<p>8:4<i> And his disciples answered him: Where shall one be able to find bread for these men here in such a desolate place?</i>- The wording is so very similar to the LXX of Ex. 16:3, where a faithless Israel asked the same of Moses; and Moses responded, as did the Lord, in providing bread from Heaven. Did the disciples actually say those words? Would they really have said the very words which Israel did in one of their lowest ebbs of faith and understanding? My suggestion is that they did indeed say something similar in essence, but Mark / Peter purposefully recorded it in terms which highlight the similarity with unbelieving Israel- to as it were emphasize how weak the disciples were at that point. Peter was the public leader of the early ecclesia, and yet the Gospels all emphasise his weaknesses. The Gospels all stress the disciples&rsquo; lack of spirituality, their primitive earthiness in comparison to the matchless moral glory of God&rsquo;s Son, their slowness to understand the cross. But there are also more studied references to their failures. Mark&rsquo;s account of their words at the feeding of the crowd is shot through with reference to the attitude of faithless Israel in the wilderness: &ldquo;Where shall we &lsquo;And this includes me, Mark...this is what we said to Him...&rsquo; get bread to satisfy this people in the wilderness?&rdquo;.</p><p>&quot;Where can&quot; is literally &quot;Whence can a man&hellip;&quot;. Their reasoning was that no&nbsp;<i>man</i>&nbsp;could meet this huge need, and so therefore, they naturally couldn&rsquo;t meet it- for they were only men. Man can&rsquo;t, therefore we can&rsquo;t. And so our reasoning goes so often. Something is humanly impossible, therefore it is impossible to me, because I am human. The life and person of the Lord Jesus challenged this thinking very deeply. For He was fully human, of our nature, our representative, and yet did super-human things. With God&rsquo;s manifestation and involvement in human life, then human beings can achieve that which is humanly impossible. And this was exemplified supremely in the Lord Jesus, once we appreciate He was of our nature and not some Divine puppet playing a mere role- as required by Trinitarian theology.</p>