JESUS’S FIRST MIRACLE OCCURS AT CANA OF GALILEE

JOHN 2:1–11

Anyone who has taught, no matter what the setting, knows how important it is for students to have confidence in their teacher. This is doubly true when the learning experience will take the students into more difficult and threatening circumstances. Day after day Jesus asked his disciples to do just that. Step one way and you touch off the anger of the Roman authorities. Step another and the religious leaders in Jerusalem are calling for your death. In this atmosphere, Jesus needed the disciples’ uncompromised trust. His first miracle occurred at Cana, happening where it did for a reason.

Although Jesus had by then become a rabbi with an increasing public presence, he continued to participate in social events with his family. So we find him attending a wedding in Cana of Galilee (John 2:1–11). It was traditional for Jewish families to wash regularly as part of the process of ritual purification. Since a wedding celebration lasted for several days, gallons of water were kept in stone water jars for that purpose.1 The water was intended for ritual cleansing, not bathing or drinking. But when the supply of wine at this wedding gave out, Jesus’s mother urged him to do something that only he could do. The water in the six stone jars was turned into choice wine.

When we go to put Jesus’s first miracle on the map, three possible locations present themselves as options. The first is Kanah (Cana), located within the tribal territory of Asher near Greater Sidon (Josh. 19:28). While it receives the support of Eusebius, this Cana seems too far from Nazareth to fit the narrative.2 The second choice is Kefr Kana. Since the sixth century, Christian pilgrims have traveled to this village just four miles northeast of modern Nazareth to visit churches commemorating this miracle. But archaeological discoveries thus far do not reveal a first-century existence for this village of Cana as does a third site—Khirbet Qana, located eight miles north of Nazareth.3 This village, which sits atop a perpendicular outcrop of the Bet Netofa Ridge, is the most likely site of Jesus’s first miracle.

Large limestone vessels, which could be used for storing ritually pure water, did not transmit ritual impurity.
© Dr. James C. Martin. The Israel Museum.

The site of Cana of Galilee (Khirbet Qana) located on the southern edge of the Bet Netofa Ridge.

How does this location connect with strengthening the confidence of Jesus’s disciples? First, we note that some of the initial disciples Jesus called included Andrew, Simon, Philip, and Nathanael (John 1:40–49). Andrew, Simon, and Philip were from Bethsaida (John 1:44). Nathanael was from Cana (John 21:2). Since these four students were all from Galilee, they were going to encounter the negative Galilean perspective about people from Nazareth—a perspective noted just a few verses earlier in John’s Gospel. When Philip found Nathanael and told him they had found the promised Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth, Nathanael replied, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46). Initially, as Jesus moved about in Galilee, these low expectations followed him and created an obstacle to his authority.4 And though Nathanael quickly believed Jesus was the Messiah upon meeting him (John 1:47–49), these same low expectations threatened to undermine the confidence of the disciples whom he had called from Galilean cities to become his students.

Consequently, there was a reason Jesus did the first miracle in their Galilean backyard and right in Nathanael’s hometown on an east/west roadway that connected Galilee with the Mediterranean Sea. Certainly this miracle helped out the troubled wedding host by removing the embarrassment of running out of wine. More importantly, it sent an early message throughout Galilee in general and to the Galilean disciples in particular. Encouraged to see Jesus as special, they could confidently trust his identity as Messiah. John goes on to tell us that this first miracle in Cana had exactly the intended results: “He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him” (John 2:11).

Sarcophagus scene (fourth century AD) of Jesus’s first miracle—changing the water into wine at Cana.