Matthew 14:21

‘And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.'

Finally we are supplied with an enumeration of the crowds, or rather, of those ‘who ate'. There were five thousand men, besides women and children. The idea is probably that ten men were required in order to establish a synagogue. Thus five thousand represented a covenant community, for five is ever the number of covenant (five fingers to the hand that seals the covenant, the commandments in sets of five, the measurements of the Tabernacle and Temple in multiples of five, the covenant altar was five by five, five shekels was the price of deliverance from Tabernacle service, and so on).

However reference to Exodus 12:37 may also serve to confirm that a new Exodus is in mind for there we read of ‘men on foot besides children'. However, here, under the new covenant, women also are now to be seen as important.

We must not multiply up too much from the number of men. The trek round the Lake would probably have resulted in many women and children being left to make their way home. And furthermore they would have been needed at home to milk the animals. The fact that only the men are numbered probably indicates their predominance in the crowd.

To sum up there are a number of lessons to be learned from this incident.

That His disciples were to 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 the responsibility of the disciples to provide both physical and spiritual sustenance to the people, in the same way as He Himself provided it to them (compare John 21:15). 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 He wanted them to see that He was now here as the Messiah to spread a table before those who looked to Him (compare Isaiah 25:6; Isaiah 55:1; and extra-testamental literature). He wanted them to see Him as the source of true provision for all men's needs, the Bread of Life to their souls (John 6:35). And this would in the end be ministered through His Apostles and those whom they appointed.

He wanted them to appreciate that He was here among them as the Representative of Israel (Matthew 2:15), leading them in a second Exodus, in a way as a second Moses (although this latter is never emphasised), 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). A greater than Moses was here, and a greater Exodus was taking place (Matthew 2:15), establishing a new Israel. (In Matthew the emphasis is on the new Exodus rather than a new Moses).

He wanted them to recognise that He was here among men in order to establish a new covenant and a new covenant community, something symbolised by this covenant meal. A new covenant community was thus in process of formation, and this is what this meal symbolised (compare Exodus 24:9). Such a community has already been indicated by His description of believers as His mother, His sisters and His brothers (Matthew 12:50), and assumed in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:13; Matthew 5:45; Matthew 6:9), and He will emphasise this again shortly (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 Matthew 26:26 the breaking of the bread would expand to symbolise His body. Here He was symbolising the fact that He could feed their souls as they responded to Him (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.

He wanted them to know that He was among men in order to feed their inner beings (see John 6:32, and compare Isaiah 55:1), 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.

He wanted them to learn their lesson from this incident that never again should they, the Apostles, or the other disciples, see any situation as impossible for Him to deal with.

Note on Other Explanations.

Necessarily Atheists and Agnostics and those who deny the possibility of miracles cannot accept that it happened like this, and yet often have to admit that it must have some basis in truth. So they have to think of a way round it. But we should note that by doing so they go against the evidence. Rather than accept the truth they weave ‘fairy stories'. For in order to give an explanation that is what they have to do, ignore the evidence and what is written, and spin their own threads of gold. For the sake of completeness and to assist those who are troubled by such things we will consider one or two of these explanations.

1). The first is that what happened was that a young boy brought his dinner and gave it to Jesus who then told the disciples to share it with the crowds, and that all those in the crowds were so moved by His action and the action of the little boy that they all shared their food that they had brought with them with others (or something similar). It is a nice idea. But it clearly goes contrary to what the four accounts say. It is not likely that the disciples would have said what they did about dispersing and buying food without having first checked that the people were without food. Furthermore it destroys the symbolism and at the same time ignores how long the crowds had already been away from home. They were not out on a picnic, and had not anticipated this extra journey. Nor can we understand why if this was what happened a hint of the fact is not supplied by at least one of the eyewitnesses, as a wonderful picture of the influence of Jesus. And certainly it would be strange that such a trivial happening as it would then have become should be treated as so important by all four Gospel writers. Nor would it have stirred the crowds to make Him a king (John 6:15). The idea trivialises all that the story points to, and every detail is against it.

2). That what happened was that Jesus divided up the loaves into minute amounts which were then given to the crowds as a ‘token Messianic meal' and that this gave them such an uplift that their hearts were satisfied and they were ‘filled' and therefore did not for a while notice their hunger. It is a beautiful picture, but it would not have served them well during the night, or next morning when they awoke hungry. And it still requires us to drastically reduce the numbers involved, or alternately increase the food available. It is also to assume that the ‘meal' had a significance not made apparent in the first three Gospels. If this was what happened it is strange that the lesson to be drawn from it was totally ignored and that it was interpreted as just physical, without further explanation. It would also leave everyone still hungry and as much in danger of fainting as before. Thus Jesus would have failed to fulfil what He promised to the Apostles, that they would be able to feed the crowds.

3). That the story is simply an invention based on what Elisha did in 2 Kings 4:42. But if this were the case its importance as revealed by its presence in all four Gospels, in different presentations, is inexplicable. There is no avoiding the fact that all four considered the event extremely important and on the whole gave basically the same picture. Nor does the incident then have the significance that it clearly had. Elisha's was not a covenant meal.

End of note.