Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish
//For readers of the King James Version (which I grew up on), this verse can be confusing. Why would wine burst the bottles, whether old or new?
Answer: Think not of glass bottles, but wineskins. Most translations preserve the original message, such as the NIV:
Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.
Wine ferments, and as it does, it expands. Wineskins that are old and brittle cannot grow to contain the expanding wine. Thus, the wineskins burst.
