Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Luke 5:37
And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.
37. new wine into old bottles ] Rather, wine-skins. The skins used for holding wine were apt to get seamed and cracked, and old wineskins would tend to set up the process of fermentation. They could contain the motionless, not expand with the fermenting. To explain this passage, see Excursus III.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 37. The new wine will burst the bottles] These old bottles would not be able to stand the fermentation of the new wine, as the old sewing would be apt to give way. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the eastern bottles are made of skins; generally those of goats.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
And no man putteth new wine into old bottles,…. To which the Scribes and Pharisees are here compared, into whose hearts the new wine of Gospel grace was not put; or to whom was not made known the love of God Comparable to new wine; nor the blessings of the new covenant of grace, now exhibited; nor the truths of the Gospel now more clearly and newly revealed.
Else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled; they not being able to receive and bear these things, no, not the relation of them: these were hard sayings to them, of which they said, who can hear them? they could not hear them with patience, much less receive them in the love of them; but were at once filled with wrath and indignation, and rejected them.
And the bottles shall perish; their condemnation shall be the greater.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
1) “And no man putteth new wine into old bottles;” (kai oudeis ballei oinon neon eis askous palaious) “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins,” into old wineskin bottles. For men knew that fermentation would burst the hard-set dry skins and destroy both the bottle and the wine, See? Mat 9:17.
2) “Else the new wine will burst the bottles,” (ei de me ge herksei ho oinos ho neos tous askous) “Otherwise the new wineskins will burst,” split, waste the contents, Mar 2:22, because of impurities that entered the bottle through cracks in the old skin bottles.
3) “And be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.” (kai autos ekchuthesetai kai hoi askoi apolountai) “And it will be poured out (will leak out) and the wineskin containers will be ruined,” all involved would be wasted, the one who gathered the grapes, made the wine, furnished the bottles, etc.
Jesus came not to repair the Law, and old order of ordinances, ceremonies, rites, and feast days, but to establish a new, which He did in His church, His house, His bride, the Kingdom of Heaven, or His Flock, Luk 12:32; Mat 26:31-32; Mat 28:16-20; Joh 15:16; Joh 15:27; Joh 3:28-29; 1Ti 3:15; Mar 13:34-35; Heb 3:1-7; Mat 16:18; Act 20:28; Eph 3:21; Rev 19:5-9.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(37) Else.Better, as before, if otherwise.
The bottles shall perish.Better, will perish, there being no reason for any difference between the two verbs.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
“And no man puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine will burst the skins, and itself will be spilled, and the skins will perish.”
The point is emphasised again using the idea of putting new wine into old wineskins. To do so would be to cause the dried out old skins to burst. They are no loner elastic enough to cope with the fermentation of new wine. Then all would be lost, the new wine and the wineskins, for the skins would perish.
As the parallel above reveals this includes the idea that in order for the new to prosper there must be His death. Because Jesus has come to a place which is like dried out, old wineskins, His having come can only result in His death (the new wine will be lost) and the destruction of the place to which He has come (the old wineskins, Jerusalem, will perish).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Luk 5:37-38. Bottles shall perish. Some render it, Skins will be lost.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Luk 5:37 . The tradition of the second logion seems to have come down to Lk.’s time without variation; at all events he gives it substantially as in parallels. The difficulty connected with this parabolic word is not critical or exegetical, but scientific. The question has been raised: could even new, tough skins stand the process of fermentation? and the suggestion made that Jesus was not thinking at all of fermented, intoxicating wine, but of “must,” a non-intoxicating beverage, which could be kept safely in new leather bottles, but not in old skins, which had previously contained ordinary wine, because particles of albuminoid matter adhering to the skin would set up fermentation and develop gas with an enormous pressure. On this vide Farrar (C. G. T., Excursus , III.).
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
new = fresh made. Greek. neos. Seenote on Mat 9:17.
bottles = wine-skins.
be spilled = it will be poured out.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
bottles
i.e. wineskins.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
old: Jos 9:4, Jos 9:13, Psa 119:83
Reciprocal: Mar 2:22 – bottles
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Luk 5:37; Luk 5:18. See on Mat 9:17. Few passages given by all three Evangelists have been so altered by the copyists, and in none does the independence of the three appear more clearly.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Vers. 37, 38. The Second Parable.
