<p>15:34&nbsp;<em>And Jesus said to them: How many loaves have you? And they said: Seven, and a few small fish</em>- The feeding of the 4000 is clearly recorded in the same style and with much the same language as the feeding of the 5000. We are surely intended to place the events together. Five loaves were used in the healing of the 5000, and seven here- making a total of 12 loaves. Jewish minds would surely have thought of the 12 loaves on the table of showbread (Lev. 24:5). Moses personally was to &quot;set them&quot; on the table in rows (Lev. 24:1,6), which connects with how the loaves were &quot;set&quot; before the people (Mk. 8:6), who at the feeding of the 5000 were set down in rows (Mk. 6:40 Gk.). The hint was clearly that the most sacred bread of Judaism, the 12 loaves of the showbread, were being set before Gentiles, women, children and secular Jews- by non-priests, the disciples. And all were welcome to partake, without testing their qualification. The rending of the veil into the Most Holy at the Lord's death was only really making public that which the Lord had already achieved in His life.The Lord&rsquo;s teaching style continually revolved around posing explicit and implicit questions to His hearers, such as &quot;How many loaves do you have?&quot;. John&rsquo;s Gospel contains a total of 161 questions; and one brief passage in Mark (Mk. 8:14-21- the parallel to this section in Matthew) records how the Lord asked seven questions in quick succession. In this sense, the Lord Jesus intended to be intrusive into human life; He penetrates the depths of our being. His call to pick up a cross and follow Him was radical- so radical, that His hearers both then and now tended to [even unconsciously] negate the totally radical import of His demands.</p>
<p>Mark&rsquo;s record speaks as if the fish were something of an afterthought (Mk. 8:7); the use of the diminutive word for&nbsp;<em>little</em>&nbsp;fish suggests they thought them hardly worth mentioning. The stress (in Mark) is that&nbsp;<em>they</em>&nbsp;had a few small fish. The situation is of course purposefully similar to that of the feeding of the 5000. They were really intended to learn from it. But they didn&rsquo;t. There were some differences, and one of them was that this time, their own small amount of food was used rather than that of the boy. The Lord was seeking to show that what little they personally had, fish they had personally caught but felt inadequate for the task, could and would be used by Him in order to meet the hunger of the Gentile world.</p>