John Chapter 2

vs 1

Third day of what? I have no idea. But Jesus' mother was there at this wedding. It's easy for us to think "Oh, wedding, right" and think about what we think of as a wedding. But their weddings are pretty different. Thankfully, most of what goes on at the wedding isn't all that necessary to the story.

vs 2

Jesus and his disciples were there too. Now this shows us something interesting about weddings back then. If you were having a wedding, and you invited some sort of teacher, would you invite all his students too? Sure, this is early times yet, but the fact that they were still invited means either that they were all Galileans already, or that Jesus having disciples was accepted and approved by this invite.

vs 3

This statement to Jesus by his mum seems fairly innocuous to me. It's just a statement about the wine levels.

vs 4

But Jesus doesn't see it that way. Jesus sees it as a request to do something about it. Assuming he is right in reading the situation that way, why would his mum ask him to do this? I guess it's possible that the wedding was of people who were related to Mary, and so the idea of the party running out of wine was a shaming thing in the culture. Or that Mary simply thought it was time for Jesus to get his Messiah thing happening (although only the servants end up knowing what he did).

It's a bit of a mystery, but whyever she asks him, Jesus' initial reaction is to say that he doesn't think he should be involved. His reason is that it's not the right time, we assume to start doing miracles.

vs 5

His mum ignores him though, and tells the servants just to do what he says, and wait for the magic to happen.

vs 6

If you think about it, these are big pots. The NIV tells me it's something like 75-115 litres. That's a hell of a lot of wine. But I get ahead of myself.

vs 7

Jesus tells the servants to fill them with water. And the servants do it, fair enough. They are ceremonial washing pots after all - if a religious talker who's got a few students with him wants you to do something religiousy, then you do it. Perhaps he's going to wash the people who started the wedding, to make up for the sin of running out of wine? But remember, they didn't just go to the tap to fill these bad boys - they probably would have had to go and draw water from somewhere, and 100 litres of water is no mean feat. So they took on a bit of work to do something they didn't know would pay off.

This might tell us something about Mary's role at this wedding. That they would listen to her and do what she said (listen to Jesus), she may well have been a person of importance at the wedding. Then again, they are servants.

vs 8

The NASB ends this verse as a sentence. Usually the NIV doesn't do this as much, but they must have decided that the translation required a comma there. Oh well.

Anyway, now he tells them to draw some of the water out, and give it to the "Master of the banquet" (greek Architriklinos, which literally means 'master of tables'). And they do. Now the servants must be wondering what is going on here.

vs 9

When the guy drinks it, he finds out that it is wine. It's not a big deal to him, because he has no idea that it was water a few minutes ago. But he does feel the need to go the bridegroom and have a chat. In the NIV, it sounds like he pulls him to a side to speak - in the NASB, it sounds like he just calls out to him. That's the way I'd always imagined it, but either works. If the table master did just take him aside, it provides even a more muted response to Jesus' miracle.

The servants did know, though, and so for them it would have been something special.

vs 10

The guy tells the bridegroom that the wine is really good. He also tells us that breaking out the cheap stuff later in the festivities was the norm in that culture. At least some things never change. Don't be fooled into thinking this is non-alcoholic wine, either - the word in this verse, methuo, literally means "to be drunken" (not to be mistaken with the past tense of "to drink" - it is not "to be drunk", it is "to be drunken", and was metaphorically used to describe killing people) so they were certainly on the turps, and Jesus' wine was no exception.

vs 11

Here we are with John himself calling this the first miracle. I might point out, though, that I think you could build an argument for this being read as the first miraculous sign that was performed in Galilee. But that doesn't really matter. John thinks it's worthy of some extra description as something special. John also tells us why Jesus did this miracle - it wasn't for the sake of a good wedding bash, and it wasn't to attract servants from the wedding to be his disciples. Both of those things may have happened, but John says that this miracle had the result of Jesus revealing his glory (his identity as God) and that this caused the disciples to put their faith in him. That makes it a pretty important miracle. And yet John's the only one to record it.

vs 12

I would say that the fact that his mother and brothers are there with him afterwards, as well as his disciples, means that the wedding may have been some sort of family affair. In any case, Capernaum seems to be where his family was staying, perhaps not permanently, but for a few days at least.