On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and Jesus’ mother was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no wine.”
4 Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does that have to do with you and me? My hour hasn’t come yet.”[1]
5 His mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
6 Now six stone water jars stood there, the kind used for the Jewish purification rites, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.[2][3] 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them all the way to the top.
8 Then he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.”
So they took it.[4] 9 The master of the feast tasted the water that had become wine. He didn’t know where it came from — though the servants who had drawn the water knew — and he called the bridegroom over 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had plenty to drink. But you’ve kept the good wine until now.”
11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.
12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples, and they stayed there a few days.
• • •
13 The Jewish Passover was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and money-changers sitting at their tables. 15 He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple — the sheep and the cattle too. He scattered the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those selling doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace.”
17 His disciples remembered that it is written, “Passion for your house will consume me.”[5]
18 The Jews responded, “What sign can you show us to prove you have the right to do this?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
20 The Jews said, “This temple took forty-six years to build, and you’re going to raise it up in three days?”[6] 21 But the temple he was speaking about was his body. 22 So after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word Jesus had spoken.
23 While he was in Jerusalem for the Passover festival, many people believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing. 24 But Jesus didn’t entrust himself to them, because he knew all people. 25 He didn’t need anyone to tell him about human nature — he knew what was in a person.
Notes
Note 1. The Greek behind this line, literally “what to me and to you,” is an old Semitic idiom found throughout the Hebrew scriptures (Judges 11:12; 1 Kings 17:18; 2 Kings 3:13). It marks distance between the speaker and the matter being raised; how sharp it sounds varies from passage to passage. The address “Woman” (gynai) is the same one used to the Samaritan woman at 4:21 and to Mary Magdalene at 20:15. ↩
Note 2. Under Jewish purity law ceramic vessels that contracted impurity had to be broken, but stone could not become impure, so it was prized for ritual washing. Large limestone jars like these have been excavated across first-century Galilee and Judea. ↩
Note 3. The Greek measures each jar at two or three metrētai, a metrētēs being roughly ten gallons. Six jars filled to the brim comes to somewhere around 120 to 180 gallons. ↩
Note 4. The “master of the feast” (architriklinos) was the person who ran a banquet — overseeing the food, drink, and flow of the celebration, something like a head steward or toastmaster. He was not the host or bridegroom. ↩
Note 5. The line is Psalm 69:9, “zeal for your house has consumed me,” the cry of a righteous sufferer mocked for his devotion to God. Our “passion” renders the same word usually translated “zeal.” ↩
Note 6. Herod the Great began his lavish rebuilding of the temple around 20–18 BC, so a forty-sixth year points to roughly AD 27–28 — one of the few datable anchors in the Gospels. The complex was still unfinished, and work continued for decades until shortly before Rome destroyed it in AD 70. ↩