And many more believed because of his own word;
many.
Genesis 49:10 The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.
Acts 1:8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Acts 8:12,25 But when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women…
because.
John 6:63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.
John 7:46 The officers answered, Never man spake like this man.
Matthew 7:28,29 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine: …
because of His message.
The term "message" refers to the words and teachings of Jesus, which were powerful enough to inspire faith. Unlike the initial belief of the Samaritans, which was based on the woman's testimony, this belief was directly due to Jesus' own words. This underscores the authority and truth of Jesus' teachings, as seen in John 6:63, where He states, "The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life." The emphasis on His message also points to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies about the coming of a prophet like Moses, as mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:15, who would speak God's words to the people.
- The tiny conjunction ties John 4:41 to what just happened in Sychar. The Samaritan woman’s testimony drew her neighbors to Jesus, and “they asked Him to stay with them, and He stayed two days” (John 4:40).
- Scripture loves these connecting words because they show God’s work is continuous. Just as in Acts 2:47, “And the Lord added to their number daily,” the kingdom grows from one conversation to the next.
- The Spirit’s harvest keeps expanding. Not a handful, not even “many,” but “many more.”
• From one woman (John 4:7) to a village (4:39) to an even larger group (4:41).
• Echoes of John 12:19: “Look, the world has gone after Him!”
- God’s saving heart always reaches beyond the expected—think of Acts 11:21 where “a great number believed and turned to the Lord.”
- Belief here isn’t casual agreement; it is saving trust in the Messiah. John’s Gospel repeatedly clarifies that “whoever believes in Him shall not perish” (John 3:16).
- In Sychar, belief moved villagers from curiosity to commitment, much like the Philippian jailer who asked, “What must I do to be saved?” and then “believed in God with his whole household” (Acts 16:30-34).
- John closes his Gospel with the same aim: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ…and that by believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31).
- Their faith had a clear cause. It did not spring from cultural pressure or miracles alone but from exposure to truth.
- Romans 10:17 reminds us, “So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”.
- The Samaritan villagers show that when God’s Word is received, it produces faith (1 Thessalonians 2:13).
- Jesus’ own words carried divine authority: “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63).
- Unlike the woman’s testimony, His message is firsthand revelation. Hebrews 4:12 declares it “living and active,” and Luke 24:32 records hearts burning as He spoke.
- The focus shifts from witness to the Word itself, underlining that lasting belief rests on Christ’s proclamation, not merely on human reports (John 4:42).
John 4:41 highlights the unstoppable growth of faith when people encounter the living Word. The story moves from a single testimony to a multiplied community of believers, all grounded in Jesus’ own message. His words still create faith today, inviting us to join the “many more” who trust Him.
(41) And many more believed.--The veil is left upon those two days, as upon so many days in the life of Christ. We know how much was said at the well in a few minutes, and that many believed on Him in a few hours. What questions they must have asked! What truths He must have taught during this sojourn! How that central truth of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man must have burned in the hearts of this mixed and despised people! Salvation was of the Jews, and they were from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim. But Fatherhood is a truth for every heart of man, and He who thus linked heaven and earth was the Saviour of the world. We know not what words passed from them to Him, from Him to them; but we know that the result was that many more believed, and that those who before believed on testimony passed to the higher faith of personal conviction.Verses 41, 42. - And very many more believed, during that visit, by reason of his word - Christ's own word. We know not what the word was, but the specimens which John has recorded make us certain that torrents of living water flowed from his lips. He was moving in the full power of the Spirit. He was unveiling the nature of that "salvation" which was, as he said, "from the Jews;" but a salvation which affected and was adapted to the whole world. And they (repeatedly) said to the woman (the play of aorist and imperfect tenses throughout this passage is very noteworthy), No longer do we believe by reason of thy speaking. The word λαλιά does not generally connote so serious a meaning as λόγος. The first word is used for "utterance" pure and simple (Matthew 26:73), and for the inarticulate voices of lower creatures as well, while λόγος and λέγειν never have the latter meaning; but still λαλιά is used in classical Greek for "discourse," and in John 8:43 is used by Christ of his own "utterance." Meyer says the term is purposely chosen from the standpoint of the speaker, while in ver. 39 λόγος is used of the same λαλιά by St. John as narrator. The above are the only times the term is found in the New Testament. For we have ourselves heard, and we know - fully, by personal intuition (we might have expected ἐγνῶμεν here) - that this is indeed the Saviour of the world. This sublime description only occurs in one other place in the New Testament (viz. 1 John 4:14), and here it falls from the lips of a Samaritan. There is no improbability that it should have expressed the thought of Samaritans, for they entertained wider and less nationalized views than did the Jews. Baur's notion, that the author wished to contrast heathen or Gentile susceptibility with Jewish narrowness and reserve, is out of keeping with the facts. A genuine heathen would have been as easy to invent as a susceptible Samaritan. "The Saviour of the world" is one of the noblest and most accurate terms in all the Bible to denote the work of Christ. It is the outcome of a discourse and of teaching which led men to the idea of spiritual and sincere worship of the Father, which searched for moral conditions rather than orthodox ritual, which demanded purity of life more than outward observance, and treated doing the will and work of the Father as more indispensable than necessary food. We need not be surprised (Acts 8.) to find the outcome of this sojourn of the Divine Lord among the misunderstood and hated Samaritans. The effort of the Tubingen school to find in this narrative an idealization of the synoptic tradition of Christ's special beneficence towards the Samaritans is very unfortunate, because, in Matthew 10:5, the "twelve" were forbidden to enter into cities of the Samaritans, and advised to occupy all their energies in evangelizing the cities of Israel. The record of Acts 8. affords very slender basis for a corresponding enlargement. The narrative before us shows that, in answer to the receptivity of the Samaritans, the Lord made the richest and fullest and most explicit and immediate revelation of himself. The extension of the kingdom of grace to Samaritans, and their incorporation into the body of Christ, was arrested by the need of the visit of the apostles, by the magic and hypocrisy of Simon; of which there is not here the slightest trace.