Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Luke · About this commentary
New Wine, Old Skins
Luke 5:33-39
33 They said to him, “Why do John’s disciples often fast and pray, likewise also the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink?” · WEB
Asked why his followers don't fast, he answers with a wedding, a patch, a wineskin — and a line about people who prefer the old.
"Why do John's disciples often fast and pray, likewise also the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours eat and drink?" Luke 5:33.
The complaint follows straight from the feast, and it is a fair observation. Two serious religious movements fasted; his did not. The exchange is in the earliest account Mark 2:18–28.
"Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?" Luke 5:34. The answer is that fasting is a response to circumstances, and these are not those circumstances. Nobody fasts at a wedding. The image also does something quieter: in the older Scriptures the bridegroom of God's people is God Isaiah 62:5 Hosea 2:19–20.
"But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them. Then they will fast in those days" Luke 5:35. The first shadow in the book falls here, in a sentence about a party. Taken away is not a departure; it is a removal, and it is the first hint of how this ends.
Then the two pictures, and this account sharpens both.
"No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old garment, or else he will tear the new, and also the piece from the new will not match the old" Luke 5:36. The damage runs two ways — the new garment is cut up and the repair does not match anyway. What is refused is the idea that this can be handled as a patch on the existing arrangement.
"No one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine will burst the skins" Luke 5:37. Skins stretched once and gone brittle cannot take a second fermentation. The point is not that the old was bad; it is that it has already done its work and has no give left.
"No one having drunk old wine immediately desires new, for he says, 'The old is better'" Luke 5:39.
The last line belongs to this Gospel alone, and it is the most humane sentence in the paragraph. Having just argued that the new cannot be poured into the old, he grants the obvious human fact: nobody wants it. Old wine is better, and everyone who has drunk it says so.
That is not a rebuke so much as a diagnosis, and it is offered without contempt. The people objecting are not villains; they are people with a settled taste, being handed something that has not aged and does not yet taste like anything they value. This book will spend twenty more chapters on that difficulty.
settled What this mark means