoni would have had little say in either situation.
The first century was a bloody period in Samaria, Galilee and Judea, and it was all too common for men to die at the end of a Roman sword or spear. The death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE led to an uprising against Roman rule that saw the city of Sepphoris burned and hundreds of men crucified to enforce obedience to Roman law. Before his term as governor ended, Pontius Pilate would bring a bloody end to another uprising in Samaria itself in 36 CE.
If any of Fotoni’s husbands died at Roman hands, from illness, or from simple bad fortune, she would have been left bereft and dependent upon customs like the kinsman redeemer to see that she was provided for. Each partner she had lowered her value to potential suitors, like a steak another person had taken a bite of.
Was she a multiple divorcee? That likewise was outside her control. A woman had no recourse in first-century Samaria to demand release from a toxic marriage, but her husband could send her away for any reason he wanted. Jealousy? That was his call. Bad cook? Fair enough. Ugly? Who could blame him? No children? You are divorced, divorced, divorced.
Five husbands in, no matter her age, Fotoni would have been in a desperate spot. That sixth man wouldn’t take her as his wife. He wouldn’t hide her shame. But if she gave him sex, he’d give her a place to sleep. He’d give her food. He’d let her survive.
Fotoni wasn’t a reprobate. She was alone and in a desperate situation, doing what she needed to do to survive. Her day was spent existing, trying to find what scraps of dignity and life she could find, under whatever stone they were hidden; while she tried to avoid the notice of others so she could forget the humiliation life had given her.
And then she met Jesus down by the well.
***
Wells play a prominent place in courtship in the Hebrew Scriptures. When Abraham sent his servant Eliezer to find a wife for his son Isaac, Eliezer found Rebekah at the well. She agreed to marry Isaac, and returned to Canaan with Eliezer. When Moses fled Egypt, he met Zipporah at the well. They later married, and she joins him on his return to Egypt to free Israel.
And now here we have Jesus, sitting by a well, and asking Fotoni for a drink.
Jesus wasn’t there by chance. He knew what time it was. He knew the mores of the day, and he knew who would go to the well to fetch water in the heat of the day.
Not prostitutes.
Not sinners.
Was she a multiple divorcee? That likewise was outside her control. A woman had no recourse in first-century Samaria to demand release from a toxic marriage, but her husband could send her away for any reason he wanted. Jealousy? That was his call. Bad cook? Fair enough. Ugly? Who could blame him? No children? You are divorced, divorced, divorced.
Five husbands in, no matter her age, Fotoni would have been in a desperate spot. That sixth man wouldn’t take her as his wife. He wouldn’t hide her shame. But if she gave him sex, he’d give her a place to sleep. He’d give her food. He’d let her survive.
Fotoni wasn’t a reprobate. She was alone and in a desperate situation, doing what she needed to do to survive. Her day was spent existing, trying to find what scraps of dignity and life she could find, under whatever stone they were hidden; while she tried to avoid the notice of others so she could forget the humiliation life had given her.
And then she met Jesus down by the well.
***
Wells play a prominent place in courtship in the Hebrew Scriptures. When Abraham sent his servant Eliezer to find a wife for his son Isaac, Eliezer found Rebekah at the well. She agreed to marry Isaac, and returned to Canaan with Eliezer. When Moses fled Egypt, he met Zipporah at the well. They later married, and she joins him on his return to Egypt to free Israel.
And now here we have Jesus, sitting by a well, and asking Fotoni for a drink.
Jesus wasn’t there by chance. He knew what time it was. He knew the mores of the day, and he knew who would go to the well to fetch water in the heat of the day.
Not prostitutes.
Not sinners.
Outcasts.
Jesus went to the well at noon because the only people he would meet there would be of no account, someone whom no man would respect and whom no woman would either, not because of anything they had done but because society is cruel. When Jesus stopped Fotoni and asked her for a drink, he invited the scorn of anyone who saw him talking to her but he also elevated her to the role of a benefactor
And then he went further, and initiated a discussion with her about God, about salvation, about Torah and worship, and treated her like she was a learned elder. In a few short minutes, Jesus showed Fotoni more respect than she’d had in years and restored the dignity and self-worth she’d always known she deserved.
