The Feeding of Four Thousand Men (8:1-10).
In the light of Jesus' experience with the Syro-Phoenician woman this feeding is of huge significance and tremendous importance. It was not just a repetition of the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:30-44) but an important indication that Jesus was now aware that the bread of life should even now be made available to Gentiles. He felt it necessary to extend His blessing, offered previously only to Israel, to the Gentiles before His ministry was complete. The woman had received His crumbs, now these people in Gentile territory were to receive bread in abundance.
Apart from superficial similarities that arise simply from the fact of feeding a crowd - the crowd gathered, the sitting down, bread and fish (staple diets), the blessing, the distribution of the food and the gathering of the fragments, all of which would necessarily be repeated in any such incident, the details are in fact very different.
Here Jesus initiated the feeding, in chapter 6 it was at His disciples' suggestion. Here they had been there three days and had run out of food, in chapter 6 it was the same day and they had assembled hurriedly and had no food. Here He has compassion on them because they have no food (symbolically the Gentiles did not have ‘the word'), there He was concerned because they were as sheep without a shepherd, (a typical Old Testament picture of Israel). Here the question was, ‘From where can food be obtained?' There the suggestion was that the crowd be sent away. Here there were seven loaves, there there were five. Here there were a few small fish, there there were two. Here there are seven baskets gathered up, there there were twelve, and the baskets are of a different type. In the detail the account is different in almost every way.
As mentioned previously the numbers themselves are significant. Whereas five, the covenant number, and twelve, the number of the twelve tribes, had pointed to Israel, here four, the world number, and seven the universal number of divine completeness and perfection, point to the whole world. Furthermore in chapter 6 the bread was gathered up in identifiable Jewish baskets, here in ‘universal' baskets.
Analysis.
a In those days, when there was a great crowd and there was nothing to eat, He called His disciples to Him and says to them (Mark 8:1).
b “I have compassion on the crowd because they continue with me now three days and have nothing to eat, and if I send them away fasting to their home they will faint in the way, and some of them are come from far” (Mark 8:2-3).
c And His disciples answered Him, “From where will one be able to fill these men with bread here in a desert place?” (Mark 8:4).
d And He asked, “How many loaves have you?” And they said, “Seven” (Mark 8:5).
e And He commanded the crowd to sit down on the ground (Mark 8:6 a).
d And He took the seven loaves, and having given thanks He broke and gave to His disciples to set before them (Mark 8:6 b).
c And they set them before the crowd. And they had a few small fish, and having blessed them He commanded to set these also before them” (Mark 8:6).
b And they ate and were filled, and they took up of broken pieces that remained over, seven baskets (Mark 8:8).
a And they were about four thousand, and He sent them away (Mark 8:9).
Note that in ‘a' there was a great crowd, and in the parallel they were about four thousand. In ‘b' He has compassion on them because they have no food, and in the parallel they all ate and were filled. In ‘c' the disciples ask how they can fill the men with bread, and in the parallel they do so. In ‘d' there are seven loaves, and in the parallel Jesus offers the seven loaves to the crowd. Centrally in ‘e' Jesus was in control.