Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’ Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding-guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. (Mark 2: 18-20)

If Jesus is the bridegroom, who is the bride? His disciples, the people, Israel, the world?

Jesus specifically identifies his disciples as wedding guests or, in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, as the bridegroom's attendants. Some other is the bride.

Throughout the Hebrew scriptures the covenant of God with Israel is compared to a marriage. Here is one example from Hosea 2:

On that day, says the Lord, you will call me, ‘My husband’, and no longer will you call me, ‘My Baal’. For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more. I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will take you for my wife for ever; I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love, and in mercy. I will take you for my wife in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord.

There are many other examples, including Ezekiel 16, Isaiah 54, and - perhaps - the Song of Solomon. Jesus has come to renew this covenantal relationship. The bride was at least the whole of Israel.

In Hosea and elsewhere in scripture marriage is presented as a profound source of struggle, pain, disappointment, commitment, and loving transcendence. In offering himself as the bridegroom Jesus may be suggesting that our relationship with God is of a similar nature.