§4 The Last Two Days: A Wedding in Galilee (John 2:1–12)
The journey home to Galilee is not described. The writer focuses instead on a single incident that took place after the group arrived. Debates about whether one could reach Galilee from Bethany in two days are pointless, first, because the exact location of Bethany is unknown (see note on 1:28), and second, because the phrase on the third day could sometimes be used to express a short indefinite period of time (like “a couple of days” in colloquial English). Strictly speaking, the phrase means “the day after tomorrow” (cf. Luke 13:32), that is, the third day after Jesus met Nathanael. This would be Day Six. But the Gospel writer may not be speaking strictly, and in any case, the number he has assigned to this day is not six but three! He is surely more precise here than in verse 12 (“a few days”), and there is nothing wrong in counting a six-day sequence. But the emphasis is on the sequence, not on the total of six. If there were more days, or fewer, the point would be much the same. Interpretations that speak of the sequence as “six days of the new creation” corresponding to the six day week of Genesis 1 are questionable. Nor is it likely that the sequence is intended to correspond to the “six days before the Passover” near the end of Jesus” ministry (cf. 12:1) or the six days prior to his transfiguration (cf. Mark 9:2; Matt. 17:1). More to the point is the observation that the third day recalls language used of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead (e.g., Matt. 16:21; Luke 24:7, 21; 1 Cor. 15:4), as the miracle at Cana anticipates the glory of that event. Yet even this is speculative at best; the third day is not used explicitly of Jesus’ resurrection in John’s Gospel (though cf. “three days” in 2:19). To expect it to carry that connotation here, where it is part of a larger sequence, probably attributes too much ingenuity to the writer and too much sophistication to his readers.
The incident can be viewed either in itself or as part of the Gospel as a whole. In itself, it is a curious account of a rather extravagant miracle performed not to meet a desperate human need but simply to avert a social disaster. It is told soberly and simply, as a true incident, yet it has richly symbolic overtones that probably account for its inclusion here. Though the story proper is framed by references to Jesus’ disciples (vv. 2, 11), the disciples have no role in the actual account of the miracle. They serve instead to fix the story in its present context in John’s Gospel. The disciples’ response is what gives the story significance within that larger context: This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him (v. 11). For the narrator, the disciples’ place within the story proper is taken by the servants to whom Mary said, “Do whatever he tells you” (v. 5), and who alone, we are told, knew where the good wine had come from (v. 9). In a sense these servants represent not only the first four disciples but everyone who knows where Jesus comes from and does what he commands. As soon as the miracle story has been told, attention centers on the disciples and their response. The purpose of the miracle is to reveal Jesus’ glory to them, the new Israel (cf. 1:31), bringing to realization the vision promised to Nathanael. The explicit statement that they believed in Jesus (v. 11) completes their call and marks an auspicious beginning to the Galilean ministry.
After the single miracle at Cana and a short stay at Capernaum, Jesus will go to Jerusalem at the season of Passover and drive the moneychangers from the temple (cf. 2:13–22). To a reader familiar with the other Gospels, it appears that Jesus’ Passion is already under way (cf. Mark 11:15–18). The impression given is that the Gospel of John is to be a short Gospel indeed! The impression is, of course, misleading, because Jesus’ activities continue, with several journeys back and forth between Jerusalem and Galilee. Not until chapter 12 does he come to Jerusalem for the last time, and not until chapter 18 is he placed under arrest. In chapter 2, as he tells his mother, his time has not yet come (v. 4). Yet the early placement of the temple cleansing is deliberate, and its effect is twofold. First, it puts everything that follows under the shadow of Jesus’ impending Passion and gives his dialogues with the Jews the character of a trial. Second, it makes the story of the Cana wedding a kind of epitome or scale model of Jesus’ entire Galilean ministry, in which he turns the water of traditional ritual cleansing (v. 6) into the wine of a new and joyous messianic age.
Jesus’ ministry is seen in much the same way here as in certain synoptic parables. When asked why his disciples did not fast, he once asked in return, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them” (Mark 2:19). Jesus was not, of course, the bridegroom at the Cana wedding, yet in the imaginative world of his parables he saw himself as a bridegroom and his time on earth as a joyful wedding celebration. He also spoke significantly of “new wine,” which he said must be poured “into new wineskins” (Mark 2:22). It was probably imagery of this kind, traceable to Jesus himself, that led the writer of John’s Gospel to use a wine miracle at a wedding feast as an appropriate symbol for all that preceded the Passion.
