was a latent power equal to the present need, and which he could put forth at his will, however he had restrained it until now.* Others assume that she had no definite purpose in thus speaking, but only that as she had ever found him a wise counsellor in the least as well as in greatest things, so she turned to him now. Bengel's explanation is curious, that it was a suggestion to him that they should leave, and thus by their example break up the assembly before the embarrassment of their hosts should appear. The Romanist expositors have been very anxious to rid our Lord's answer, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" of every shadow of rebuke or blame. Whole essays have been written with this single purpose. Now it is quite true that in the address "Woman" there is nothing of the kind-nothing of severity or rebuke, however it may have something of such a sound to an English ear. We find our blessed Lord, even at the moment when probably he was addressing to his mother the last words that he spake to her on earth,-when commending her to the care of the beloved disciple, using the same language, “Woman, behold thy son." (John xix. 26.) So far from any harshness, the compellation has something solemn in it, and always must have, where the dignity of woman is felt and recognized. But it is otherwise with the words following, "What have I to do with thee?" If we compare them with the same or similar expressions elsewhere, the meaning of them will come clearly out, and it is this, "Let me alone; what is there common to thee and me? we stand in this matter on altogether different grounds." All expositors of the early Church have allowed, even by the confession *So Theophylact, Euthymius, and Neander. (Leben Jesu, p. 370.) So Cocceius: Verba nihil aliud portendunt quâm Mariam tanquam solicitam et parentem operuisse ipsi defectum vini, ex condolentiâ nimirum, ‡ Velim discedas, ut ceteri item discedant, antequam penuria patefiat. Calvin has a still more curious reason for this suggestion: Ut piâ aliquâ exhortatione convivis tædium eximeret, ac simul levaret pudorem sponsi. § Tí tuoi kai ooí; Cf. Judg. xi. 12; 1 Kin. xvii. 18; 2 Kin. iii. 13, (LXX.,) where the same phrase is used; it is elliptic, and the word koòv may be supplied. Thus in the second of these passages, "What is there in common to us twain, to me a sinful woman, and thee a man of God, that we should have thus come together to my harm?" And in the third, "What have we in common, I, a prophet of the true God, and thou, the son of that idolatrous king Ahab, that thou shouldst ask counsel of me?" Cf. Josh. xxii. 24; 2 Sam. xvi. 10 (LXX.); Matt. viii. 29; Mark i. 24; Luke viii. 28. It is only out of an entire ignorance of the idiom that their explanation could have taken rise, who understand the words, "What is that to thee and me? What concerns it us twain that there is no wine?" Two examples for many. Irenæus (Con. Hær., 1. 3, c. 16): Properante Mariâ ad admirabile vini signum, et ante tempus volente participare compendii poculo, Domi of the Romanists themselves, that there is more or less of reproof and repulse in these words; and they themselves are obliged to admit that there is the appearance of such; but at the same time they deny the reality. Christ so spake, they say,* to teach, not her, but us, that they were higher respects than those of flesh and blood, even the everlasting interests of God's kingdom, which moved him to the choosing the present moment for the first putting forth of his divine power. This is most true, that it was to teach this; but to teach it first to her, who from her wondrous position as the mother of the Lord, was in chiefest danger of forgetting it. "She had not yet," says Chrysostom, "that opinion of him which she ought, but because she bare him, counted that, after the manner of other mothers, she might in all things command him, whom it was more fitting for her to reverence and worship as her Lord." Yet whatever amount of rebuke was intended, any harshness which the reply may have in the reading we cannot doubt was mitigated by the manner of its speaking, by the way, too, in which the Lord suffered a near compliance with her request to shine through the apparent refusal. For when she said to the servants, "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it," it is plain that she saw in his seeming denial a real granting of her desire. Undoubtedly there is something obscure in that command following immediately as it does the words of Christ, "Mine hour is not yet come." For these words, and above all, when taken in connection with those that precede them, seem to put off not merely for a brief period, -for a few minutes, or for an hour, the manifestation of his glory as the Messiah, but to put it off altogether till some later period of his ministry. Indeed, this "hour" is generally, and especially in the language of St. John, the hour of his passion, or of his departure from the nùs repellens ejus intempestivam festinationem, dixit. Quid mihi et tibi est, mulier? nondum venit hora mea, expectans eam horam quæ est à Patre præcognita. He means by the compendii poculum, the cup of wine which should not be the result of the slower and ordinary processes of nature, but made per saltum, at a single intervention of divine power, therefore compendiously. Cf. 1. 