Jesus saw how weary she was from her life of labor and isolation, and offered her living water, a symbol she picks up on immediately. And then, in a final flourish, he revealed himself to her, and made Fotoni the first Samaritan entrusted with his revelation, and sent her, spirit soaring, back to her village where her status was raised from “that woman” to chosen emissary of the messiah.
The men who tell the story of Fotoni today – and let’s be honest, it’s usually men – love the story to have its little embellishments about her supposed moral lapses. It’s a cruel and pernicious sexism that wants to imprison women for faults real and imagined, to keep them silent and in their place, and to remind them to be grateful for the bare minimum.
We tell victims of sexual harassment and sexual abuse to be silent, and when they demand justice instead, we complain that they’re hurting God’s work. When they’re in abusive marriages, we tell them to remain in submission; and when they don’t, we shun them and rally around the abusers they’ve left behind.
That’s because we don’t understand what holiness is. We think of sin as a violation of a legal code, one that requires condemnation, but that they’ll be spared because they have received all the right beliefs and doctrines. It’s an old and Gnostic heresy that says that that holiness can’t abide the presence of sin.
The gospels come from a culture built on honor and shame. A woman like Fotoni was shamed, and shame drives us away from one another. Holiness, as revealed throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and through the life of Jesus, scours the countryside looking for a sheep the rest of the flock abandoned. It turns the room upside-down to find a coin missing through no fault of its own, and when it sees someone who’s been broken down, abused and turned away, holiness doesn’t tell them they deserve what’s happened to them.
Instead it sits and waits for them, and when the moment comes, it acts as natural as can be and invites them into a conversation.
“Can you get me a drink?”
Jesus went to the well at noon because the only people he would meet there would be of no account, someone whom no man would respect and whom no woman would either, not because of anything they had done but because society is cruel. When Jesus stopped Fotoni and asked her for a drink, he invited the scorn of anyone who saw him talking to her but he also elevated her to the role of a benefactor
And then he went further, and initiated a discussion with her about God, about salvation, about Torah and worship, and treated her like she was a learned elder. In a few short minutes, Jesus showed Fotoni more respect than she’d had in years and restored the dignity and self-worth she’d always known she deserved.
Jesus saw how weary she was from her life of labor and isolation, and offered her living water, a symbol she picks up on immediately. And then, in a final flourish, he revealed himself to her, and made Fotoni the first Samaritan entrusted with his revelation, and sent her, spirit soaring, back to her village where her status was raised from “that woman” to chosen emissary of the messiah.
The men who tell the story of Fotoni today – and let’s be honest, it’s usually men – love the story to have its little embellishments about her supposed moral lapses. It’s a cruel and pernicious sexism that wants to imprison women for faults real and imagined, to keep them silent and in their place, and to remind them to be grateful for the bare minimum.
We tell victims of sexual harassment and sexual abuse to be silent, and when they demand justice instead, we complain that they’re hurting God’s work. When they’re in abusive marriages, we tell them to remain in submission; and when they don’t, we shun them and rally around the abusers they’ve left behind.
That’s because we don’t understand what holiness is. We think of sin as a violation of a legal code, one that requires condemnation, but that they’ll be spared because they have received all the right beliefs and doctrines. It’s an old and Gnostic heresy that says that that holiness can’t abide the presence of sin.
The gospels come from a culture built on honor and shame. A woman like Fotoni was shamed, and shame drives us away from one another. Holiness, as revealed throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and through the life of Jesus, scours the countryside looking for a sheep the rest of the flock abandoned. It turns the room upside-down to find a coin missing through no fault of its own, and when it sees someone who’s been broken down, abused and turned away, holiness doesn’t tell them they deserve what’s happened to them.
Instead it sits and waits for them, and when the moment comes, it acts as natural as can be and invites them into a conversation.
“Can you get me a drink?”
