4:22a

You worship what you do not know: Jesus was indicating that the Samaritan people did not truly know God. The Samaritans praised and honored God but did not really know or understand him.

Here are other ways to translate this clause:

You Samaritans do not really know whom you worship (Good News Translation)
-or-
You Samaritans worship something you don’t understand (New Century Version)

You: This pronoun is plural here and refers to the Samaritans. They were a group of people who were descended from both Jewish people and Gentiles (Assyrians). So they worshiped in a mixed way and the Jews did not like them. In some languages it will help to make explicit that Jesus was speaking about all Samaritans, not just the woman. For example:

You Samaritans (New International Version)
-or-
You people (NET Bible)

worship: The Greek word the Berean Standard Bible translates as worship means to praise and honor God.

what you do not know: Jesus was referring to God. The Samaritans did not truly know God.

4:22b

we worship what we do know: Jesus indicated that the Jews’ faith in God was established on a solid basis. That basis consisted of historical facts and God’s revealing himself to the Jews. They truly knew something of the one true God. Translate this in a way that makes a clear contrast with “what you do not know” in 4:22a. For example:

we Jews know whom we worship (Good News Translation)
-or-
We understand what we worship. (New Century Version)

we: This pronoun is exclusive. It refers to Jesus and the Jews, but not to the woman and the Samaritans. It may be necessary to make this more explicit. For example:

we Jews (New Living Translation (2004))

for: The Greek connector that the Berean Standard Bible translates as for means “because.” It introduces the reason why the Jews knew the one they worshiped.

salvation is from the Jews: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as salvation is from the Jews indicates that it is through the Jewish people that God saves the world. God would reveal himself and his salvation to the Jews, and the Savior himself (Jesus) was Jewish. In some languages it may be natural to indicate that Jesus was himself a Jew. For example:

But we Jews do know the God we worship, and by using us, God will save the world. (Contemporary English Version)
-or-
but we Jews know whom we worship, because it is from the Jews that salvation comes (Good News Translation)

© 2020 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.