Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

the-fourth-watch

2015-06-23 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
the-fourth-watch
Votey panel for the-fourth-watch
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

The Joke

Jesus is at a gathering where his followers are praising his ability to turn water into wine. One skeptic challenges him by saying "You can't make Jello shots!" Jesus responds with "Oh yeah? See that lake over there?" — implying he's about to turn an entire lake into Jello. The final panel shows a Bible passage reading: "And in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea" — the joke being that Jesus wasn't actually walking on water through a miracle, but rather walking on a lake he had turned into solid Jello.

The Humor

The comic reinterprets the famous biblical miracle of Jesus walking on water by providing a hilariously mundane alternative explanation: the "sea" was actually a giant Jello shot. It takes Jesus's well-known miracle of turning water into wine and escalates it to an absurd degree — turning an entire lake into Jello. The punchline works because it retroactively reframes one of the most iconic miracles in Christianity as an unintended side effect of a party trick gone too far. The humor also plays on the frat-party culture of Jello shots, anachronistically placing that concept in a biblical setting.

References

The final panel references Matthew 14:25 from the Bible, which describes Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee during the "fourth watch of the night" (between 3 AM and 6 AM).

View History (1) Original Comic
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