<p>8:20 <i>And when the seven among the four thousand, how many basketfuls of broken pieces did you gather? And they said to him: Seven</i>- The Lord intended them to see a connection between the <i>seven</i> loaves and the <i>seven</i> baskets full of fragments which they gathered. For each loaf, there was a basket of fragments. Perhaps His idea was that effectively, the people didn't eat the bread; each loaf was just broken into pieces by the Lord and then left on the ground by the crowd. The idea would be as stated in John 6 that the bread provided represented the Lord and His message, which for the most part was discarded by the crowds, who were simply hooked on getting to see or feel a miracle.</p>