January 4, 2026
It’s common to read John 4 and view the Samaritan woman negatively. She’s drawing water at an unusual time, which some interpret as her being an outcast, and she’s had five husbands and is now with a man who isn’t her husband.
However, we must remember that men held all the power in her context. Having a husband was how women stayed out of poverty, and a woman couldn’t divorce her husband under biblical law. So, if she’s had five husbands, she’s either been bereaved or abandoned five times by presumably different men, and quite likely for her own protection, she is now forced to live with a man who is not her husband.
Maybe she’s not the sexually promiscuous woman most readers assume she is, but rather someone who has been abandoned and forsaken multiple times and has been forced to make a difficult choice for her own protection. We don’t have enough information to make a definitive judgment. Still, it’s always valuable to slow down and read familiar texts from different angles to see if any new insights emerge.