Christ and His Mother's Inside Conversation

Often, when reading the Scriptures, we see a story or a phrase that raises a question mark in our minds, something that just does not quite make sense, likely because we live in such a different cultural and historical context. In John 2:4, at the wedding at Cana, Christ says to his mother: “What concern is this to us?”

I just came across this verse in a version which was slightly different than what I remembered, and the difference in wording caught my attention, making me wonder how this was expressed in Greek. So, I looked up the Greek, and it is incredibly brief: Τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί. My rudimentary Greek brain sees only this: “What to me and to you?”

I looked up several other English translations to try to check and see if there is a consensus or an understanding of those words that might not be known to me:

What have I to do with thee? 

What is that to you and to Me?

What have I to do with thee? 

What concern is this to us? 

Why do you involve me? 

What concern is that to you and to me?

Adding in words like ‘concern’ is valid to help us understand what he means, which is verified even with the rudimentary translation ‘What to me and to you?’ However, this seems to lean away from the “What have I to do with you” types of translations.

This understanding leads to another question, which I will leave for another time: If Christ does not say “us”, but very specifically, “to me and to thee [my mother]”, is there a special relationship between Christ God and his mother Mary that comes into play resulting in him doing something because it was his mother in particular that asked him?