The Right Name, but Not Yet the Right Understanding

“In those days” is loose, but the last place named was the Decapolis (7:31), so the crowd may well be largely Gentile. Many interpreters read the second feeding as bread for the nations after the first was bread for Israel; the text itself does not say so.

In 6:34 the Book of Mark reported that Jesus was moved with compassion. Here he says it himself, “I have compassion”, the only time in Mark he names his own feeling in these words. Three days is long enough for whatever food people brought to be gone.

“Fasting” is nēsteis, without food. “Faint” is eklythēsontai, to give out, to collapse. “From far” is apo makrothen, a phrase the Old Testament uses for distant peoples (Joshua 9:6, Isaiah 60:4), and those who read the crowd as Gentile point to it.

“Wilderness” here is erēmia, a desolate place, and this is the only time Mark uses that form of the word. “Satisfy” is chortasai, the fodder word from 6:42. Where the first question came in the evening from the disciples, this time Jesus raises the need first and they supply the doubt.

The question is word for word the one Jesus asked in 6:38, “How many loaves have ye?” This time there is no “go and see”: the disciples already know their stock. Seven loaves is more than five, and the crowd is smaller.

The verb is now eucharistēsas, gave thanks, rather than the “blessed” of 6:41. It is the word used over the cup at the Last Supper (14:23) and gives the church its word Eucharist. There is no green grass this time, only “the ground”.

“Small fishes” is ichthydia, little fish, a diminutive. The fish receive a blessing of their own, separate from the bread, which did not happen in chapter 6. The order to serve them is given as a second command.

“Broken meat” uses the 1611 sense of meat as any food. The “baskets” are spyrides, large baskets of woven rope or reed, a different word from the kophinoi of 6:43. A spyris was big enough to lower Paul in over the wall at Damascus (Acts 9:25).

The first crowd was counted as andres, men (6:44); this one is simply “about four thousand”. “Sent them away” is apelysen, released, the word used of dismissing an assembly. The dismissal is immediate, and so is the departure by boat.

Dalmanutha appears nowhere else in ancient writing, and its location is unknown. Matthew 15:39 has Magdala, or in some manuscripts Magadan. Scribes copying Mark sometimes changed the name to one they recognised.

Mark calls Jesus’ miracles dynameis, mighty works, and never uses sēmeion, sign, for them. In Mark signs are what opponents demand and false prophets will offer (13:22). “Tempting” is peirazontes, testing, the verb used of Satan in the wilderness (1:13).

“Sighed deeply” is anastenaxas, a strengthened form of the groan over the deaf man in 7:34. The Greek of the refusal follows a Hebrew oath formula, literally “if a sign shall be given”, with an unspoken curse on the speaker, meaning “never”. “This generation” recalls the wilderness generation of Psalm 95:10.

“He left them” is aphentes, the verb of letting go. He simply turns his back on the demand, boards the boat and crosses to the eastern shore. No further exchange with the Pharisees is recorded.

Only Mark mentions the single loaf in the boat. From early times some readers have taken it as a quiet pointer to Jesus himself, the one loaf they have with them, though the text makes no comment. “Had forgotten” shows the fault is theirs, not his.

Leaven was a lump of old fermented dough kept back to raise the next batch. It was banned at Passover (Exodus 12:15) and became a picture of hidden corruption spreading through the whole (1 Corinthians 5:6–8). Pharisees and Herod are named together, as the Pharisees and Herodians plotted together in 3:6.

The Greek can be read “they reasoned that they had no bread”, a conclusion, or as the words of their discussion. Either way, the warning about leaven is heard as a remark on catering, and they turn to finding who forgot.

“Not yet” is oupō, and it comes twice in the questions of verses 17 and 21. The phrase implies that understanding is expected eventually; it has not come yet. The question about a hardened heart is put to the disciples directly, where in 6:52 it was only reported about them.

The words are Jeremiah’s: “O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not” (Jeremiah 5:21), and Ezekiel 12:2 says the same of a rebellious house. The third question, “do ye not remember?”, is Jesus’ own addition to the prophets’ pair.

In recalling the five thousand, Jesus uses kophinous, the stout wicker baskets of 6:43. The disciples answer with the number, twelve, promptly and correctly. The question is about who gathered the fragments: “took ye up”.

Here the word is spyridōn, the larger baskets of verse 8, so the two meals are kept distinct down to the basket. The numbers run backward: seven loaves for four thousand left seven baskets, while five loaves for five thousand left twelve. More bread, fewer mouths, less left over.

