Five-minute study · Day 142 · John 4
John 4:24
A word worth stopping on: worship προσκυνέω proskyneo
Jesus is sitting on the edge of Jacob's well, talking to a Samaritan woman about water, husbands, and mountains. She raises the old argument: your people say Jerusalem, our people say Gerizim. Where is the right place to worship? Jesus answers with one of the most compressed theological statements in the Gospels: 'God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.' The Greek word he uses for worship is proskyneo, and its etymology goes somewhere unexpected. It means to kiss toward.
Word study: worship
- Greek
- προσκυνέω
- Pronounced
- proskyneo
- Strong's
- G4352
- Definition
- To worship, to prostrate oneself before, to do obeisance. Compound of pros (toward) and kyneo (to kiss). Originally: to kiss the hand toward, to blow a kiss to a deity, to prostrate and kiss the ground before a ruler.
Proskyneo is the most common word for worship in the New Testament, appearing sixty times. Its etymology is revealing. Pros means toward, in the direction of. Kyneo derives from kyneo or kuneo, to kiss. The original gesture was physical: extending the hand toward a deity's image and kissing the hand, or falling prostrate and kissing the ground before a king. Persian court protocol required proskynesis before the Great King, a full prostration that Greeks found deeply offensive because they reserved such gestures for gods alone. When Alexander the Great attempted to introduce proskynesis at his court, his Macedonian generals resisted. Callisthenes refused publicly. The act was too intimate, too total, to give to any human being.
Thayer's lexicon traces the word's movement from physical gesture to internal disposition. In Homer, proskyneo describes the physical act of prostration. By the time of the Septuagint, it translates the Hebrew hishtachavah, which likewise means to bow down, to prostrate oneself. Both words begin as body language and evolve to encompass the full interior reality of submission, reverence, and adoration.
John 4:24 redefines the word's geography. The Samaritan woman asks about location: this mountain or that one? Jesus strips location out of the equation. True proskyneo happens in spirit and in truth. The kiss toward is no longer aimed at a mountain, a temple, or a golden image. It is directed toward a God who is spirit, and it originates from a worshiper whose own spirit is engaged. The body may kneel. The lips may move. The direction of the kiss is inward and upward simultaneously.
The TDNT article on proskyneo notes that John uses the word more than any other Gospel writer. In John's theology, worship is the defining posture of the believer before the Father. The Samaritan woman's question about where to worship is answered with how to worship. Geography yields to disposition. The mountain does not matter. The kiss does.
Historical context · First century AD, with roots in the tenth century BC schism
A Well, a Woman, and Two Mountains
Jacob's well sits at the foot of Mount Gerizim, near the ancient city of Shechem (modern Nablus). The well is still there. You can visit it today inside the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Photina, built over the site. The well is approximately 41 meters deep, cut through limestone, and still holds water. When the Samaritan woman told Jesus the well was deep (John 4:11), she was stating a measurable fact.
The Samaritan-Jewish dispute over the proper location of worship was centuries old by the time of this conversation. After Solomon's death, the northern tribes broke away under Jeroboam (1 Kings 12). The Samaritans eventually built their own temple on Mount Gerizim, probably in the fifth or fourth century BC. This temple was destroyed by the Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus in 128 BC, an act the Samaritans never forgave. By Jesus' time, the hatred between Jews and Samaritans was deep and mutual. Jews traveling between Judea and Galilee would sometimes cross the Jordan to avoid Samaritan territory entirely.
The Samaritan Pentateuch, the Samaritan community's version of the Torah, includes a commandment to build an altar on Mount Gerizim, a text absent from the Jewish Masoretic tradition. The Samaritans considered Gerizim, the mountain of blessing (Deuteronomy 11:29), to be the place God chose. Jews pointed to Jerusalem, the place where David brought the ark and Solomon built the temple. Both sides had textual and historical arguments. Both were deeply invested.
Jesus' answer sidesteps the entire debate. He does not choose Jerusalem. He does not choose Gerizim. He says the hour is coming when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, regardless of mountain. For a Samaritan woman who had internalized a centuries-old territorial argument about the correct address for God, the statement was seismic. The God who is spirit cannot be confined to the coordinates of any mountain. The proskyneo that matters is the one happening inside the worshiper, wherever that worshiper is standing.
For reflection
Proskyneo meant to kiss toward. The original worshiper extended the hand and pressed the lips to it, aiming the gesture at a god or king. Worship at its root is intimate, directional, and costly. The woman at the well wanted to know the right address. Jesus told her the right posture. When you worship, what are you kissing toward? Is it a routine, a performance, a place you sit every week? Or is something in you actually reaching toward God with the vulnerability that a kiss requires?
The Macedonian generals refused to perform proskynesis before Alexander. They considered it too intimate to give to anyone less than a god. The New Testament asks you to give it freely to one.
Sources: Thayer's Greek Lexicon; TDNT, proskyneo; Koester, 'The Dwelling of God' (CBQ)