Why Did Jesus Do That? Why did Jesus turn water into wine?

Weddings in Jesus' day were weeklong festivals. Banquets would be prepared for many guests, and the week would be spent celebrating the new life of the married couple. Often the whole town was invited, and most would come - it was considered an insult to refuse an invitation to a wedding. To accommodate many people, careful planning was needed. To run out of wine was more than embarrassing; it broke the strong unwritten laws of hospitality. Jesus was about to respond to a heartfelt need.

During that wedding at Cana, Galilee Jesus turns water into wine. Of all the amazing signs that Jesus could have performed, why start with this one? The answer can be found in the pages of Jewish Scripture! This is a lesson where we learn how Jesus' marital miracle fulfils messianic prophecy.

According to John's Gospel, Jesus performs the first miracle of His ministry when He turns water to wine. After the wine runs out, Jesus has stone jars filled with water, which He transforms into the best wine at the banquet. But of all the wonders that the Messiah could have wrought, why does He begin with this one? Jesus' first sign validates His own messianic identity and recalls the prophetic vision of a time when the blessings of water and wine would flow in abundance.

The six stone water jars were normally used for ceremonial washing. According to the Jew's ceremonial law, people became symbolically unclean by touching objects of everyday life. Before eating, the Jews would pour water over their hands to cleanse themselves of any bad influences associated with what they had touched.

Jesus' sign of turning water into wine alludes to divine cleansing for Israel. The transformed water comes from "six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding two or three metretas" (John 2:6).

A metretes was an ancient measure of about ten gallons, so Jesus makes somewhere around 150 gallons of wine! More important is how the use of exact numbers by John. Six jars with two or three metretas each. Six multiplied by two is 12; six times three is 18. These numbers had symbolic resonance in first-century Judaism: twelve signifies the tribes of Israel (Rev 21:12) and eighteen alludes to God's gift of renewed life or prosperity (Luke 13:11-16) in the later rabbinic numerical system of gematria, in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number, the word for "life" [חי; chai] equals 18. Thus, Jesus’ sign shows that He has come to purify all Israel and offer the gift of eternal life to the whole world.

Jesus' use of water to produce wine also echoes the prophecy of Joel, which details an abundance of wine and purifying waters in the messianic age: "In that day, the mountains shall drip with wine (עסיס; asis)… and all the stream beds of Judah shall flow with water (מים; mayim); a spring shall come forth from the House of the Lord” (Joel 3:18).

The fact that John's Gospel is particularly interested in Jesus' offer of life-giving water supports the likelihood that His first miracle alludes to Joel's prophetic words. The expansive world of Jewish Scripture and tradition provides Gospel readers with a deeper theological understanding of Jesus' first sign. These ancient contexts underscore Jesus' role as a heavenly saviour whose activity signals the divine desire to lavish life.