What Does John 4:5 Mean?
So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.THE KEY
The ground where this meeting begins is already a gift passed from Jacob to Joseph, carrying their story into the present.
THE MEANING
Jacob’s gift to Joseph remains woven into the place where this encounter unfolds. The ground carries a relationship forward, so the setting bears meaning before anyone speaks.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The place is only scenery, unrelated to the encounter. Here, the ground holds the memory of a gift that is still being claimed.
THE ROOT
ἔδωκεν
edōken
GROWS FROM
δίδωμι
didōmi
to give, grant, or place into another’s possession
The verse’s “gave” is a form of δίδωμι, a verb whose family also includes words for gift. The land is introduced as something given, and the same verb returns when the woman says Jacob gave them the well (John 4:12).
ALSO GROWS
dōron: gift
δῶρον
The parcel is presented as something received through Jacob’s act of giving.
dōrea: gift, free gift
δωρεά
This related word keeps the focus on what is handed over and received, rather than on the ground as mere location.
χωρίου
chōriou
GROWS FROM
χωρ-
chōr-
place, region, room, or space
“field” in this verse is chōriou. The word belongs to the same family as χώρα, a region or country: this parcel is a particular place within a wider land. English “parcel” makes the ground sound like a bounded possession, while the Greek word also echoes the larger place it occupies.
ALSO GROWS
chōra: region, country, land
χώρα
The parcel is a distinct piece within the surrounding region.
chōreō: make room, contain, or proceed
χωρέω
This related form carries the sense of space and capacity, opening the place-word toward what can be held or entered.
יוֹסֵף
Yōsēf
GROWS FROM
יסף
to add, increase, or do again
Joseph’s name echoes the Hebrew verb for adding: at his naming, Rachel says, “The LORD shall add to me another son” (Genesis 30:24). Here, the ground is attached to Joseph, whose name carries the language of increase and addition.
ALSO GROWS
yāsaph: add, increase, do again
יָסַף
This verb supplies the seed behind Joseph’s name.
môsāf: addition, extra portion
מוֹסָף
The idea of addition resonates with Jacob’s later description of Joseph’s portion as one above his brothers (Genesis 48:22).
THE PATTERN
A gift of land carries a relationship forward beyond the giver.
Moreover I have given to you one shoulder above your brothers, which I took from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow.And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, they buried in Shechem, in the portion of field that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, for a hundred pieces of silver. It became the holding of the children of Joseph.Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank from it himself, and his children, and his livestock?THE THREAD
Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well, and drank from it himself, and his children, and his livestock?The woman later says Jacob “gave us the well,” using the same Greek verb, δίδωμι, that describes his gift of ground to Joseph. The land and well are linked by the same act of giving, carried forward as a living inheritance.
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