A sense of “already, but not yet” pervades the narrative. Jesus displays his glory and his disciples come to faith, but only after a clear signal to the reader that this revelation is provisional and not final (v. 4). The proper time for Jesus’ “glorification” is at his death (cf. 12:23; 13:31; 17:1, 5), and that time has not yet come. The miracle at Cana is a display of glory ahead of time, a display that typifies his Galilean ministry as a whole and specifically fulfills his promise to Nathanael. The juxtaposition of 1:19–51 and 2:1–11 in the text of John’s Gospel allows each to interpret the other. Jesus is now “revealed to Israel” (1:31). But if the Cana narrative is the end of something—that is, the six-day sequence with its promise of glory—it is also a beginning. The first of his miraculous signs (v. 11) indicates that more will follow. More miracles do follow, but the Gospel writer has in mind one in particular, the healing of a government official’s son at that same Cana in Galilee (see 4:54). Much has been written about a miracle or signs source used by the author of this Gospel, but the numbering of Jesus’ miracles stops at two. The two Cana miracles form a pair distinct from all the rest. Neither of them gives rise to discourse or controversy. Both do exactly what the Gospel writer wants miracles to do: They lead people to believe in Jesus and through faith in him to gain life (see 20:31).
The length of Jesus’ stay in Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples cannot be determined from the text. The vagueness of a few days stands in marked contrast to the deliberate sequence of days extending from 1:29 to 2:11. Verse 12 represents a momentary pause, a brief respite in the action before Jesus’ first confrontation with Jerusalem and the temple. Other such pauses take place in Bethany, east of the Jordan (10:40–42), and in a town called Ephraim, near the desert (11:54). Jesus has said to his mother, My time has not yet come (v. 4), and now, it appears, they are simply waiting.
2:4 / Why do you involve me? lit., “what to me and to you?” A slightly more literal translation suitable to the present context is “What do you want from me?” The idiom is used both in Hebrew and Greek literature to dissociate the speaker from the listener (cf., e.g., the demons crying out at Jesus in Mark 1:24 and 5:7). Jesus is insisting that if he acts, it must be on his own initiative in obedience to God his Father. His hand will not be forced, even by a close relative (cf. 7:6–10).
He addresses his mother as woman, a term which in Greek carries no disrespect (cf. 19:26), yet which dissociates Jesus from the traditional mother-son relationship and places him solely under God’s directive. The NIV’s Dear woman is too intimate. Either woman alone or “My dear woman” would have conveyed better the intended note of mild annoyance.
2:6 / From twenty to thirty gallons: lit., “two or three measures.” A “measure” was about nine gallons, yielding an approximation of 20 or 25 gallons for each jar.
2:8 / Now draw some out. B. F. Westcott suggested that Jesus is commanding more water to be drawn from the well from which the jars had been filled, not from the jars themselves (The Gospel According to St. John [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950; reprint of 1881 edition], pp. 37–38). This would avoid the assumption that Jesus produced such a huge quantity of wine, and it is true that the same verb is used in 4:7, 15 for drawing water from a well. But there has been no explicit mention of the water source (as, e.g., 4:6 and 9:7), only of the jars, their purpose, and their capacity. Why are these details included if the miracle affects only a small quantity of water taken directly from a well? As for the extravagance of 120–150 gallons of the choice wine, it hardly exceeds that of “about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume” poured out on Jesus’ feet (12:3) or the seventy-five pounds of spices used to embalm his body (19:39). Abundant wine was part of Jewish and Jewish-Christian apocalyptic hopes, and the six jars at Cana were modest compared to the fantastic bounty expected in the days of the Messiah (cf. Enoch 10.19, 2 Baruch 29.5). Papias, a second-century bishop from Asia Minor, attributed to Jesus and to “John the Lord’s disciple” a prophecy of “vineyards … with 10,000 vines and on one vine 10,000 branches, and on one branch 10,000 shoots, and on every shoot 10,000 clusters, and in every cluster 10,000 grapes, and pressed from every grape 25 measures of wine” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.33.3). The “extravagance” of the canonical Gospel of John seems tame by comparison, for it has, after all, a basis in history. Yet it makes the point that when Jesus gives life, he gives it abundantly (cf. 10:10). There is more than enough for everyone in need (cf. 6:13).
2:11 / This, the first of his miraculous signs: lit., “this beginning of the signs.” The word for “miracles” or “signs” (Gr.: sēmeia) emphasizes the symbolic character of these acts. They are important not simply because they are miraculous but because they convey a meaning or message.