⁴But he had to go through Samaria.⁵So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. ⁷ A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’.⁸(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) ¹⁰Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’¹¹The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?¹²Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’¹³Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,¹⁴but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’¹⁵The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

Psalm 126

A Harvest of Joy

A Song of Ascents.¹ When the ^Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,    we were like those who dream.² Then our mouth was filled with laughter,   and our tongue with shouts of joy;then it was said among the nations,   ‘The ^Lord has done great things for them.’³ The ^Lord has done great things for us,   and we rejoiced. ⁴ Restore our fortunes, O ^Lord,   like the watercourses in the Negeb.⁵ May those who sow in tears   reap with shouts of joy.⁶ Those who go out weeping,   bearing the seed for sowing,shall come home with shouts of joy,   carrying their sheaves.