The woman at the well is one more woman who defies the modern contention that women are not to be preachers. After encountering Jesus herself, she goes and preaches him to the others of her city.
Read literally, it’s the story of a woman unlucky in love. Of her five husbands, who knows how many died and how many divorced her for a younger, prettier woman. It is very possible that she is infertile, and after not providing a child some of the men have cast her out by divorce. This was the way in a child-obsessed culture.
Now she was living with a man who wouldn’t commit to her, which was still a better shot at survival than being an older, “used-up” woman alone in a patriarchal culture. Notice Jesus doesn’t shame her as the contemporary church often does when telling her story. Twice he simply tells her she’s spoken the truth, honoring her honest character (John 4:17–18).
But John likely tells it as a story full of symbolism. John loves symbolism. The woman stands for the Samaritans and their history with God.
After Assyria conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, it resettled Samaria with people from five places: Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim (2 Kings 17:24). Each group brought its own gods into what became a syncretic culture (2 Kings 17:29–33). History said that Samaritans came from that mix of foreigners merging with the Israelites left behind. Those are the five husbands.
The sixth man, the one she has now who isn’t her husband, is Rome. Samaria lived under Roman occupation. A forced cohabiting, but without the intimate union it had with the first five.
That makes Jesus the seventh man. John’s Gospel is full of sevens (seven signs, seven “I am” sayings), and so is Revelation, because seven is the number of completion. And the sevens are designed to consistently point to Jesus. One chapter earlier, John the Baptist calls Jesus “the bridegroom” (John 3:29). And in Scripture, a meeting at a well is where marriages begin: Rebekah, Rachel, Zipporah.
The seventh man is the true husband, the one who finally makes her whole. By the end, many in her town believe he is “the Savior of the world” (John 4:42).