Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St LukeBurton, Henry
Religion
Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St Luke
Burton, Henry
Bible. Luke -- Commentaries
We see the mother again at Cana, where she is an invited and honoured
guest at the marriage, moving about among the servants with a certain
quiet authority, and telling her Divine Son of the breakdown in the
hospitalities: "They have no wine." We cannot now go into details, but
evidently there was no distancing reserve between the mother and her
Son. She goes to Him naturally; she speaks to Him freely and frankly, as
any widow would speak to the son on whom she leaned. Nay, she seems to
know, as by a sort of intuition, of the superhuman powers that are lying
dormant in that quiet Son of hers, and she so correctly reads the
horoscope of Heaven as to expect this will be the hour and the place of
their manifestation. Perhaps her mind did not grasp the true Divinity of
her Son--indeed, it could not have done so before the Resurrection--but
that He is the Messiah she has no doubt, and so, strong in her
confidence, she says to the servants, "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do
it." And her faith must have been great indeed, when it required a
"whatsoever" to measure it. Some have thought they could detect a tinge
of impatience and a tone of rebuke in the reply of Jesus; and doubtless
there is a little sharpness in our English rendering of it. It does
sound to our ears somewhat unfilial and harsh. But to the Greeks the
address "Woman" was both courteous and respectful, and Jesus Himself
uses it in that last tender salute from the cross. Certainly, she did
not take it as a rebuke, for one harsh word, like the touch on the
sensitive plant, would have thrown her back into silence; whereas she
goes off directly to the servants with her "whatsoever."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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