Mark 6:37

Shall we go and buy With one mouth they seem to have reiterated what St Philip had said earlier in the day.

two hundred pennyworth The specifying of this sum is peculiar to St Mark and St John. The word translated pennyis the denarius, a silver coin of the value originally of 10 and afterwards of 16 ases. The denarius was first coined in b. c. 269, or 4 years before the first Punic war, and originally was of the value of 8½ d. of our money, later it = 7½ d. It was the day-wages of a labourer in Palestine (Matthew 20:2; Matthew 20:9; Matthew 20:13). "It so happens that in almost every case where the word denariusoccurs in the N. T. it is connected with the idea of a liberal or large amount; and yet in these passages the English rendering names a sum which is absurdly small." Prof. Lightfoot on the Revision of the N. T. p. 166.