The woman took Jesus' words about water at face value. She could see He had no bucket, and she knew how deep the well was, so she asked where this water could possibly come from. Matthew Henry puts it simply: "What Jesus spake figuratively, she took literally." Gill hears more edge in it, saying she spoke "in a sneering, scoffing manner." Her question presses Jesus to explain how He can give what He seems to have no way to get.

Jesus did not explain where He would get the water. Instead He showed what kind of water it was: "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst" (John 4:13-14). The water He gives becomes "in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4:14). The woman answered, "Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw" (John 4:15).

Barnes says it seems "there were no means of drawing water affixed to the well," so travelers had to bring their own. Gill, adding a phrase from the ancient poet Nonnus, says Jesus had "no pail, or bucket, or rope, to let it down with." Barnes adds that if the well is the same one that is there now, "it was about 100 feet deep."

The woman was still thinking of the water in Jacob's well. Matthew Henry explains what Jesus meant: "By this living water is meant the Spirit." John himself later makes the same connection (John 7:38-39).

This question shows the gap between what we can see and what Jesus offers. The woman measured His offer by the bucket He did not have and the depth of the well. Jesus was speaking of something no bucket could reach. Later in John He says that rivers of living water will flow from whoever believes, and John explains, "this spake he of the Spirit" (John 7:38-39).

The misunderstanding did not end the conversation. Jesus kept drawing her forward, one question at a time, until He told her plainly, "I that speak unto thee am he" (John 4:26). He is patient with people who start with the wrong idea of what He is offering.