The King James reads “How is it that ye do not understand?” from the Received Text. Older manuscripts read simply “Do ye not yet understand?”, and the question is left without an answer. The disciples do not reply, and the Book of Mark moves on to Bethsaida.

Bethsaida means “house of fishing”. Philip the tetrarch rebuilt it as a city and named it Julias after the emperor’s daughter; its site is disputed between et-Tell and el-Araj. The boat was sent toward Bethsaida in 6:45 and only now arrives.

Jesus leads the man by the hand out of the town himself. “Ought” means anything. Asking “do you see anything?” is unique in the Gospels: nowhere else does Jesus ask after a healing whether it has worked.

“Looked up” is anablepsas, which can also mean “regained sight”, the verb used of Bartimaeus in 10:51–52. That the man knows what trees look like, and what men look like, suggests he had once been able to see; that is an inference from his words.

Three verbs of seeing come in one verse: dieblepsen, he looked intently; apekatestē, he was restored; eneblepen, he kept seeing. “Clearly” is tēlaugōs, a word found nowhere else in the New Testament, meaning shining far off: he could now make out things at a distance.

Some manuscripts read “do not even go into the village”. This is the last healing in Mark with an order to keep it quiet. The next blind man, Bartimaeus, is healed in public on the road and follows Jesus toward Jerusalem (10:52).

Caesarea Philippi lay at a source of the Jordan beneath Mount Hermon, about twenty-five miles north of the lake. Philip rebuilt the old town of Paneas, named for its grotto to the god Pan, and named it for Caesar and himself; Herod the Great had built a temple to Augustus there. “By the way” is en tē hodō, on the road, a phrase that recurs until Jericho.

The public answers all name men who have died or gone: a beheaded prophet, a prophet taken up, or one of the old line. Moses had promised a prophet like himself (Deuteronomy 18:15). People are placing Jesus as someone come back, not someone new.

The “ye” in “whom say ye” is emphatic: never mind the crowds, you. “Christ” is Christos, the Greek rendering of the Hebrew mashiach, anointed one. In Israel priests and kings were anointed with oil, and the title had come to mean the promised king.

“Charged” is epetimēsen, rebuked, the verb used to silence the unclean spirits in 1:25 and 3:12. It is used three times in four verses: Jesus rebukes the disciples to silence, Peter rebukes Jesus (verse 32), and Jesus rebukes Peter (verse 33).

“Must” is dei, the language of necessity. “Rejected” is apodokimasthēnai, the verb of Psalm 118:22 in the Greek, “the stone which the builders refused”, which Jesus quotes in 12:10. Elders, chief priests and scribes are the three groups of the council, and they appear together again at the arrest (14:43) and trial (15:1).

“Openly” is parrēsia, plainly, without figures, the only time Mark uses the word. After a chapter of riddles about leaven and baskets, this is spoken straight. “Took him” is proslabomenos, drew him aside, the gesture of someone taking charge of another.

“Savourest” in 1611 meant to have a taste for; the Greek phroneis means to set one’s mind on. Mark’s wilderness account in 1:13 gave no words to Satan; the confrontation Matthew sets there (Matthew 4:10) comes in Mark through the mouth of the chief disciple.

“Deny” is aparnēsasthō, the verb used when Peter denies Jesus three times (14:30, 14:72). Condemned men carried the crossbeam to their own execution, as Simon of Cyrene will be made to carry it (15:21). This is the first time the word “cross” appears in Mark.

Only Mark adds “and the gospel’s” to “for my sake”, as he does again in 10:29. The gospel of 1:1 is given the same weight as the person of Jesus. The verse is built as a mirror: save and lose, lose and save.

“Profit” is ōphelēsei, and “lose” is zēmiōthēnai, a word for suffering a loss or paying a fine. The language is a merchant’s ledger: total gain entered on one side, a single forfeit on the other, and the forfeit outweighs the whole column.

“In exchange” is antallagma, the price paid to get something back. Psalm 49:7–8 had said that no man can give to God a ransom for his brother, “for the redemption of their soul is precious”. In 10:45 Jesus will speak of giving his own life as a ransom.

“Adulterous” is the prophets’ picture of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God as a marriage betrayed (Hosea 2, Jeremiah 3). The Son of man coming in glory with angels echoes Daniel 7:13. This is also the first time in Mark that Jesus speaks of God as “his Father”.