INTRODUCTION

From the Woman to the Worshipper

How Religion Perceived Her and How I Became Her Persecutor

“There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water…”

John 4:7, KJV, excerpt

Before we go any further, I must confess something. Before I ask you to consider the relationship between Ezekiel 23, 2 Kings 17 and John 4, I must acknowledge the part I played in the way this woman has been judged. I was among her persecutors. I did not stand beside her well, but I added my agreement to the voices that condemned her.

When preaching called her a “whore”, a “loose woman” or a woman who could not keep a man, I said, “Amen.” When her five husbands were counted as though each marriage were another entry in a catalogue of sins, I said, “Amen.” When she became a sermon illustration used to frighten women into holiness, I said, “Amen.” I accepted the accusation without asking whether Scripture had actually made it.

I had heard her story so often that I thought I knew her. Yet I had learned to recognise the label before I had learned to listen to the woman. My agreement helped repeat a judgement that John’s Gospel does not pronounce. Today, I repent. This book grows out of that repentance and my desire to read her encounter with Jesus more faithfully.

1 How Religion Perceived Her

In much of the preaching I heard, she was introduced almost entirely through her marital history. She was the woman with a past, the woman at the well, the woman with five husbands. Those descriptions became the limits of what we were willing to see. We repeated the number of her marriages while giving far less attention to her questions, her understanding of worship or the witness she would become.

John 4 does not call her a prostitute. Jesus tells her that she has had five husbands and that the man she now has is not her husband, but the passage does not explain why those marriages ended (John 4:17–18). Her history matters to the conversation, and Jesus speaks truthfully about it. We should speak with the same care, recognising how much of that history has not been given to us.[ER1] 

What moves me now is the way Jesus begins. He asks her for a drink and speaks with her across a divide that she herself finds surprising. Before He names her marital history, He offers her the gift of living water (John 4:7–10). He knows the truth about her and still addresses her as someone able to receive from God. I had allowed accusation to dominate a story in which His generosity appears so early.

She came to draw water, and He opened a conversation about life. As I read their exchange, I hear an invitation to pay attention to her thirst as well as her circumstances. Jesus neither invents a better history for her nor reduces her to the history He knows. He speaks with her, answers her questions and reveals Himself to her. That is the encounter I want this book to help us hear.

I once accepted a banner of shame placed over her life. Now I want to listen to Jesus’ teaching about the worshippers the Father seeks. Her story leads us into that teaching, and it ends with people coming to Him through her testimony. We lose something precious when we make her an object lesson in disgrace and stop listening before she has spoken.

2 The Mistake I Made

My mistake began with allowing inherited accusations to govern my reading. I needed to return to John 4 and attend to what it actually says. I also needed to consider Samaria’s place in the wider story of Scripture. Ezekiel 23 and 2 Kings 17 raise questions about covenant, religious inheritance and divided worship that deserve careful attention alongside this encounter at the well.

In Ezekiel 23:4, Samaria is represented by Aholah, usually written Oholah in modern translations. The name means “her tent”, or “her own tent”.1 Jerusalem is represented by her sister, Aholibah. These women are prophetic personifications of communities. Ezekiel uses the language of unfaithfulness to expose their broken covenant with God, including their involvement with foreign powers and idols. His imagery asks us to consider worship and allegiance, not merely to attach a sexual accusation to an individual woman.

Second Kings 17:24–41 describes an earlier chapter in Samaria’s history, when the king of Assyria brought peoples from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath and Sepharvaim into its cities. They introduced their own gods: Succothbenoth, Nergal and Ashima, together with Nibhaz and Tartak, and Adrammelech and Anammelech. Five incoming peoples are named, but the account names seven deities. Its concern is the mixture of religious practices described in the words, “They feared the LORD, and served their own gods” (2 Kings 17:33, excerpt).

That mixture stands against the confession at the heart of the Shema: “The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4, excerpt). Here is a story of worship divided between the LORD and other gods. It gives us a reason to ask how inherited practices can shape a community’s understanding of God, and how easily religious observance can coexist with divided allegiance.

