The Life of Christ

SECTION 32

Jn. 2:1 And on the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there;

Edersheim tells us that weddings were usually held on Wednesday afternoons in Israel. 10

• It was illegal to have a wedding on the Sabbath, the day before the Sabbath, or on a feast day.

• Having it on Wednesday gave the first several days of the week for preparation.

The local Sanhedrin also met every Thursday, which made it convenient for the husband to annul the marriage if he discovered the night before that his wife was not a virgin (Deut. 22:15-21).

• On the wedding night there was to be a “blood evidence” upon the sheets of the bed resulting from the breaking of her vaginal membrane (hymen) (Deut. 22:17).

‘…these are the evidences of my daughter’s virgin ity.’ And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city (Deut. 22:17).

• The blood shed resulting from their initial intercourse formed a blood covenant between the man and the woman.

• If she wasn’t a virgin, and the husband chose to make a formal claim to this effect, in earlier times she could be stoned to death as the result (Deut. 22:21).

• “But if the thing is true, and evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her f ather’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel, to play the harlot in her father’s house. So, you shall put away the evil from among you” (Deut. 22:20-21). • There were occasional times when the husband would try to annul the marriage, falsely claiming his wife wasn’t a virgin. In such a case the parents of the bride would produce the “blood evidence” of the wedding night to prove that their daughter indeed was a virgin. This was all done on Thursdays, the day the local Sanhedrin met. Jn. 2:2-3 “… and Jesus also was invited, and His disciples, to the wedding. 3 And when the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to Him, ‘They have no wine.’”

Running out of wine was more than a minor embarrassment, since the family had a social obligation to meet a cultural standard.

• The problem in those days was that there wa sn’t a large variety of different drinks — it was either wine or water.

Jn. 2:4-5 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”

This peculiar statement addressed a number of Jesus’ concerns.

• He first communicates to Mary that He was no longer available to serve as her helper. In the past, He was always right there to serve in whatever way He could. That has all changed as of now.

10 Alfred Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Grand Rapids, MI: Associated Publishers), 268.

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