4:20a

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain: The woman was referring to an old argument the Jews had with the Samaritans. The Samaritans did not worship God at the temple in Jerusalem. Instead, they worshiped God on Mount Gerizim in Samaria. They had worshiped there for hundreds of years, even after their temple was destroyed in 128 B.C.

Our: The pronoun Our is exclusive. The woman was distinguishing between the ancestors of the Samaritans and their customs and those of the Jews. If your language does not have inclusive and exclusive pronouns, you may want to indicate that the woman was only talking about Samaritans. For example:

My ancestors (Contemporary English Version)

fathers: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates literally as fathers refers to both male and female ancestors.

worshiped: The word worshiped leaves implicit that it was God whom they worshiped. It may be necessary to make this explicit. For example:

worshiped ⌊God⌋

on this mountain: The phrase this mountain refers to Mount Gerizim. The well where the woman and Jesus were talking was very near the mountain.

4:20b

but: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as but here introduces a contrast. The contrast is between where the Samaritans worshiped and where the Jews said that people must worship..

you Jews say that the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem: The Jews said that the Samaritans were wrong to worship on Mount Gerizim. They said that people should only worship God in Jerusalem.

Here are other ways to translate this clause:

you (plur.) insist that people need to worship in Jerusalem
-or-
you Jews say that Jerusalem is the right place to worship

you Jews say: The pronoun you is plural and includes Jesus and the Jews as a group. The woman did not believe that what they were saying was true. Here is one way to indicate this unbelief:

you Jews believe

the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem: The Greek phrase that the Berean Standard Bible translates as the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem means “It is in Jerusalem that God requires people to worship him.” In other words, God does not allow worship anywhere else. For example:

we are required to worship in Jerusalem
-or-
Jerusalem is the place where we should worship God (Good News Translation)

In some languages it may be necessary to supply the word “only” to make the meaning clear. For example:

Jerusalem is the only place to worship (Contemporary English Version)

in Jerusalem: This phrase refers to the temple in the city of Jerusalem. In some languages it may be necessary to mention the temple. For example:

⌊at the temple⌋ in Jerusalem

General Comment on 4:20a–b

This sentence is in the form of a statement, but a question is implied. The woman was asking Jesus about the ancient disagreement between the Jews and Samaritans. She wanted to know what he thought. So in some languages it is more natural to translate this as a question. For example:

So tell me, why is it that you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place of worship, while we Samaritans claim it is here at Mount Gerizim, where our ancestors worshiped? (New Living Translation (2004))

4:21–24

These verses are Jesus’ answer to the Samaritan woman. In it he contrasts worshiping at a specific place and worshiping “in spirit and truth.” He indicates that the place where you worship is not important. Instead, what God desires is spiritual worship that is based on the truth.

© 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.