The Feeding of the Five Thousand

This is the only miracle of the Galilean ministry told in all four Gospels (Mark 6:30–44) (Matthew 14:13–21) (Luke 9:10–17) (John 6:1–15). In Mark the Twelve have just returned from their mission, and Jesus takes them away by boat on the lake to a deserted place to rest. Matthew adds that he had just heard of the death of John the Baptist. The crowds saw them go and followed on foot. Jesus had compassion on them, Mark says, “because they were like sheep without a shepherd”, and he taught them; Matthew and Luke say that he healed their sick (Mark 6:30–34) (Matthew 14:12–14) (Luke 9:10–11). Luke sets the scene near Bethsaida.

As Mark tells it, late in the day the disciples asked him to send the people away to buy food. He answered, “You give them something to eat.” They had five loaves and two fish; in John it is Andrew who points out a boy carrying five barley loaves and two fish. Jesus had the people sit down on the grass. He took the loaves, looked up to heaven, blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to hand out, and he divided the fish. All ate and were satisfied, and the disciples filled twelve baskets with what was left. The men numbered about five thousand; Matthew adds that there were women and children besides (Mark 6:35–44) (Matthew 14:15–21) (John 6:5–13).

John alone reports the reaction. The people said, “This is truly the prophet who comes into the world”, and Jesus, seeing that they meant to take him by force and make him king, withdrew to the mountain by himself (John 6:14–15). That night, according to Mark, Matthew and John, the disciples in their boat saw him walking on the sea (Mark 6:45–52) (Matthew 14:22–33) (John 6:16–21). Mark and Matthew also tell of a second feeding, of four thousand people with seven loaves (Mark 8:1–10, 19–20) (Matthew 15:32–39).

In John the crowd finds Jesus the next day at Capernaum, and he speaks in the synagogue there about the manna their ancestors ate in the wilderness and about himself: “I am the bread of life.” He says that the bread he will give is his flesh, for the life of the world. Many of his disciples found the saying hard and left him. When he asked the Twelve whether they too would go, Peter answered, “You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:22–69).

The story recalls the account in Kings of Elisha feeding a hundred men with twenty barley loaves, with some left over (2 Kings 4:42–44), and the manna that Exodus says was given in the time of Moses (Exodus 16:4, 14–15). The actions of taking, blessing, breaking and giving return in the accounts of the Last Supper (Mark 6:41; 14:22).