What does Jesus mean when he talks about living water?

At Jacob’s well, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that whoever drinks the water he gives “will never thirst,” for it becomes “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14). “Living water” in ordinary speech meant flowing spring water as opposed to cistern water; Jesus uses the phrase for the life only he gives.

The dialogue moves from physical thirst to the Messiah who “will explain everything to us” (4:25), and Jesus discloses, “I, the one speaking to you, I am he” (4:26).

At the Feast of Tabernacles Jesus cries out that the thirsty should come to him and drink, and that whoever believes will have “rivers of living water” flowing from within (John 7:37–38). John interprets: “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive” (7:39).

Old Testament background includes the Lord as “the spring of living water” whom Israel forsook (Jeremiah 2:13), and prophetic promises of water and Spirit (e.g., Isaiah 44:3; Ezekiel 47). Jesus claims to be the giver of that eschatological life.