“Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come”
Woman, why does this concern us?… My hour has not yet come. (John 2:4 BSB)
What it sounds like today
Startlingly rude to his own mother, twice over.
The cultural key
Neither half is rude. 'Woman' (gynai) was a respectful, even tender address; Jesus uses the same word from the cross while entrusting his mother to the beloved disciple (John 19:26). The middle phrase is a fixed Semitic idiom, literally 'what to me and to you' (Judges 11:12; 2 Kings 3:13): a distancing formula meaning 'that is not my affair,' or 'our concerns differ here.' And 'my hour' in John is a loaded term: it means the cross and glorification, tracked through the whole Gospel until 'the hour has come' (12:23).
Recovered meaning
A gentle boundary, not a rebuke: 'Dear woman, my timetable is set by the Father, and the hour that defines me has not arrived.' Mary, apparently untroubled, tells the servants to do whatever he says, and the first sign follows anyway.