Old and New Cloth and Wineskins
Group: Incongruities
Matthew 09:16-17Text QuotationMatthew 9:16-17
No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.
CommentaryChristians should have proper reference, in all their arrangements, to the proprieties of time and place. It would be unsuitable for the disciples of the Savior to mourn while he was with them, just as it would be unsuitable for the guests at a wedding to be gloomy and sad. The other illustrations are are merely striking cases of incongruity. - New cloth is unfulled cloth, which would shrink on being accidentally wet, and thus produce a degree of tension in the surrounding parts which would soon cause a more extended rent than the one which it was intended to repair.- Bottles were made of leather, and, when old and rigid, were easily ruptured by the fermentation of new wine.
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