John 2 Footnotes

2:4 Jesus’s literal words to Mary sound brusque: “What does that have to do with you and me, woman?” But another translation would be “Dear woman, why do you involve me?” It was not yet his time to provide for all the needs of all the world’s people through his sacrificial death, but his turning water into wine was a sign that the messianic times had arrived (Jl 3:13; Am 9:13-14).

2:6-7 Creating this much wine would seem to encourage drunkenness. Worse, this miracle seems to be frivolous from start to finish, hardly meeting any acute human need. On the other hand, wedding festivities often lasted for a week and an entire village could have been involved, so the amounts consumed by any individual at one time may have been quite moderate. Furthermore, one of the points of the miracle was to stress the new joy associated with Jesus’s ministry and the kingdom he was inaugurating. Mk 2:21-22 makes much the same point in the parable of the wineskins.

2:13-25 At first glance this passage seems out of place since the other Gospels all have Jesus clearing the temple during the last week of his life (Mk 11:15-17). But John may have thematically relocated this passage as a kind of “headline” over his entire Gospel (there are no precise chronological links with previous or subsequent material in the Gk), or Jesus may have cleared the temple twice—once at the outset of his ministry when he had the people’s sympathies and once later when it proved too much for the authorities to tolerate.

2:15-16 Doesn’t Jesus’s “temple tantrum” show a cruel, vindictive side to him—abusing animals and exhibiting uncontrollable rage? Actually, the Greek text says he applied the whip only to the wicked people he was confronting. Rabbinic sources suggest that using the temple for trading in sacrificial animals was a recent development; the Kidron Valley below had been the earlier site. Commercial convenience created the change, but it prevented the Court of the Gentiles from being used as God had intended it—as a place of worship. Godly wrath is eternal opposition to what is evil. As such, it is not at all opposed to love but is really the action of holy love in the face of evil. Love for those who are outcast often requires judgment against their oppressors.