Chapter 2:
Marriages the time of Jesus were very much known for their celebrations. Compared to the Friday or Saturday evening weddings and receptions of our day and age, ancient Jewish weddings would traditionally last even longer, spanning often upwards of several days. For all of you who have been to a wedding, I know what you are thinking, a week’s worth of celebration? How on earth did they party so hard, or dance multiple nights away? What in the world went into all of that preparation?
For those of you married, I’m sure most of you can relate. The effort, planning, timing, and coordination for just one day of a wedding can be strainful enough. Imagine then a wedding that went on night after night? The couple must’ve taken wedding event planning to new heights. However, in Jesus’s time, weddings were not so much about the destination or the couple’s event coordination. Rather, for a momentary season, weddings became the talk of the whole town. They became the community’s central focus, the life of town, where everyone was invited to participate and contribute to the celebration.
In ancient Jewish times, weddings were not just about rejoicing in the bride’s and groom’s love for one another. Rather, each wedding served as reminder to the town of God’s love for his people. A love which the whole community was invited again to rediscover.
God’s first command to man and woman in Eden was to:
“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it . . .” – Genesis 1.28
During Jesus’s time, most Jews often pointed to marriage as one of the few things in God’s original design which was not lost in humanity’s fall. Weddings therefore would become the reminder of the Edenic hope for them all.
It should come as no surprise then, that with such a kind of celebration, came over a year’s worth of preparation. But to understand the wedding at Cana, we’ll probably need to take off our twenty-first century conception of what we expect a wedding to be. Sure, there are some similarities; but even more so, we’ll need to step into the customs of the ancient world to be given more clarity.
Different from today, at the time of Jesus, Jewish wedding ceremonies were actual separated into two main parts: erusin and nissuin. The first ceremony, erusin, marked what was called the period of betrothal. The second, nissuin, marked the start of the final ceremony which involved the final vows and the days of celebrations that would follow.
It began as follows: Just before erusin, through a wedding contract, the couple announced to the whole community their intent for marriage. Shortly thereafter they would gather with the whole community to begin their vows. Erusin, and its period following after, can be seen to be somewhat similar to the engagement period we commonly practice today, but it is also different in its level of commitment.
That is, after the ceremony of erusin, the couple was already considered by the community to be married. Meaning, in the community they were already called husband and wife. But, over the course of the next year, while married, they would still live under different roofs, preparing and waiting for nissuin to come about. It is this stage of marriage we find Mary and Joseph in. Matthew tells us they are husband and wife, yet at the present time, “betrothed” and still waiting for nissuin to arrive.
When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together . . . – Matthew 1.18
If there still was more to the ceremony, then what did Mary and Joseph, and every Jewish couple of their time, do after the time of erusin betrothal? Why was a year needed to wait till nissuin took place? What more preparations did they have to make? Today, in engagement, a couple’s days might be filled with many event planning activities: Finding a reception venue and church, booking a food catering vendor and photographer, saying “yes to the dress”, sending “save the dates”, organizing wedding colors, flowers, bridesmaids, groomsmen, ushers, family table arrangements, and the infamous D.J. . . . Need I say less?
During Jesus’s time though, they took a different approach to the planning of wedding activities. It began similarly with organizing bridesmaids and groomsmen; but after came wedding garments, lanterns, a ram’s horn, processions, singing, wine, a wedding canopy, and a master of ceremonies; followed each night by household community feasts.
To the Groom . . . To the Bride
During erusin, the groom’s primary responsibility was to prepare a place for his bride to live once she entered under his roof. It was also his responsibility to oversee nissuin’s wedding ceremonies and the first of the wedding feasts the following day. Surprising enough, it was not the bride, but rather the groom and his family who would take on all the wedding planning responsibilities. Unlike today where the “save the dates” are fixed and the bride often organizes many of the day’s events; in Jesus’s time, the day of the wedding would be a surprise for the whole town and also a surprise for the bride! You heard that right, the bride would not know the exact day or hour the wedding would take place! In some sense, though he had an idea, not even the groom would know fully the day, at least not until his Father granted him final consent . . . (To Be Continued)