The Feeding of the Four Thousand

Mark For Everyone

MARK 8.1–10
The Feeding of the Four Thousand...

...Two more loaves, a thousand less people, and five fewer baskets remaining. It’s almost like a dream; we’ve heard the story before, it seems, two chapters earlier, and yet it’s different. The disciples seem to be living in a dream, too; whatever it is that’s happening, it’s so much bigger and so very different from what they had been expecting or hoping for that they simply couldn’t take it all in.

Of course, clever and subtle minds have probed closely to see if maybe Mark is trying to tell us something more than simply ‘Jesus did it again’. Perhaps, some have said, the 5,000, with the 12 baskets left over, represent Jesus’ ministry to the Jewish world (with its 12 tribes), while the 4,000, with the seven baskets left over, represent his promise to the wider Gentile world (with, in Jewish folklore, 70 nations). Coming after the events of chapter 7, and probably located in Gentile territory, there may be a hint here that this second feeding involves a wider group than simply Jesus’ Jewish audience...

Taken from Mark for Everyone by Tom Wright