The woman measured Jesus against the greatest name connected to that place. Jacob had provided this well, and it had served his whole household. If Jesus claimed He could give better water, He was claiming to be greater than Jacob. Barnes puts her meaning this way: "Art thou wiser, or better able to find water, than Jacob was?" Gill says she called Jacob their father "according to the common notion and boasting of these people." The question expects the answer no, but it raises exactly the right issue: who is this man?

Jesus did not say "I am greater than Jacob" in so many words. He compared the two waters: "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). Jacob's well satisfied for a time; the water Jesus gives becomes "a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4:14). By the end of the conversation He tells her plainly who He is: "I that speak unto thee am he" (John 4:26).

John says Sychar was "near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph" and that "Jacob's well was there" (John 4:5-6). Barnes explains that the Samaritans came "partly of the remnant of the ten tribes, and partly of people sent from Chaldea," yet they still "considered themselves descendants of Jacob." That is why she says "our father Jacob."

Barnes also notes that Jacob giving the well "was doubtless the tradition, though there is no evidence that it was true." The detail that Jacob, his children, and his cattle drank from it, Barnes says, "was added in commendation of the water of the well."

This is one of two times in John when people ask whether Jesus is greater than a patriarch. The Jews later ask, "Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead?" (John 8:53). In both cases the honest answer is yes, and John's Gospel is written to show why.

Jesus answers the woman not by tearing Jacob down but by pointing to a gift Jacob could never give. Jacob's well met a real need, but people had to keep coming back. What Jesus gives does not run out (John 4:14). Barnes observes, "People like to commend that which their ancestors used as superior to anything else." Jesus honors what came before while showing that He brings something far greater.