Matthew Chapter 15 verse 32 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 32. - Called his disciples unto him. Seeing the necessities of the multitude, Jesus, as it were, takes his disciples into council, treating them not as servants, but as friends. They were doubtless dispersed among the crowd, and Jesus summons them around him, and puts before them the special point to which his attention is turned. Thus he tries their faith, and shows that there were no human means available for feeding these famishing people. Thus God, so to speak, takes Abraham into his confidence before visiting the iniquity of Sodom: "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" (Genesis 18:17). I have compassion (σπαλαγχνίζομαι) on the multitude. The human heart of Jesus felt for these distressed followers; his perfect sympathy was aroused in their behalf. We observe references to this tender feeling in many other instances (see Matthew 9:36; Matthew 14:14; Matthew 20:34; Mark 1:41; Mark 5:19; Luke 7:13. And in the Old Testament, e.g. Isaiah 49:15; Jeremiah 12:15; Micah 7:19). They continue with me now three days. The verb used here (προσμένειν) implies close attendance persevered in against obstacles; it is used in Acts 11:23 in a spiritual sense, "He exhorted them all that with purpose of heart they would cleave (προσμένειν) unto the Lord." The three days, according to the Hebrew formula of computation, would consist of one whole day and parts of two others. Thus constantly employed in healing and teaching, Jesus thinks not of himself; his whole care is centred on the people who, in their anxiety to see and hear him, forget their own necessities. There would be nothing strange in the people camping out for a night in Palestine. Men and women ordinarily lie down to rest in the clothes which they have worn during the day, and need no special preparation for sleeping. Thus a man covers himself with his heavy outer garment, lies on the dry ground, like Jacob at Bethel, with a stone or his arm for a pillow, and sleeps comfortably and safely till awakened by the morning sun. I wilt not send them away fasting. Like a good master of a household, in his tender pity, Christ takes the circumstances of the multitude into consideration, and cannot endure the idea of dismissing them wearied and unfed to find their way to their own homes, which, as St. Mark adds, were, in the case of many of them, at a long distance. Faint. Travellers tell us that out of the motley crowd of pilgrims that flock to Jerusalem at Easter-tide, many run short of provisions and perish on the road. Christ's thoughtful care regards the possibility of such disaster, and prepares the remedy. He had treated the sicknesses of the multitude; he had instructed their ignorance; now he will feed their bodies. They had sought nothing from him, nor begged for food; probably they had no idea of looking to him to supply their want. But they who follow Jesus shall never lack. They were seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and temporal blessings were added to them.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(32) I have compassion on the multitude.--The obvious resemblance between the details of this narrative and that of the feeding of the Five Thousand has led the schools of critics, who do not regard either as the record of a fact, to treat this as only another version of the same incident, or rather, from their point of view, of the same legend. The notes of distinctness are, however, too numerous to admit of that explanation. The number of the people fed, their three days' waiting till their food was exhausted, the number of the loaves at hand, and of the baskets in which the fragments were collected after the meal, are all different. More than this, the words rendered in both narratives by "basket" in the Authorised version are not the same in the Greek. Here the word is ?????? (spuris), the hamper in which provisions were packed as for a party travelling together, large enough, as in St. Paul's escape from Damascus (Acts 9:25), to hold a man; while in the other it was the ??????? (cophinus), or smaller basket, which a man carried in his hand. Lastly, our Lord's words in Matthew 16:9-10, distinctly recognise the two miracles, and connect the close of each with the word which was thus specially appropriate to it. Unless we adopt the incredible hypothesis that the one narrative was first so disguised that it lost the marks of its identity, and that the Evangelists, having combined the two, then invented our Lord's words, with all their apparent freshness and adaptation to the special circumstances of the hour, they must be admitted to be decisive as proving that there had been two events, like in kind, to which He thus referred. It is significant that here, as so often before, the display of miraculous power in its highest form originates not in answer to a challenge, or as being offered as a proof of a divine mission, but simply from compassion. Three days had passed, and still the crowds hung on His words and waited for His loving acts, and now they began to show signs of exhaustion that moved His sympathy.