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When you read the story you come to the conclusion that the woman herself is the source of Jesus' words. It is her testimony. To wit: "Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” "

Having 5 husbands is nothing in a society that controls marriage which matches the older people with wealth to the younger people with strength. Might be important to know more about Samaritan lifestyles, of course, but for the purpose of understanding this story such knowledge is not needed.

Going through this just now I noticed the cadence of the story went from greater to smaller, condition of total compliance with the law to possible non compliance (unmarriage after a lifetime of forced marriage), first to last, "living water" that quenches thirst contrasted to ordinary water that doesn't, and so on.

These structural elements are consistent with traditions of oral transmission of information ~ and although this supposedly too place at noon while the other disciples went to buy lunch at a nearby town the woman went from her short conversation with Jesus to convert a great number of Samaritans.

That is, she went from no direct knowledge of the Messiah to being a powerful witness who drew many to the Truth.

Jesus once more tells them he has food of which they have no knowledge.

So, there's a lot of work to do here to dig into all the depths of understanding because this is not really a simple story.

Did somebody say the woman's sex life was important? This was about someone recognizing the Messiah IMMEDIATELY.

I am impressed with the ability of the Apostle John to compress so many messages into such a short story about a trip to a well ~ the well where Jesus was himself getting a drink.

No doubt at some point in his own life John realized Jesus was the Messiah. How much more profound that the woman at the well did so with only the slightest amount of information about Him.

The woman has just said to Jesus (4.17), "I have no husband."

Jesus says, "the one you have now is not your husband." That could mean that she and her boyfriend are posing as married but she doesn't try to lie to Jesus about the situation, or maybe after five marriages she is openly living with someone she isn't married to and the other villagers don't care. We aren't told how many of the marriages ended with the death of her husband and how many were ended by divorce. Maybe she was divorced five times for adultery, and husbands numbers two to five were her lovers when she was married to her previous spouse.