44. Joh_2:1-11, Wedding-Wine at Cana
John 2:1-11, Wedding-Wine at Cana
John 2:1-11 : The distinguishing fact is that Christ turned the water into wine. The Greek word is oinos; and it is claimed that therefore the wine was alcoholic and intoxicating. But as oinos is a generic word, and, as such, includes all kinds of wine and all stages of the juice of the grape, and sometimes the clusters and even the vine, it is begging the whole question to assert that it was intoxicating. As the narrative is silent on this point, the character of the wine can only be determined by the attendant circumstances—by the occasion, the material used, the person making the wine, and the moral influence of the miracle. The occasion was a wedding convocation. The material was water—the same element which the clouds pour down, which the vine draws up from the earth by its roots, and in its passage to the clusters changes into juice. The operator was Jesus Christ, the same who, in the beginning, fixed that law by which the vine takes up water and converts it into pure, unfermented juice. The wine provided by the family was used up, and the mother of Jesus informed Him of that fact. He directed that the six water-pots be filled with water. This being done, He commanded to draw and hand it to the master of the feast. He pronounced it wine—good wine. The moral influence of the miracle will be determined by the character of the wine. It is pertinent to ask, Is it not derogatory to the character of Christ and the teachings of the Bible to suppose that He exerted his miraculous power to produce, according to Alvord, 126, and according to Smith, at least 60 gallons of intoxicating wine?—wine which inspiration had denounced as “a mocker,” as “biting like a serpent,” and “stinging like an adder,” as “the poison of dragons,” “the cruel venom of asps,” and which the Holy Ghost had selected as the emblem of the wrath of God Almighty? Is it probable that He gave that to the guests after they had used the wine provided by the host, and which, it is claimed, was intoxicating? But wherein was the miracle? We read in Matthew 15:34 that Christ fed four thousand persons, and in Mark 6:38 that He fed five thousand persons, in each case upon a few loaves and fishes, taking up seven and twelve baskets of fragments. In these cases, Christ did instantly what, by the laws of nature which He had ordained, it would have taken months to grow and ripen into wheat. So in the case of the wine, Christ, by supernatural and superhuman rapidity, produced that marvelous conversion of water into the “pure blood of the grape” which, by his own established law of nature, takes place annually through a series of months, as the vine draws up the water from the earth, and transmutes it into the pure and unfermented juice found in the rich, ripe clusters on the vine. In Psalms 104:14-15, we read: “That He may bring forth food out of the earth, and wine that maketh glad the heart of man.” Here the juice of the grape which is produced out of the earth is called wine. This wine was made by the direct law of God—that law by which the vine draws water from the earth and transmutes it into pure juice in the clusters.
I am happy to state that this is not a modern interpretation, forced out by the pressure of the wine question, but was also entertained by the early fathers.
St. Augustine, born a.d. 354, thus explains this miracle: “For He on that marriage-day made wine in the six jars which He ordered to be filled with water—He who now makes it every year in the vines; for, as what the servants had poured into the water-jars was turned into wine by the power of the Lord, so, also, that which the clouds pour forth is turned into wine by the power of the self-same Lord. But we cease to wonder at what is done every year; its very frequency makes astonishment to fail”—Bible Commentary, p. 305.
Chrysostom, born a.d. 344, says: “Now, indeed, making plain that it is He who changes into wine the water in the vines and the rain drawn up by the roots. He produced instantly at the wedding-feast that which is formed in the plant during a long course of time”—Bible Commentary, p. 305.
Dr. Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, England, in 1600, says: “What doeth He in the ordinary way of nature but turn the watery juice that arises up from the root into wine? He will only do this, now suddenly and at once, which He does usually by sensible degrees”—Bible Commentary, p. 305. The critical Dr. Trench, now Archbishop of Dublin, says: “He who each year prepares the wine in the grape, causing it to drink up and swell with the moisture of earth and heaven, to transmute this into its own nobler juices, concentrated all those slower processes now into the act of a single moment, and accomplished in an instant what ordinarily He does not accomplish but in months”—Bible Commentary, p. 305.
We have the highest authority that alcohol is not found in any living thing, and is not a process of life. Sir Humphry Davy says of alcohol: “It has never been found ready formed in plants.”
Count Chaptal, the eminent French chemist, says: “Nature never forms spirituous liquors; she rots the grape upon the branch, but it is art which converts the juice into (alcoholic) wine.”
Dr. Henry Monroe, in his Lecture on Medical Jurisprudence, says: “Alcohol is nowhere to be found in any product of nature; was never created by God; but is essentially an artificial thing prepared by man through the destructive process of fermentation.”
Professor Liebig says: “It is contrary to all sober rules of research to regard the vital process of an animal or a plant as the cause of fermentation. The opinion that they take any share in the morbid process must be rejected as an hypothesis destitute of all support. In all fungi, analysis has detected the presence of sugar, which during the vital process is not resolved into alcohol and carbonic acid, but after their death. It is the very reverse of the vital process to which this effect must be ascribed. Fermentation, putrefaction, and decay are processes of decomposition.” See notes on 1 Timothy 4:4. Can it be seriously entertained that Christ should, by His miraculous power, make alcohol, an article abundantly proved not to be found in all the ranges of His creation? Can it be believed that He, by making alcohol, sanctions the making of it and the giving of it to His creatures, when He, better than all others, knew that it, in the past, had been the cause of the temporal and eternal ruin of myriads, and which, in all the ages to come, would plunge myriads upon myriads into the depths of eternal damnation? The Rev. Dr. Jacobus says: “All who know of the wines then used, well understand the unfermented juice of the grape. The present wines of Jerusalem and Lebanon, as we tasted them, were commonly boiled and sweet, without intoxicating qualities, such as we here get in liquors called wines. The boiling prevents fermentation. Those were esteemed the best wines which were least strong”—Comments on John 2:1-11. This festive occasion furnishes no sanction for the use of the alcoholic wines of commerce at weddings at the present time, much less for the use of them on other occasions.