The story of the woman at the well is one of the most iconic encounters in the Bible. Told in John 4:1-42, it depicts how Jesus, traveling through Samaria on the way to Galilee, sat down at a well in the town of Sychar.

There, around noon, while His disciples were in town buying food, He encountered a Samaritan woman coming to draw water from the well. He asked her for a drink, and their talk took off from there — culminating in her salvation and many more from her town, too.

We are told a few key facts about this woman. While her name was never revealed, we know she was female and a Samaritan, a race with whom Jews did not associate, as Scripture explains. We know she had had five husbands, and the man she had currently was not her husband.

We also know, from understanding cultural and historical traditions of that time, that women typically drew water in groups in the morning, and it was often a social occasion. The fact that she was drawing water alone, at midday, probably indicates she was a social outcast.