Luke 9:13

‘But he said to them, “You give them to eat.” '

Jesus' reply was, ‘You give to them to eat.” (The ‘you' is emphasised). Compare Mark 6:37. Jesus had a number of lessons that He wanted to bring home to His disciples, and the first was their responsibility for ‘feeding' the people, especially when He was gone (compare John 21:15).

We must take this statement at face value. His Apostles had now experienced what it was like to perform miracles of healing. They knew now that they were fully a part of His present mission. And He hoped that they knew that He was the Messiah. In that case, Jesus is asking, why did they not exercise their new found power and authority by doing as Elisha's servant had done (2 Kings 4:42), and feeding the crowd with whatever food they had? Note how His command to them is very similar to that of Elisha to the man who brought the loaves. There Elisha had given his command and Elisha's deputy had fed the four hundred at Elisha's command. Jesus wanted His disciples to do the same, acting as Hid deputies.

(In LXX Elisha says, ‘dote tow laow' - ‘give to the people'. Here Jesus says ‘dote autois' - ‘give to them'. LXX then uses esthio while Jesus uses phagein, but it should be noted that LXX then has phagomai in Luke 9:43 where ‘the Lord' says they shall eat. Luke may well have been distinguishing Jesus from Elisha by deliberately using the verb ‘the Lord' used. And besides, while Luke does use a Greek text similar to LXX his quotations do not always by any means square with LXX, thus his version might have here used phagomai, which is synonymous with esthio).

But their faith was as yet insufficient for them to be willing to obey Him, and He had this confirmed when they began to speak of going and buying food. If only they had gone ahead distributing what little they had, what a blessing it would have been to them as it multiplied. But they still had much to learn, and they missed the opportunity.

This would not be the only time when Jesus told them to do something, and then let the matter drop when they proved to be obtuse (compare the swords - Luke 22:36). But when they did fail to respond Jesus knew what in the end He intended to do, and from it would come important lessons. (That they were at this time spiritually blind to the possibilities is forcibly brought out in Mark 8:14). These include:

· That His disciples might see their own future in terms of meeting the needs of men and women. They must ‘give them to eat'. Having initially opened their ministry in their recent mission, it would continue to be their responsibility to provide both physical and spiritual sustenance to the people, in the same way as He provided it to the Apostles. With regard to the physical side they would in fact seek to carry this out literally in Acts (see Acts 2:44; Acts 4:32). And the church has rightly continued to see one of its functions as providing for the physical needs of the needy. But the equal importance of their ministering to the spiritual side also soon came home to them. They later knew that they were not to allow ‘serving tables' to prevent their preaching of the word (Acts 6:1).

· That they might realise that He was now here as the Messiah to spread a table before those who looked to Him (compare Isaiah 25:6 and extratestamental literature). He wanted them to see Him as the source of true provision for all men's needs. And this would in the end be ministered through His Apostles and those whom they appointed.

· That they might appreciate that He was here among them as a second Moses, the one who gave them bread from Heaven to eat. Moses had been with the multitude in the wilderness, and had fed them ‘from Heaven'. Jesus was now here among them in the wilderness to give better bread than Moses gave them, the true Bread which has come down from Heaven to give life to the world (John 6:33).

· That they might recognise that He was here among men in order to establish a new covenant, something symbolised by this covenant meal. A new covenant community was in process of formation, and this is what this meal symbolised. He emphasised this again shortly afterwards (Matthew 16:18). It would be composed of all those who came in faith to Him for provision, expressing their need, including this crowd who had been willing to go so far out of their way to be here, which in itself expressed their faith. In Luke 22:19 the breaking of the bread would expand to symbolise His body. Here He was symbolising the fact that He could feed their souls (John 6:35). From this meal therefore all were to learn that if they would be spiritually fed it must be through Jesus Christ, and that He had sufficient and to spare in order to do this.

· That they may know that He was among men in order to feed their inner beings (see John 6), something which in the end only He could do, and he would shortly make clear that this would be through His death (John 6:51). But His main aim was that this physical provision might be seen by them as an acted out parable similar to those of the prophets whereby they would recognise that He was offering to feed their souls. It was a display of quiet power that evidenced His limitless resources.

· If they learned their lesson from it never again would the Apostles, or the other disciples, see any situation as impossible for Him to deal with.

‘And they said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fishes, unless we should go and buy food for all this people.” '

The disciples blankly missed their opportunity, and He did not press it. Instead of obeying Him (they fell short of the obedience of Elisha's servant) they pointed to what resources they had. They had five loaves and two fishes. As far as they were concerned in their state at that time that was insufficient.

The predominance in the passage of significant numbers stresses that the numbers were not only genuine (they were in proportion to each other) but also symbolic. Five in Israel is ever the number of covenant. This helps to bring out that this was to be a covenant meal, and that they were to learn that in the covenant they had sufficient provision for all their need. As well as the five indicating covenant the combination of five and two making seven indicated sufficiency of divine provision. These would then be supplied to five thousand men in groups of fifty, indicating a covenant community divided up in covenant fashion.

But the disciples were thinking ‘practically'. So they pointed out that this tiny meal (they would be small round barley loaves) could hardly begin to feed the crowd. The thought that they should obey Jesus does not even seem to have crossed their minds. They were still very much ‘half blind' (see Mark 8:24 which deliberately pictured how the Apostles were at that time). They simply emphasised to Jesus the fact of the total inadequacy of supply. It is doubtful, in fact, if they had any other intention than that. They probably did not expect Jesus to do anything about it either. Their dull response would bring home to Jesus how far they still had to go in recognising their calling.