John Chapter 2 verse 1 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 1-ch. 3:2-4. The testimony of signs to the glory of the Word made flesh. Verses 1-12. - (1) The first sign, the beginning of signs, Mastery over the old creation. Sign of love and power. The description of the preceding narrative, given in ver. 11, is the true key to it. It is impressive on several accounts. Christ had not yet given any "sign" of the invisible and eternal glory which the evangelist in his prologue had claimed for him. He had not in his own person "manifested" the unique majesty of his will, nor revealed the direction in which the power he wielded would most freely move. John, by this statement, (1) puts down a positive disclaimer of the whole cycle of portents which, when he wrote, had begun to hover in romantic and exaggerated fashion around the infancy and minority of Jesus. (2) He shows that his purpose is to bring back from forgetfulness the primary and most impressive events which did in reality characterize the earliest ministry of Christ. . . .

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English ReadersII.(1) The third day--i.e., from the last note of time in John 1:43, giving one clear day between the call of Philip and the day of the marriage.Cana of Galilee has been identified with both Kanet el-Jelil, or Khurbet Kanet, and Kefr Kenna. The monks of Nazareth and local tradition claim the latter place as the scene of the miracle, but this tradition has not been traced earlier than the seventeenth century, and the best modern authorities do not accept it. (But comp., in support of Kefr Kenna, Zeller in Report of Palestine Exploration Fund, iii. 1869.) Kanet el-Jelil, on the other hand, is the rendering of the Arabic version, and Saewulf, as early as A.D. 1103, describes it as the place "where the Lord turned water into wine at the wedding" (Early Travels in Palestine, p. 47). The strength of the argument is in the identity of name in the original, whereas Kenna is quite distinct. Travellers describe it as an obscure, uninhabited village in ruins. They were formerly shown the house where the marriage took place here, and even the water-pots, but these are now shown at the rival Kefr Kenna. The ruins are on the side of a hill looking over the plain of El Buttauf, rather more than six miles to the N. or N.E. of Nazareth, and so answering Saewulf's description. It is some fifteen or sixteen miles from Tiberias and Capernaum, and six or seven more from Tell-Anihje. (Comp. John 1:28.) The writer knows the place by its common name Cana of Galilee, by which it was distinguished from the Cana of the tribe of Asher, S.E. from Tyre (Joshua 19:28). The mother of Jesus was already there, as a relation or friend, assisting in the preparations.