Mark 8:4

‘And his disciples answered him, “From where will one be able to fill these men with bread here in a desert place?”

Some have argued that the disciples would not have asked this question if they had already been at the feeding of the five thousand. But that is not necessarily so. They had no doubt seen that as a unique event and may well have recognised its significance, with its particular pointers, as applying specifically to Israel. Even if they had been that discerning, however, they would not expect the same for Gentiles. Gentiles had not been fed by God through Moses. (They had in fact, for the ‘people of Israel' were actually a mixed multitude, but they were not seen in that way in Jewish eyes). And they may have remembered how Jesus had been apprehensive of the crowd and had hurried them off afterwards, almost as though He had regretted what He had done.

Other factors to take into account are:

1). They would surely have seen it as presumptious (as it would have been) to suggest to Jesus that He ought to perform a miracle. Indeed it may well be that, while they recognised that, their question was a hint along those lines, an expectant question, without putting too much pressure on. They did not want to tell Him what He should do, but they may have had it in their hearts that He could do it if He wanted to.

2). We must not necessarily assume that they would expect Jesus constantly to perform such miracles. They tended to underestimate what Jesus could and would do, and as we know, they were very slow to learn (as Jesus will soon have to point out (Mark 8:14)). Christians today and through the ages have been similar. A signal display of the power of God does not always result in a lasting strong faith and expectancy, even among mature Christians. They soon tend to degenerate back into lack of faith and lack of expectancy.

3). There may have been a considerable period of time between the one incident and the other, time enough for any expectancy to have died down. The accounts tend to foreshorten the length of Jesus' ministry because they only select the high points.

Thus overall their attitude would not really be surprising even if they had been present some time previously at an earlier miracle of such magnitude, especially as this time Gentiles were involved. They were not constantly expecting the ‘greater' miracles.