John Chapter 2 verse 9 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 9. - When the governor of the feast tasted the water which had become wine. Luther translated, "Den Wein der Wasser gewesen war" - "The wine which had been water." No other explanation is possible than one that asserts an astounding contravention of the ordinary evolutions and sequences of nature. If wine has taken the place of water, there has been added to the water that which was not there before. The vine, with all its wondrous processes - the vineyard, the wine press, and other appliances - have all been dispensed with, and the same power which said, "Let there be light," called these additional elements together, originated them by his will. The new properties presented themselves to the percipient senses. In this respect the transformation is profoundly different from the supposed change which occurs in the Holy Eucharist. There the accidents and elements all remain; the substantia underlying them is supposed to be replaced by another substantia; but neither the one nor the other substance has ever been present to the senses. Here a new substance, with previously undiscovered attributes, presents itself. The uncompromising opponents of the supernatural will accept almost any interpretation but that which lies on the surface. The rationalistic, mythical, poetic mystic explanations all alike are encumbered with special difficulties. The evangelist who held Christ to be the Logos incarnate saw nothing inconceivable in the event. It was one of many phenomena which accompanied his life as the "Son of man," which helped to create the underlying presupposition on which the Gospel was written. Like the testimony of the last of the prophets and the earliest of the disciples, it is part of the evidence that the Logos dwelt among us. When the governor tasted wine drawn from these water pots, and knew not whence it was. He had known all the resources of the feast, but this puzzled him by its novelty. "Whence has it come? Where has it been stored? Whose is it?" An interesting parenthesis is here introduced, to contrast the ignorance of the ruler of the feast with the overwhelming mystery of knowledge given to the servants (the disciples of Jesus himself), [But the servants (διάκονοι) who drew the water knew]; knew, i.e., whence it was and, it seems to me, what it was. Meyer and others say they did not know that they had brought wine. It is impossible to assert as much as this. They knew the plain fact that it was not a wine vat or wine cask, but a water jar, from which they had drawn in order to fill the chalices in their hands. They became, therefore, guarantors of the mysterious sign. How much more than "whence" it was had dawned on their mind we cannot say. The governor of the feast calleth the bridegroom. We may judge from this that this responsible person was not in the room where the six water jars were placed, and that he either approached the bridegroom in his seat of honour, or called to him from his own, and expressed, by a convivial boast and equivocal compliment, his sense of the excellence of the wine which had thus, at the end of the feast, been lavished on the guests, who had been hitherto kept strangely ignorant of the resources of the host. It is unnecessary to put into the words any meaning deeper than the epigrammatic humour in which he revealed his sense of the reality of the objective fact which had been brought to his knowledge.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(9) Water that was made wine.--Better, water that had become wine. At what moment did the transformation take place? What water became wine? The text itself does not speak of "water now become wine" until the ruler of the feast tasted it, and immediately afterwards speaks of it as "water," when the servants drew it, for the plain reference of the parenthesis in brackets is to the drawing of the water from the pitchers (John 2:8), not to a previous drawing of water to place in the pitchers, which has not been even hinted at. Unless, then, there is a strong reason which does not appear in these words, this simple meaning is the true one;--that the change took place during or after the drawing from the pitchers, and that that portion only was changed which was carried to the ruler and actually needed to supply the guests. The reason based upon the mention of the number and contents of the pitchers (John 2:6) is certainly not a strong one. It is quite natural to find these stated in the picturesque style of this Gospel, and there is no care to give more than a rough estimate of the size from a remembrance either of these pitchers or of pitchers generally used for this purpose. There is more force in the general impression derived from John 2:7. It may be fairly asked why was more water placed in readiness than was needed? But the pitchers would be in any case re-filled for ablutions after the feast. They were at hand, meeting the eye. All possibility of collusion is thus excluded. They had been used not long before; they would very soon be used again. The filling of all leaves to the servants the choice of one or more from which to draw. There is an unfailing potential supply; it becomes an actual supply only when needed and appropriated by human want. This, as every supernatural work, is made to depend upon faith. There is no demand for this faith in filling water-pots with water; it is otherwise when they draw it, and bear it in the usual tankard to the ruler, in answer to the demand for wine. Here, as everywhere in divine action, there is an economy in the use of power. There is no miracle of "luxury" or "waste" or "excess." These cavils of the higher criticism are--like the additions of expositors, as that the feast lasted for a week or more, or their perversions, as that the wine was in no sense intoxicating--superstructures without a foundation.