The wine missing at the Cana wedding symbolizes a spiritual lack in the physical nation of Israel. When Mary says, "They have no wine," she describes the wedding feast and also the nation, whose people had no symbolic wine. In its place they had only water, the water of purification "according to the manner of the Jews." These rituals came from the minds of men rather than from Scripture, and they pushed God's pure Word into the background. Their traditions, including the Oral Law and the rabbis' opinions, left the people unable to recognize their King standing among them. The six stone waterpots, six being the number of man, hold a great quantity of this man-made purification, between 120 and 180 gallons. The stone vessels may represent the people's hearts of stone, which could not change or sustain a meaningful relationship with their Creator. They needed hearts of flesh. What the nation lacked, and what the occasion required, was wine. The first sign, the turning of water into wine, answers that lack, and it corresponds to the eighth sign, the catch of 153 fish.