3, c. 11, and Chrysostom, (Hom. 21 in Joh.): Εβούλετο . . . ἑαυτὴν λαμπροτέραν ποιῆσαι διὰ τοῦ παιδός, therefore was it that Christ σφοδρότερον ἀπεκρίνατο. ... * Maldonatus: Simulavit se matrem reprehendere, cùm minimè reprehenderet, ut ostenderet se non humano, non sanguinis respectu, sed solâ caritate, et ut sese, quis sit, declaret, miraculum facere. St. Bernard had gone before him in this explanation: it was, he says, for our sakes Christ so answered, ut conversos ad Dominum jam non sollicitet carnalium cura parentum, et necessitudines illæ non impediant exercitium spirituale. ↑ Hom. 21 in Joh. The true parallel to this passage, and that throwing most light on it, is Matt. xii. 46-50. world, (John vii. 30; viii. 20; xii. 23, 27; xvii. 1,*) though in a single instance, (John vii. 6,) it may have, as here, a nearer signification. But it is plain that the Blessed Virgin understood them differently, and, as the sequel showed, rightly. "Mine hour is not yet come," not till the wine is wholly exhausted will his time arrive; as yet it was only failing: then will be the time to act, when by its complete failure, manifest to all, the miracle will be above suspicion. Otherwise, in Augustine's words, he might seem rather to mingle elements than to change them.t When all other help fails, then and not till then has Christ's "hour" arrived. Luther here notes, and presents to us for an example, the faith of Mary, who from this apparent repulse could yet draw forth an assurance that her petition, whatever may have been the error of pressing it too hastily, or other fault that clung to it, should yet in due time be heard so that, with entire confidence of this, she said unto the servants, "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it," evidently believing not merely that he would comply with her request, but in some degree guessing at and even indicating the manner. Very beautiful is it here to observe the facility with which our Lord yields himself to the supply, not of the absolute wants merely, but of the superfluities of others. Yet it is not so much the guests whom he has in his eye, as the bridal pair, whose marriage-feast, by the unlooked-for short-coming of the wine, was in danger of being exposed to mockery and scorn. And the gracious Lord has sympathy with all needs-with the finer as well as the commoner needs of our life. For all the grace, and beauty, and courtesy of life are taken account of in Christianity, as well as life's sterner realities; and the spirit of Christ, in himself and in his disciples, does not slight or despise those any more than these. We may contrast this his readiness to aid others, with the strictness with which he refused to come to the help of his own extremest needs. He who made wine out of water, might have made bread out of stones. But he will do nothing at the suggestion of Satan, though all at the suggestion of love.§ * It is ó kapós there, ǹ ☎pa here. So the author of a sermon in the Appendix to St. Augustine (Serm. 92): Hâc responsione interim debemus advertere quod de nuptiali vino pars aliqua adhuc fortè resederat. Ideo nondum erat Domini plena hora virtutum, ne miscere magis elementa quàm mutare videretur [ne aqua vino admixta crederetur: Grotius]. Maldonatus: Cur ergo miraculum fecit, si tempus non venerat? Non venerat, cùm mater petivit ; venerat cùm fecit, modico licet intervallo. So Cyril, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euthymius. Hilary (De Trin., 1. 3, § 5): Sponsus tristis est, familia turbatur, sollemnitas nuptialis convivii periclitatur. Augustine (Serm. 123, c. 2): Qui poterat talia facere, dignatus est indigere. Qui fecit de aquâ vinum, potuit facere et de lapidibus panem. "There were set there six water-pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece." Every thing is here narrated, as Chrysostom* observes, so as to exclude any possible semblance of collusion. They were water-jars, not wine-vessels, so that none could say that very probably there was a residue or sediment of wine remaining in them, which lent a flavor to water poured on it, and so formed the thinnest kind of wine-even as the same is witnessed against in the praise which the ruler of the feast bestows upon the new supply. (ver. 10.) The fact of these vessels being at hand is no less accounted for: it was not by any premeditated plan, but they were there in accordance with the customs and traditionary observances of the Jews in the matter of washing; for this seems more probable than that this "purifying" has reference to any distinctly commanded legal observances. The