<p>14:25&nbsp;<em>And in the fourth watch of the night-</em>&nbsp;Between three and six a.m. This indicates how long they had been struggling. It is the same &lsquo;watch&rsquo; of the night in which God used the sea to destroy the Egyptians and thus save His people (Ex. 14:20).</p>
<p><em>He came to them-</em>&nbsp;The Greek strictly means that He departed, He left to walk over the sea to them, in the fourth watch of the night. Mk. 6:48 adds the detail that &quot;He would have passed by them&quot;. This is often His style to this day- it's not that He plays hard to get, but He wants to elicit in us a sense of our desperation for Him. Likewise He often asked sick people what He could do for them, when it was obvious what they wanted. For the same reason on the road to Emmaus, He made as if He would have gone further- to elicit in those disciples an urgent desire for fellowship with Him. The same word translated &quot;passed by them&quot; had just been used by the disciples in saying that &quot;the time is now&nbsp;<em>past</em>&quot; and so the Lord should send the crowd away to feed themselves. The disciples likely realized that they were being corrected for their desire to turn away the crowds of people from the Lord; admittedly their motivation was poor, as the Lord seems to explain to them in John 6, but it was seriously wrong to turn them away.<br />
Mk. 6:48 says that &ldquo;He saw them toiling in rowing&rdquo; and then, later, He went to them. He didn&rsquo;t literally see them rowing; but in His sensitive mind, He imagined just how it would be for them, and so He went to them.</p>
<p><em>Walking upon the sea</em>- The Greek&nbsp;<em>peripateo</em>&nbsp;means to walk&nbsp;<em>around&nbsp;</em>(from whence &lsquo;peripatetic&rsquo;], and is used about our walk of life, career, habits etc. The impression is of the Lord walking around at ease upon the waves which were so frightening to the disciples. Walking on the sea, Jesus &ldquo;would have passed by them&rdquo; (Mk. 6:48). I don&rsquo;t suppose He&nbsp;<em>would</em>&nbsp;have done, because He was &lsquo;coming unto them&rsquo;, but this was how they perceived it &ndash; and thus the record stands written, from a human perspective.</p>