for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
Parallel Translations
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for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
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For thou haste had five husbandes and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. That saydest thou truely.
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For thou hast had fiue husbands, and he whom thou nowe hast, is not thine husband: that saidest thou truely.
Cross-references (12)
Passages linked to John 4:18 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Jeremiah 3:20 “Surely as a wife treacherously departs from her husband, so you have dealt treacherously with me, house of Israel,” says Yahweh.
- Romans 7:3 So then if, while the husband lives, she is joined to another man, she would be called an adulteress. But if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress, though she is joined to another man.
- 1 Corinthians 7:10-11 But to the married I command—not I, but the Lord—that the wife not leave her husband (but if she departs, let her remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband not leave his wife.
- Mark 10:12 If a woman herself divorces her husband, and marries another, she commits adultery.”
- Genesis 20:3 But God came to Abimelech in a dream of the night, and said to him, “Behold, you are a dead man, because of the woman whom you have taken; for she is a man’s wife.”
- Genesis 34:2 Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her. He took her, lay with her, and humbled her.
- Genesis 34:7-8 The sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it. The men were grieved, and they were very angry, because he had done folly in Israel in lying with Jacob’s daughter, a thing ought not to be done. Hamor talked with them, saying, “The soul of my son, Shechem, longs for your daughter. Please give her to him as a wife.
- Genesis 34:31 They said, “Should he deal with our sister as with a prostitute?”
- Numbers 5:29 “ ‘This is the law of jealousy, when a wife, being under her husband, goes astray, and is defiled,
- Ruth 4:10 Moreover, Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, I have purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead on his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his place. You are witnesses today.”
- Ezekiel 16:32 “ ‘ “A wife who commits adultery! Who takes strangers instead of her husband!
- Hebrews 13:4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled; but God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (10 sources)
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 18 For thou hast had five husbands; and he…
18 For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.
Ver. 18. He whom thou now hast, &c.] Here he comes home to her conscience; so must all that will do good on it, striving not so much to please as to profit. Bees are killed with honey but quickened with vinegar. The eagle, though she love her young ones dearly, yet she pricketh and beateth them out of the nest: so must preachers drive men out of the nest of pleasure. John Speiser, preacher at Augsburg in Germany, did his work so well at first, that the common strumpets left the brothel houses (then tolerated) and betook themselves to a better course, A.D. 1523. Yet afterwards he revolted to the Papists and miserably perished. (Sculler. Annal. 118.)
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain He tells her, that she had had five husbands;…
He tells her, that she had had five husbands; whether successively, the former being dead, and she marrying another, or five from whom she had been divorced for adultery, is not agreed; the best modern interpreters judge, that she had had five men to whom she had been in marriage, but so behaved herself toward them, that either for her adultery, or some other froward behaviour towards them, they had given her a bill of divorce; and though she now used and lived with one as her husband, yet in this she said truly, because, her former husbands yet living, he was not her husband. This seemeth more properly the sense, than that after five legal husbands’ death, she lived in whoredom with a sixth person. By this discovery, our Saviour both bringeth her to the sense of her sin, and also to an acknowledgment of him as the Messiah.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain For thou hast had five husbands,.... Which she either…
For thou hast had five husbands,.... Which she either had had lawfully, and had buried one after another; and which was no crime, and might be: the Sadducees propose a case to Christ, in which a woman is said to have had seven husbands successively, in a lawful manner, Mat 22:25. Or rather, she had had so many, and had been divorced from everyone of them, for adultery; for no other cause it should seem did the Samaritans divorce; seeing that they only received the law of Moses, and rejected, at least, many of the traditions of the elders; and since they are particularly said (y).
"not to be expert in the law of marriages and divorces:''
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and the rather this may seem to be the case, as Dr. Lightfoot observes; since these husbands are mentioned, as well as he with whom she lived in an adulterous manner; and which suggests, that she had not lived honestly with them:
and he whom thou now hast, is not thy husband; that is, not thy lawful husband, as the Persic version reads, and Nonnus paraphrases; being not married to him at all, though they cohabited as man and wife, when there was no such relation between them:
in that saidst thou truly; or that which is truth: thus Christ the omniscient God, who knew her full well, and the whole of her past infamous conversation, and her present lewd and wicked way of living, exposes all unto her.
