Jesus left his familiar world of Jewish Galilee and traveled with his disciples through the hostile territory of the Samaritan's. The Samaritans and the Jews had a long history of mistrust and violence toward one another. Thirsty, he sat down by a well and asked a woman for a drink.

What kind of rabbi was Jesus? On whom did he have compassion?

Hospitality was one of the greatest virtues in the ancient world and giving a stranger a drink would have been a religious obligation, but Jesus had broken some unspoken rules of protocol. Not only was Jesus speaking with an enemy, but he was speaking to a woman who had been through several marriages and was now living with a man who wasn't her husband. This kind of lifestyle was highly immoral to an observant Jew in Jesus' day.

It is likely that a Jewish rabbi would not want to be seen conversing with such a woman. In addition, a Jewish person would become ceremonially “unclean” by drinking from a jar handled by a Samaritan. This would mean that Jesus would not have been able to enter a synagogue or the temple without a ritual bath in living water from God.

A woman like the Samaritan was little more than a prostitute in the eyes of her peers, and certainly a social misfit.

Jesus and the woman began to talk about water, spiritual water, the coming Messiah, and the promises of God.