Summary
Chapter summary
First sign at Cana. Water to wine. Jesus cleanses the temple (John places it at the opening of the ministry, not the end). 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up'. He spake of the temple of his body. Many believed in his name when they saw the miracles which he did.
Context
Gospel · John — John overview
- A. 1–11 Water Turned to Wine at the Cana Wedding
- B. 12–17 A Whip of Cords in His Father's House
- C. 18–25 Destroy This Temple and in Three Days I Will Raise It
The outline
A.Water Turned to Wine at the Cana Weddingvv. 1 to 11
Read vv. 1 to 11 →B.A Whip of Cords in His Father's Housevv. 12 to 17
Read vv. 12 to 17 →C.Destroy This Temple and in Three Days I Will Raise Itvv. 18 to 25
Read vv. 18 to 25 →
The world behind this chapter
John 2The history
A village wedding was a week-long public event, and the groom's family carried the cost. Running out of wine was not an awkward moment; it was a lasting disgrace that the whole district would remember, and in that culture it could even expose the family to a legal claim from the bride's relatives. That is the size of the problem the mother of Jesus brings to him.
The six jars are specified as stone, and the material is the point. Under the purity rules that governed Jewish households, stone vessels do not contract ritual impurity, while pottery does and has to be broken. Workshops that cut such vessels have been excavated near Jerusalem, and stone cups and jars turn up all over first-century Jewish sites. These jars were there for washing, and their capacity — twenty or thirty gallons each — tells you how much water a household went through.
The temple trade had a logic behind it. Pilgrims came from across the empire with foreign coin, the temple tax had to be paid in an approved currency, and sacrificial animals had to pass inspection, so exchange tables and animal pens were genuinely useful. What made them intolerable was where they stood: in the outer court, the only part of the complex a non-Jew was permitted to enter.
John places this cleansing at the start of the ministry, while Matthew, Mark, and Luke place one in the final week. Some hold there were two cleansings, three years apart; others hold that John has moved the scene forward to state his theme early. The text does not settle it, and honest readers land in both camps.
What it meant to them
The water for purification becomes the best wine of the feast, and the master of the banquet says the good wine has been kept until now. Readers who had grown up inside the washing system would have felt the whole argument of the Gospel in that one swap.
The forty-six years detail let readers date the scene. Herod began rebuilding the temple around 20 or 19 BC, and the work continued long after Jesus died — it was not finished until about AD 63, seven years before Rome burned it down. When Jesus said he would raise this temple in three days, the joke about the building schedule was obvious to everyone in the courtyard.
Sources cited
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
- Flavius Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston translation)
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on John 2. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
Connections from this chapter
v. 17 · Quoted here
'The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up': the disciples remember (temple cleansing).
Psalms 69:9→because zeal for Your house has consumed me, and the insults of those who insult You have fallen on me.
public-domain commentaries in agreement
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.