The figure is taken from the Oriental custom of preserving liquids in leathern bottles, made generally of goat-skins. No one, says M. Pierotti, travels in Palestine without having a leathern bottle filled with water amongst his luggage. These bottles preserve the water for drinking, without imparting any ill taste to it; also wine, oil, honey, and milk. In this parable there is evidently an advance on the preceding, as we always find in the case of double parables. This difference of meaning, misapprehended by Neander and the greater part of interpreters, comes out more particularly from two features: 1. The opposition between the unity of the garment in the first, and the plurality of the bottles in the second; 2. The fact that, since the new wine answers to the new garment, the new bottles must represent a different and entirely new idea. In fact, Jesus here is no longer opposing the evangelical principle to the legal principle, but the representatives of the one to those of the other. Two complaints were raised against Jesus: 1 st. His negligence of the legal forms; to this accusation He has just replied. 2 d. His contempt for the representatives of legalism, and His sympathy with those who had thrown off the theocratic discipline. It is to this second charge that He now replies. Nothing can be more simple than our parable from this point of view. The new wine represents that living and healthy spirituality which flows so abundantly through the teaching of Jesus; and the bottles, the men who are to become the depositaries of this principle, and to preserve it for mankind. And whom in Israel will Jesus choose to fulfil this part? The old practitioners of legal observance? Pharisees puffed up with the idea of their own merit? Rabbis jaded with textual discussions? Such persons have nothing to learn, nothing to receive from Him! If associated with His work, they could not fail to falsify it, by mixing up with His instructions the old prejudices with which they are imbued; or even if they should yield their hearts for a moment to the lofty thought of Jesus, it would put all their religious notions and routine devotion to the rout, just as new and sparkling wine bursts a worn-out leathern bottle. Where, then, shall He choose His future instruments? Among those who have neither merit nor wisdom of their own. He needs fresh natures, souls whose only merit is their receptivity, new men in the sense of the homo novus among the Romans, fair tablets on which His hand may write the characters of divine truth, without coming across the old traces of a false human wisdom. God, I thank Thee, because Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to these babes (Luk 10:21). These babes will save the truth, and it will save them; this is expressed by these last words: and both, the wine and the bottles, are preserved. These words are omitted in Luke by some Alex. They are suspected of having been added from Matthew, where they are not wanting in any document; Meyer’s conjecture, that they have been suppressed, in accordance with Mark, is less probable.
It has been thought that the old bottles represent the unregenerate nature of man, and the new bottles, hearts renewed by the Gospel. But Jesus would not have represented the destruction of the old corrupt nature by the gospel as a result to be dreaded; and He would scarcely have compared new hearts, the works of His Holy Spirit, to bottles, the existence of which precedes that of the wine which they contain. Lange and Gess see in the old bottles a figure of the legal forms, in the new bottles the image of the evangelical forms. But Christian institutions are an emanation of the Christian spirit, while the bottles exist independently of the wine with which they are filled. And Jesus would not have attached equal importance to the preservation of the wine and of the bottles, as He does in the words: And both are preserved. It is a question, then, here of the preservation of the gospel, and of the salvation of the individuals who are the depositaries of it. Jesus returns here to the fact which was the occasion of the whole scene, and which had called forth the dissatisfaction of His adversaries, the call of Levi the publican. It is this bold act which He justifies in the second parable, after having vindicated, in the first, the principle on which it was based. A new system demands new persons. This same truth will be applied on a larger scale, when, through the labours of St. Paul, the gospel shall pass from the Jews to the Gentiles, who are the new men in the kingdom of God.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
Verse 37
Bottles; made of leather, which, when old, were rigid and unyielding, and easily burst by the fermenting of new wine. Both these examples are intended as only striking cases of incongruity and unfitness, to give point and emphasis to the declaration of the unsuitableness of fasting and mourning under the circumstances in which the Savior and his disciples were placed. We are not to press the details of the similitude so far as to attempt to find any thing in the previous discourse corresponding to the two kinds of wine or cloth, or to the bottles.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
The second illustration adds the fact that the new order that Jesus had come to bring has an inherently expanding and potentially explosive quality. The gospel and Christianity would expand to the whole world. Judaism simply could not contain what Jesus was bringing since it had become too rigid due to centuries of accumulated tradition. Here Luke’s account is very close to Mark’s.