John 2:9-10

“ When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water which was made wine and he knew not whence it came, but the servants who had drawn the water knew the ruler of the feast calls the bridegroom, 10, and says to him, Every one serves first the good wine, and when men have become drunken, then that which is worse; thou hast kept the good wine until now. ”

The words ὕδωρ οἶνον γεγεννημένον, the water become wine, admit of no other sense than that of a miraculous transformation. The natural process by which the watery sap is transformed every year in the vine-stock (Augustine), or that by which mineral waters are formed (Neander), offers, indeed, a remote analogy, but not at all a means of explanation. The parenthesis which includes the words καὶ οὐκ... ὕδωρ presents a construction perfectly analogous to that of John 1:10 and John 6:21-23.

This parenthesis is designed to make the reality of the miracle apparent, by reminding the reader, on the one hand, that the servants did not know that it was wine which they were bearing, and on the other, that the ruler of the feast had not been present when the event occurred. Weiss makes the clause καὶ οὐκ ἤδει πόθεν ἐστίν also depend on ὡς, and commences the parenthesis only with οἱ δέ...This is undoubtedly possible, but less natural as it seems to me. He calls the bridegroom; the latter was in the banqueting hall. Some have desired by all means to give a religious import to the pleasantry of the ruler of the feast, by attributing to it a symbolic meaning; on one side, the world, which begins by offering to man the best which it has, to abandon him afterwards to despair; on the other, God, always surpassing Himself in His gifts, and, after the austere law, offering the delicious wine of the Gospel.

There was by no means anything of this sort in the consciousness of the speaker, and no indication appears that the evangelist attached such a sense to the words. This saying is simply related in order to show with what entire unreservedness Jesus gave Himself up to the common joy, by giving not only abundantly but excellently. There is here, also, one of the rays of His δόξα (glory). For the rest, it is not at all necessary to weaken the sense of μεθυσθῶσι, to be drunken, in order to remove from the guests at the wedding all suspicion of intemperance. This saying has a proverbial sense, and does not refer to the company at Cana.