(y) T. Bab. Kiddushin, fol 76. 1.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Thou hast had five husbands - Whether they were…
Thou hast had five husbands - Whether they were all dead or not, her own conscience now awakened would tell her.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 18. Thou hast had five husbands] It is…
Verse 18. Thou hast had five husbands] It is not clear that this woman was a prostitute: she might have been legally married to those five, and might have been divorced through some misbehaviour of her own, not amounting to adultery; for the adulteress was to be put to death, both by the Jewish and Samaritan law, not divorced: or she might have been cast off through some caprice of her husband; for, in the time of our Lord, divorces were very common among the Jews, so that a man put away his wife for any fault. See Clarke on Mt 5:31. Some are so very fond of exaggerating that nothing can pass through their hands without an increase: hence Heracleon says she had six husbands, and Jerome modestly gives her twenty-two! Viginti duos habuisti maritos, et ille a quo sepelieris non est tuus. "Thou hast had twenty-two husbands and he by whom thou shalt be buried is not thine." Epist. xi.
He whom thou now hast is not thy husband] Νυν ὁν εχεις, ουκ εϚι σου ανηρ. Bishop Pearce would translate this clause in the following manner: There is no husband whom thou now hast-or, less literally, Thou hast no husband now: probably the meaning is, Thou art contracted to another, but not yet brought home: therefore he is not yet thy husband. See Rosenmuller. Bishop Pearce contends that our Lord did not speak these words to her by way of reproof:
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1. Because it is not likely that a woman so far advanced in years as to have had five husbands should have now been found living in adultery with a sixth person.
2. Because it is not likely that our Lord would not, in some part of his discourse, have reproved her for her fornication, especially if guilty of it under such gross circumstances.
3. Nor is it likely that a woman of so bad a life should have had so much influence with the people of her city that they should, on her testimony, Joh 4:39-42, believe Jesus to be the Messiah.
4. Nor is it at all likely that when a discovery of her guilt was made to her, by one whom she acknowledged to be a prophet, Joh 4:19, the first thing which came into her thoughts should be the important question in religion, about the place appointed by God for his worship, so warmly contested between the Jews and Samaritans.
5. Nor is it at all probable that a person of such a bad life, without any mentioned sign of repentance, should have been the first (perhaps the only private person) to whom Jesus is recorded as declaring himself to be the Christ, as he does to her, Joh 4:26.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Hast had five husbands - Who have either died;…
Hast had five husbands - Who have either died; or who, on account of your improper conduct, have divorced you; or whom you have left improperly, without legal divorce. Either of these might have be. en the case.
Is not thy husband - You are not lawfully married to him. Either she might have left a former husband without divorce, and thus her marriage with this man was unlawful, or she was living with him without the form of marriage, in open guilt.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 18. Five… not thy husband—The Evangelist does not state…
18. Five… not thy husband—The Evangelist does not state the emotions of the woman now. But her own language, (Joh_4:29,) “he told me all things that ever I did,” shows that at Jesus’s words her whole life’s history of guilt rises up so vividly to her view, that she verily believes that it was he who told her the whole! So it is said that men in the instant of drowning have seen at a glance, as in a picture, the whole of their lives, coexisting, as it were, before the mind at once.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 18. five husbands] To be understood quite literally. They…
18. five husbands] To be understood quite literally. They were either dead or divorced, and she was now living with a man without being married to him.
in that saidst thou truly] Better, this (one thing) thou hast said truly. Christ exposes the falsehood which lurks in the literal truth of her statement.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (18) In that saidst thou truly.—The stroke goes deeper.…
(18) In that saidst thou truly.—The stroke goes deeper. It lays bare the secrets of all those years over which she thought the veil of the past had for ever been drawn. The bright days of joy and dark days of sin; the heart’s promises made and broken; the sad days of death, which five times over had robbed her of a husband; or, worse than death, the sin which had severed the sacred bonds; the shame of the present shameless life—all these are at least hidden from a stranger. But His words pierce to the inmost thoughts, and prove Him to know all the acts of her life (Joh_4:29). “Thou hast well said, A husband I have not. The holy name may not be given to the paramour thou now hast; with the loss of purity is linked the loss of truthfulness; the very truth thou utterest is meant to convey to Me an untruth, but to One who knows all, the words are really true;—“in that saidst thou truly.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 18. Thou hast had five husbands; and he whom…
18. Thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. She had been married five times; the easy divorce laws of the age, permitting a “divorce for any cause,” would allow many changes without the death of either party. Some of her husbands may have died; a part were almost certainly divorced. Her sixth alliance did not have even the apology of such a marriage.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.