It is recorded that, while making their way northward from Judea towards Galilee, Jesus and his disciples came to "Jacob's well," where the Master remained to rest, while his followers went to the neighboring village of Sychar to purchase food. Meanwhile a Samaritan woman approached the well and Jesus asked her to draw him a drink of water. Simple and natural though such a request seems to modern ears, it amazed the woman that Jesus should even speak to her, just as later their continued conversation startled his disciples, "for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans."
The beginnings of this ancient feud date back to 722 B.C., when pagan Assyrians captured Samaria and exiled many of its inhabitants, replacing them with Assyrian settlers who intermarried with the Israelites. These were the ancestors of the Samaritans, who were thus opposed by the Jews because of their semipagan background and the fact that they were not of pure Israelite stock; and the strife was intensified in the days of Nehemiah, when the Samaritans and their allies, headed by Sanballat, sought to delay the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem; while eventually they erected a rival temple in the vicinity of Shechem.
In view of these circumstances, the Jews uniformly viewed the Samaritans with contempt, not unmixed with hatred, and yet, Jesus' deep intuition and consistent kindliness led him to address to this despised outcast by the well some of his deepest statements. He spoke to her of "living water," and while she apparently took the phrase as having reference to fresh, running water, rather than to the water of life, she was led, as the interview proceeded, to hail him as a prophet.
