diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 4532c4c..d28b4d6 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -349,6 +349,9 @@ Even more queries can be found [here](https://colab.research.google.com/github/R
 
 # Latest updates
 
+## Version 0.2.0 alpha 5
+- If the initialization of the Spark session fails, we now check if SPARK_HOME is set and if it may be invalid or pointing to a different Spark version than 4.0, and output a more informative error message. 
+
 ## Version 0.2.0 alpha 4
 - Added parameters to the jsoniq magic to select the desired output to print: -j, -df, -pdf
 - Added informative error message with a hint on how to fix when trying to get a DataFrame and there is no schema.
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 4ceb6e0..167e745 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"
 
 [project]
 name = "jsoniq"
-version = "0.2.0a4"
+version = "0.2.0a5"
 description = "Python edition of RumbleDB, a JSONiq engine"
 requires-python = ">=3.11"
 dependencies = [
diff --git a/src/jsoniq/jars/rumbledb-1.24.0.jar b/src/jsoniq/jars/rumbledb-1.24.0.jar
index 15d02f5..d74418e 100644
Binary files a/src/jsoniq/jars/rumbledb-1.24.0.jar and b/src/jsoniq/jars/rumbledb-1.24.0.jar differ
diff --git a/src/jsoniq/session.py b/src/jsoniq/session.py
index 0d838f2..f523994 100644
--- a/src/jsoniq/session.py
+++ b/src/jsoniq/session.py
@@ -10,6 +10,15 @@
 with pkg_resources.path("jsoniq.jars", "rumbledb-1.24.0.jar") as jar_path:
     jar_path_str = "file://" + str(jar_path)
 
+def get_spark_version():
+    if os.environ.get('SPARK_HOME') != None:
+        spark_version = os.popen("spark-submit --version 2>&1").read()
+        if "version" in spark_version:
+            match = re.search(r'version (\d+\.\d+.\d+)', spark_version)
+            if match:
+                return match.group(1)
+    return None
+
 class MetaRumbleSession(type):
     def __getattr__(cls, item):
         if item == "builder":
@@ -64,7 +73,26 @@ def __init__(self):
 
         def getOrCreate(self):
             if RumbleSession._rumbleSession is None:
-                RumbleSession._rumbleSession = RumbleSession(self._sparkbuilder.getOrCreate())
+                try:
+                    RumbleSession._rumbleSession = RumbleSession(self._sparkbuilder.getOrCreate())
+                except FileNotFoundError as e:
+                    if not os.environ.get('SPARK_HOME') is None:
+                        sys.stderr.write("[Error] SPARK_HOME environment variable may not be set properly. Please check that it points to a valid path to a Spark 4.0 directory, or maybe the easiest would be to delete the environment variable SPARK_HOME completely to fall back to the installation of Spark 4.0 packaged with pyspark.\n")
+                        sys.stderr.write(f"Current value of SPARK_HOME: {os.environ.get('SPARK_HOME')}\n")
+                        sys.exit(43)
+                    else:
+                        raise e
+                except TypeError as e:
+                    spark_version = get_spark_version()
+                    if not os.environ.get('SPARK_HOME') is None and spark_version is None:
+                        sys.stderr.write("[Error] Could not determine Spark version. The SPARK_HOME environment variable may not be set properly. Please check that it points to a valid path to a Spark 4.0 directory, or maybe the easiest would be to delete the environment variable SPARK_HOME completely to fall back to the installation of Spark 4.0 packaged with pyspark.\n")
+                        sys.stderr.write(f"Current value of SPARK_HOME: {os.environ.get('SPARK_HOME')}\n")
+                        sys.exit(43)
+                    elif not spark_version.startswith("4.0"):
+                        sys.stderr.write(f"[Error] RumbleDB requires Spark 4.0, but found version {spark_version}. Please either set SPARK_HOME to a Spark 4.0 directory, or maybe the easiest would be to delete the environment variable SPARK_HOME completely to fall back to the installation of Spark 4.0 packaged with pyspark.\n")
+                        sys.exit(43)
+                    else:
+                        raise e
             return RumbleSession._rumbleSession
         
         def create(self):