href="#ulink_2369e42d-e5ea-5749-a216-7858d1aa12e9">3 However, most probably the avoidance of her name is just to highlight her earthly relationship to Jesus. Being the mother of Jesus, she too had a place in Jesus’ new community (cf. 2:12).
The reference to the invitation of Jesus along with his disciples (2:2) shows how closely the community of Jesus’ disciples had been linked with him within a short time. The mother of Jesus, as a woman, plays a key role in the first sign that Jesus does. Wine, as per Jewish custom, was used in festive occasions such as weddings.4 The wine used in this wedding ran out. Jesus’ mother may well have had some responsibility in catering for the guests,5 therefore she immediately brought the urgent matter to the attention of Jesus by telling him, “They do not have wine” (2:3). Perhaps she believed that Jesus, being the Son of God, was able to provide for the need on any occasion. However, Jesus did not do any miracle as his mother expected. He questioned her, “What is for me and you, O woman?” (2:4a). The word “O woman” is not a word of disrespect (cf. 19:26). Jesus’ words “My hour has not yet come” (2:4b) show that Jesus would act to supply wine in accordance with the will and timing of God rather than his physical parent. For him, to do the will of the Father was his food (4:34) and so he did not allow human relationships to direct his steps in his mission. While this meaning is well taken, the term “hour,” which occurs twenty-six times in John, has a deeper meaning.
Although Jesus says that his hour has not yet come, later he uses both present and future tenses to say, “The hour is coming, and now is” (4:23; 5:25; 16:32). Eventually he says, “The hour has come” (12:23, 27; 13:1; 17:1). The Johannine terms “the hour,” “my hour,” and “his hour” indicate the time when Jesus will return to the Father through his death and resurrection. The term “an hour” (the Greek word hōra without the definite article) refers to the effects that Jesus’ hour would bring in the lives of the believers, and those effects include the manner of worshipping God, persecution, a new understanding of Jesus’ words, and the final resurrection of all humans to face judgment (cf. 4:21; 5:25, 28–29; 16:2, 25).6 Thus, at the deeper level “my hour” in 2:4 means that the Father’s time to reveal Jesus’ glory through his death and resurrection has not yet come.
Gaining confidence from Jesus’ response, his mother instructed the servants, “You do what he would tell you” (2:5). She acted with an exemplary faith and with determination to supply wine through Jesus. However, his disciples were so passive that they were unable to recognize the need of the time.
Jesus started acting in his own time as per God’s will. He wished to supply better quality of wine by using the water kept in six stone jars, as per the Jewish rite of purification, each jar containing 80–120 liters (2:6 TNIV).7 The use of “stone jars” for purification is mentioned not in Lev 11:32–38, but in the Mishnah, a Rabbinic text of the second century that reflects the life situation of the late first century (m. Kelim 5:11; m. Besah 2:3). He asked the servants to fill the jars with water up to the brim and they did it (2:7). In obedience to Jesus’ instruction, they drew some water out and took it to the master of the feast (2:7–8).8
The text does not mention when the water drawn out of jars was turned into wine. We are only told that the master of the feast tasted the “water which had become wine” without knowing where it was from (2:9). The Greek perfect-tense gegenēmenon shows the quality of the water, which perhaps had already become wine before it came to the hands of the master. The water became wine probably when the servants were drawing it from the jars or when they were carrying it. They knew by whom the miracle happened, but not how it happened (2:9). There is a secrecy motif in this first sign of Jesus (2:11a), conveying the truth that the miraculous deeds of Jesus are beyond human comprehension. The focus of the sign, then, is not on how or when the turning of water into wine happened but on why it happened.
This sign also contains non-understanding, a literary feature of John. The master of the feast misunderstood the supply of “good wine” as the work of the bridegroom. Hence he told the bridegroom that he was keeping thus far the good wine in contrast to the usual custom of offering the best wine first so that the guests would appreciate the host’s provision, and then, after too much drinking, offering the wine of lesser quality (2:10).9 The master thus never understood the work of Jesus.
By following the Jewish rite of purification to do his first sign (literally “beginning of the signs”), Jesus brings out the truth that the real meaning of the Jewish religious customs is fulfilled only in him, who transforms the old ceremonial system into something that human beings can experience. Jesus replaces the old Jewish ritual order with his own new order.
In the OT, the “sweet wine” supplied by God to his people is the mark of deliverance from exile (Jer 31:12; Amos 9:13–14) and of prosperity (Joel 3:18), and it has an eschatological connotation also. In the light of this, Jesus’ conversion of water into wine indicates that the long-awaited kingdom of God has arrived and that God himself has drawn near in the person and ministry of Jesus to fulfill his promise of abundant blessings.10 The narrative of the wedding at Cana reaches its climax in 2:11, where the manifestation of Jesus’ glory through this sign leads the disciples to believe in him, while for others it is only a satisfaction of physical thirst (see comments on 1:14 for understanding “glory”). This sign renews the disciples’ commitment to Jesus and leads them into deeper faith.
After this sign, Jesus went to Capernaum with his mother, brothers, and disciples and stayed a few days there (2:12). This is a symbol of the corporate life of the new community, which includes men and women, centered in Jesus.
Jesus’ revolutionary act in the temple (2:13–22)
In 2:13 there is an abrupt shift from Capernaum (2:12) to Jerusalem. In the Synoptic accounts, Jesus enters into Jerusalem only once, at the end of his ministry, but in John Jesus makes four visits to Jerusalem, mainly during the Passover (2:13; 5:1; 7:10, 14; 12:9, 12). During one of his visits Jesus cleansed the Jerusalem temple and subsequently confronted the Jewish leaders (2:13–22). In the Synoptic Gospels this event is narrated nearly at the end of Jesus’ ministry (Matt 21:12–17 par.), whereas in John it is placed in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. One cannot prove that Jesus cleansed the temple twice. For John chronology has only marginal significance. In both 2:1–11 and 2:13–22 Jesus transforms the Jewish legal custom to do good to people by fulfilling their need.
Jesus went up to Jerusalem just before the Passover, a Jewish festival celebrated every year in commemoration of God’s deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, having passed over their houses without killing the first-born by seeing the blood of a lamb on their lintels and doorposts (Exod 12). All who went up to Jerusalem used to go to the temple to offer sacrifices and worship God (cf. Ps 122). Naturally Jesus, as a Jew, first went into the temple.
In the temple, Jesus did not see an atmosphere of worship, but a business trend. He found those who were selling oxen, sheep, and pigeons, and money changers sitting (2:14) for exchanging the currency brought by pilgrims who came from other countries into Tyrian coinage, which was the prescribed currency to pay temple dues (m. Bek. 8:7). The oxen, sheep, and pigeons were required by the Law to be sacrificed (Lev 1 and 3). Surprisingly, sale of “lambs,” the actual Passover sacrifice, is not mentioned in the narrative. The temple authorities apparently did not give priority to the sacrificial lambs, but were primarily concerned with the trade that would bring them economic profit. That is why Jesus became zealous for the house of God and made a whip of cords to chase out the animals and to pour out the coins of the money changers by overturning their tables (2:15). He rebuked