In this book, I explore a possible symbolic echo between Samaria’s history and the woman’s encounter with Jesus, including the five peoples of 2 Kings 17 and the five husbands of John 4. That connection is an interpretation to consider carefully. John does not identify her husbands as gods, and Ezekiel does not identify his symbolic Oholah as the individual woman Jesus meets. These passages also concern different periods; the earlier account does not establish that she personally worshipped those ancient deities.[ER2] 

I therefore want to hold the personal story and the wider questions of worship together with care. She is a woman with a life of her own, speaking from within a community whose inherited worship she brings into the conversation. Her circumstances should not be erased to make a symbol work, and Samaria’s history should not be used to supply accusations that John has not made. Both careful reading and compassion are needed if we are to hear her well.

3 From the Woman to the Worshipper

Throughout this book, I will refer to her as the Worshipper of Samaria. This is a devotional designation drawn from the conversation at the well, rather than a name supplied by Scripture. It expresses my determination to give her concern about worship the attention I once denied it. John’s description of her as a woman was never the problem; the contempt I had learned to attach to that description was.

After recognising Jesus as a prophet, she brings Him a question about the worship she has inherited:

“Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”

John 4:20, KJV

This question deserves to be heard. It concerns her fathers, her community and the place where people ought to worship. Whatever else belongs to her story, here she is speaking about how to approach God. Her marital history does not make that question unworthy of an answer. Jesus takes her into a conversation about the Father and the worship He seeks:

“But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.”

John 4:23, KJV

Jesus also speaks plainly about the limitations of her community’s understanding and affirms that salvation is of the Jews (John 4:22). His welcome includes truth. As I hear His answer, I am challenged by the dignity of a conversation in which she is able to ask, learn and receive revelation. He does not leave her with the narrow identity I had once accepted for her.

Her question also reminds me that a confused route does not extinguish the longing to worship. People can inherit practices they need to examine and still desire to approach God. I once allowed my judgement of her past to silence that possibility. Jesus’ willingness to teach her now asks something of me: will I make room for another person to receive the truth I claim to treasure?

This is the movement I want to honour: the woman whose history I had judged becomes the person to whom Jesus speaks about true worship. When she says that the Messiah will come and explain all things, He reveals that He is the One speaking to her (John 4:25–26). The encounter reaches far beyond the count of her marriages. She is meeting the Christ.

John then tells us that she leaves her waterpot and goes into the city (John 4:28). For me, that vessel left beside the well becomes a picture of changed purpose. She had arrived to draw water; now she carries an invitation:

“Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?”

John 4:29, KJV

She becomes a witness to her community. John 4:39–42 records that many Samaritans believe because of her testimony, and others come to believe through hearing Jesus for themselves. The woman I had helped dismiss is given a voice in the story of people coming to recognise the Saviour. From woman to worshipper to witness: that is the movement I had failed to notice.[ER3] 

That is why this book is called MISUNDERSTOOD. I had repeated an account of her past while failing to attend to the person Jesus addressed. He knew her history, and He gave her truth she could receive and news she could share. My repentance requires me to return to that encounter with a willingness to listen.

This book is for every woman who has felt judged by her history while her longing for God went unheard. It is also for those of us who have said “Amen” too quickly, accepting an accusation before examining the passage from which it was supposedly drawn. I invite us to return to the well together and hear the conversation again.

I want us to see her with the attention her story deserves. I want us to recognise the generosity of Jesus, who speaks truth without surrendering mercy. And I want the woman whose worship I once overlooked to be heard.

This book is for her.

Reference note

[1] NET Bible. Translator’s note on Ezekiel 23:4, explaining the names Oholah and Oholibah. Bible Gateway. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+23&version=NET. Accessed 5 October 2026.

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (KJV). Quotations identified as excerpts reproduce only part of the named verse.

 [ER1]John 4:17–18 states her marital history but does not explain why the five marriages ended. The wording now preserves that distinction and avoids supplying an unsupported accusation.

 [ER2]The proposed connection is retained as a symbolic interpretation. 2 Kings 17:24 names five incoming peoples, while verses 30–31 name seven deities. John does not explicitly identify the five husbands as gods. Ezekiel 23:4 personifies Samaria and Jerusalem; the woman in John 4 is not expressly identified as Oholah.

 [ER3]“The first evangelist” has been changed to “a witness to her community”, which is supported directly by John 4:39–42. Her role and the strength of the closing movement are preserved.