Discovery BoxJohn 4:9-10 
Context4:9 So the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you – a Jew 1 – ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water 2 to drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common 3 with Samaritans.) 4
4:10 Jesus answered 5 her, “If you had known 6 the gift of God and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water 7 to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 8
John 6:53
Context6:53 Jesus said to them, “I tell you the solemn truth, 9 unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, 10 you have no life 11 in yourselves.
1 tn Or “a Judean.” Here BDAG 478 s.v. ᾿Ιουδαίος 2.a states, “Judean (with respect to birth, nationality, or cult).” The same term occurs in the plural later in this verse. In one sense “Judean” would work very well in the translation here, since the contrast is between residents of the two geographical regions. However, since in the context of this chapter the discussion soon becomes a religious rather than a territorial one (cf. vv. 19-26), the translation “Jew” has been retained here and in v. 22.
2 tn “Water” is supplied as the understood direct object of the infinitive πεῖν (pein).
3 tn D. Daube (“Jesus and the Samaritan Woman: the Meaning of συγχράομαι [Jn 4:7ff],” JBL 69 [1950]: 137-47) suggests this meaning.
sn The background to the statement use nothing in common is the general assumption among Jews that the Samaritans were ritually impure or unclean. Thus a Jew who used a drinking vessel after a Samaritan had touched it would become ceremonially unclean.
4 sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.
5 tn Grk “answered and said to her.”
6 tn Or “if you knew.”
7 tn The phrase “some water” is supplied as the understood direct object of the infinitive πεῖν (pein).
8 tn This is a second class conditional sentence in Greek.
sn The word translated living is used in Greek of flowing water, which leads to the woman’s misunderstanding in the following verse. She thought Jesus was referring to some unknown source of drinkable water.
9 tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”
10 sn Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood. These words are at the heart of the discourse on the Bread of Life, and have created great misunderstanding among interpreters. Anyone who is inclined toward a sacramental viewpoint will almost certainly want to take these words as a reference to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist, because of the reference to eating and drinking. But this does not automatically follow: By anyone’s definition there must be a symbolic element to the eating which Jesus speaks of in the discourse, and once this is admitted, it is better to understand it here, as in the previous references in the passage, to a personal receiving of (or appropriation of) Christ and his work.
11 tn That is, “no eternal life” (as opposed to physical life).