purifying was such as the Jewish doctors had enjoined and made necessary. (Matt. xv. 2; Mark vii. 2-4; Luke xi. 39.) The quantity, too, which these vessels contained, was enormous—not such as might have been brought in unobserved; but each of these water-pots contained "two or three firkins apiece." And at the beginning they were empty; so that the servants who, in obedience to the commandment, had filled the water-pots with water, and who knew what liquid they had poured in, were themselves, by this very work which they had done, witnesses of the reality of the miracle. Else it might only have appeared, as in fact it did only appear to the ruler of the feast, that the wine came from some unexpected quarter; "He knew not whence it was, but the servants which drew the water,"t-that is, not the water now made wine, but who had drawn the simpler element, which Christ chose to use as the substratum on which he should afterwards exercise his miraculous powers, "knew." Like most other acts of creation, or more strictly, of becoming, this of the water becoming wine, is withdrawn from sight, and that which is poured into the jars as water is drawn out as wine; but the actual process of the change we labor in vain to conceive. And yet in truth it is in no way stranger, save in the rapidity with which it is effected, than that which is every day going forward among us, but to which use and custom have so dulled our eyes, that commonly we do not marvel at it at all: Hom. 22 in Joh. The Vulgate rightly, Qui hauserant. De Wette: Welche das Wasser geschöp fet hatten. So the Ambrosian Hymn : Vel hydriis plenis aquæ Quod ipse non impleverat. and because we can call it by its name, suppose that we have discovered its secret. He who does every year prepare the wine in the grape, causing it to drink up and expand with the moisture of earth and heaven, to take this up into itself, and transmute into its own nobler juices, did now gather together all those his slower processes into the act of a single moment, and accomplish in an instant what ordinarily he does. not accomplish but in many months. This analogy does not indeed help us to understand what the Lord did now, but yet brings before us that in this he was working in the line of (above, indeed, but not across, or counter to) his more ordinary workings, which we see daily around us, the unnoticed miracles of every-day nature. That which this had of its own peculiar, and taking it out from the order of these, was the power and will by which all the intervening steps of these tardier processes were overleaped, and the result obtained at once.* It has been sometimes debated whether "the ruler of the feast" was himself one of the guests, who either by general consent or the selection of the host was set over the banquet; or a chief attendant only, charged with ordering the course of the feast, and overlooking the ministrations of the inferior servants. This last is the view taken by Chrysostom and others; but the analogy of Greek and Roman usagest seems rather to point him out as himself one of the invited guests, who was invested with this office for the time; and the passage from the Son of Sirach quoted below,§ shows that a like custom was in use among the Jews. * Augustine (In Ev. Joh., Tract. 8): Ipse enim fecit vinum illo die in nuptiis in sex illis hydriis quas impleri aquâ præcepit, qui omni anno facit hoc in vitibus. Sicut enim quod miserunt ministri in hydrias, in vinum conversum est opere Domini, sic et quod nubes fundunt, in vinum convertitur ejusdem opere Domini. Illud autem non miramur, quia omni anno fit: assiduitate amisit admirationem. And again (Serm. 123, c. 3): Quæ aqua erat, vinum factum viderunt homines et obstupuerunt. Quid aliud fit de pluviâ per radicem vitis? Ipse illa fecit, ipse ista; illa ut pascaris, ista ut mireris. So also De Gen. ad Litt., 1. 6, c. 13. Chrysostom (Hom. 22 in Joh.): Δεικνὺς ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ ἐν ταῖς ἀμπέλοις τὸ ὕδωρ μεταβάλλων, καὶ τὸν ὑετὸν διὰ τῆς ῥίζης εἰς οἶνον τρέπων, ὅπερ ἐν τῷ φυτῷ διὰ πολλοῦ χρόνου γίνεται, τοῦτο ἀθρόον Tyúμ elpyúoaro. Cf. Gregory the Great, Moral., 1. 6, c. 15. So by Severus; by Juvencus, who calls him summum ministrum; by Kuinoel, and others. † This ἀρχιτρίκλινος will then answer very much to the συμποσιάρχης among the Greeks, and the rex convivii, or magister convivii, or modimperator, of the Romans. It was his part, in the words of Plato, naidaywyɛiv ovμñóσιov. (BECKER's Charicles, v. 1, p. 465.) He appears here as the προγευστης. The word αρχιτρίκλινος is late, and of rare occurrence; Petronius has triclinarches. § Sirac. xxxii. 1, 2: "If thou be made the master of a feast (hyouμevos), lift not thyself up, but be among them as one of the rest; take diligent care of them, and so sit down. And when thou hast done all thy office, take thy place, that thou mayest be merry with them, and receive a crown for thy well ordering of the feast." |