New Wine, Old Bottles: The Parable Read Through

This reading companions the breakdown New Wine, Old Bottles, and nothing is argued here; the words run as they stand, with the meaning of each image carried alongside it.

LUKE 5:33–39 — KJV

And they said unto him, [the men who had made their own fasting the measure of whether another man was serious about Yahuah] Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; [the law of Yahuah appoints one fast in the year, the tenth day of the seventh month; these frequent fasts were begun by men after Jerusalem fell, and Yahuah had already asked whether they were ever kept to Him at all] but thine eat and drink? [the charge is not sin, it is gladness, brought against men standing in front of the reason for it]

And he said unto them, Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, [the friends who belong to the wedding, whose part is joy while the wedding stands] while the bridegroom is with them? [mourning cannot be scheduled by men into a room where Yahuah is giving joy] But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. [the fast that belongs to them is the one grief gives, not the one another house appoints]

And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; [a man’s clothing in the Hebrew Scriptures is his righteousness; when Yahuah found a priest before Him in filthy clothes He did not patch them, He had them taken off the man and clean ones put on] if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. [the worn covering is not improved by the patch, it is torn worse; what Yahuah gives replaces, it does not repair]

And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; [the wine is the gladness Yahuah pours out when He is with His people, the very joy He promised would take the place of their mourning fasts; the bottle He named Himself through Jeremiah, and the bottle is a man] else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, [the old bottle is a man whose religion is his own practice and the traditions handed to him, hardened inside so the commandments of Yahuah stay outside; a sealed vessel has no vent, so what is put in it tears it apart] and the bottles shall perish. [not set aside, but broken past mending, as a jar is broken and no piece is left big enough to carry a coal or scoop water] But new wine must be put into new bottles; [the new bottle is the same man made over: a new heart where the stone was, the spirit of Yahuah within him, and the law of Yahuah written on the inside of him] and both are preserved. [the gladness and the man are kept together, and neither is kept without the other]

No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better. [the words are the man’s own and the reason he gives is taste; Moab was at ease from his youth and settled on his lees, never emptied from vessel to vessel, and so his taste remained in him and his scent was never changed]

Put together, the passage answers a question about fasting and nothing else. The fasting being defended was never commanded, the men defending it had made it the test of other men, and the gladness Yahuah had promised was being poured out in front of them while they asked why nobody was mourning. The bottle is a man. The wine is what Yahuah pours into him. The law is neither the bottle nor the wine; it is what Yahuah writes inside the man He has made new, and that man is the one container in the story that is preserved.

The warning stands where the passage leaves it. A heart can be hardened by practice until it can no longer hold what Yahuah gives, and the hardening in Zechariah was done for a stated reason, so the man would not have to hear the law. Such a man does not argue. He says the old is better, and he says it because nothing in him has ever been moved. What he turns down is the joy itself, and the vessel that will not hold it is not kept.