How does testimony lead others to hear Jesus for themselves?

Jesus learns that the Pharisees have heard he makes and baptizes more disciples than John, although the passage specifies that his disciples, rather than Jesus himself, baptize. He leaves Judea for Galilee and must pass through Samaria. At Sichar, near the ground Jacob gave Joseph, Jesus sits on Jacob’s well, wearied from his journey, about the sixth hour. His disciples have gone to buy food. A Samaritan woman comes to draw water, and he asks her for a drink. She asks why a Jew requests a drink from a Samaritan woman, since the groups do not communicate. Jesus says that knowing God’s gift and who asks, perhaps she would have asked him for living water. She points to the deep well and his lack of a drawing vessel, asking whether he is greater than Jacob, who gave them the well and drank from it with his children and cattle. Jesus contrasts water followed by thirst with his gift, a fountain springing into everlasting life. She asks for that water so she will not thirst or need to draw there.

Jesus tells her to call her husband. She says she has none; he affirms that she has spoken truly, having had five husbands and a present man who is not her husband. Calling him a prophet, she asks about her fathers’ mountain worship and the claim for Jerusalem. The edition identifies the mountain as Garizim, where Samaritans had a schismatical temple. Jesus speaks of an hour when neither location determines worship of the Father, distinguishes their unknown worship from the Jews’ known worship and says salvation is of the Jews. The hour now comes for true adorers to worship in spirit and truth, as the Father seeks, for God is spirit. The woman says the coming Messias, called Christ, will tell them everything. Jesus identifies himself as the one speaking to her. The returning disciples wonder at his conversation with a woman but ask no questions about it.

Leaving her waterpot, she goes into the city and tells the men to come see a man who told her everything she had done, asking whether he is Christ. They come toward him. The disciples meanwhile urge him to eat. He says he has food they do not know; they ask whether someone brought food. His food is doing the sender’s will and perfecting his work. Against their saying of four months until harvest, he points to already-white fields. The reaper receives wages and gathers fruit for everlasting life, so sower and reaper rejoice together. One sows and another reaps: he sends them to reap where they have not labored, entering others’ labors. Many Samaritans believe because of the woman’s report. At their request he stays two days, and many more believe through his word. They tell her their belief now comes from hearing him themselves and knowing him as Savior of the world.

After two days Jesus goes to Galilee. The passage recalls his testimony that a prophet lacks honor in his own country, then describes Galileans receiving him because they saw his Jerusalem festival works. He returns to Cana, where he made water wine. A ruler whose son is sick at Capharnaum hears of his arrival and asks him to come down and heal the son, who is at the point of death. Jesus says that unless they see signs and wonders they do not believe. The ruler asks him to come before his son dies. Jesus tells him to go because his son lives. The man believes his word and goes. Servants meet him on the way with the same news. Asked when the son grew better, they say the fever left yesterday at the seventh hour. The father recognizes that hour as the time of Jesus’s words, and he and his whole house believe. This is called the second miracle Jesus did after coming from Judea into Galilee.