What Does John 4:6 Mean?

Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, worn from the road, sat down on the well, and it was about the sixth hour.

John 4:6 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.

THE KEY

The giver of living water begins the encounter as a tired traveler seated at a well.

THE MEANING

Weariness does not interrupt the encounter: Jesus is tired, sits at the source, and the meeting begins there. This scene holds bodily limits and the possibility of life-giving encounter in the same frame.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The verse undoes the belief that an encounter with God can happen only after you have moved beyond your bodily limits.

THE ROOT

πηγή

pēgē

GROWS FROM

πηγ-

pēg-

Spring or source.

The Greek word translated “well” also means a spring or source. The same word appears in Jesus’ later image of water becoming a source within a person, connecting the well beside him with the life he offers.

ALSO GROWS

pēgazō: To spring or gush forth.

πηγάζω

This verb makes the source dynamic: it is not only a place to draw water from, but something water can flow out of.

pēgaios: Of or from a spring; spring-fed.

πηγαῖος

This adjective keeps the word family connected to water at its source, deepening the well as more than a hole in the ground.

κεκοπιακώς

kekopiakōs

GROWS FROM

κοπ-

kop-

Toil or exertion.

The Greek word for “wearied” belongs to the word family of toil and labor. Jesus’ tiredness is the bodily cost of the road he has traveled, and the encounter begins with that limit fully present.

ALSO GROWS

kopos: Toil, labor, or trouble.

κόπος

This noun makes visible the exertion behind the weariness in the verse.

kopiaō: To labor, work hard, or grow weary.

κοπιάω

This verb shares the word family of the verse’s “wearied,” tying fatigue to the work and effort that precede it.

THE PATTERN

A well gathers ordinary need into a meeting place where the next movement of the story opens.

And he saw, and behold, a well in the field, and three flocks of sheep crouched beside it, for from that well they gave the flocks drink. A great stone lay upon the mouth of the well.

Genesis 29:2 · SDVThe well is the scene’s point of arrival and the place where Jacob’s meeting with Rachel begins.

Now when Pharaoh heard this word, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and settled in the land of Midian, and sat down by the well.

Exodus 2:15 · SDVMoses arrives at the well after fleeing, and the encounter that follows opens his next chapter of life.

Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, worn from the road, sat down on the well, and it was about the sixth hour.

John 4:6 · SDVJesus’ weariness brings him to Jacob’s well, where a meeting begins in the middle of an ordinary need for water.

THE THREAD

But whoever drinks of the water I give never thirsts into the ages; the water I give becomes in him a spring of water leaping up into the life of the ages.

John 4:14 · SDV

The Greek noun ⁨πηγή⁩ (pēgē, source or spring) names both Jacob’s well here and the inner “well” in Jesus’ promise. The tired traveler seated at the source becomes the one who offers a source of life within.

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