Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.
Ver. 32. I have compassion on the multitude] My bowels yearn towards them. Neither is he less loving, now that he is in heaven, towards his poor penniless, necessitous people on earth; but when they are hardest put to it, and haply have not a cross to bless themselves with, as the proverb is, he so graciously provides, that though the young lions (or the strong ones, as the Septuagint have it) do lack and suffer hunger, yet they that seek the Lord want nothing that's good for them, Psalms 34:10. Aaron, though he might not bewail the death of his two sons, Leviticus 10:3; Leviticus 10:6,7; Leviticus 10:19, because he was high priest, yet his bowels of fatherly affection towards them could not be restrained. Christ retaineth still compassion, Hebrews 4:5, though free from personal passion; and, though freed from feeling, hath still yet a fallow feeling, Acts 9:5; Matthew 25:35; " Manet compassio etiam cum impassibilitate, " saith Bernard.
Because they continue with me now three days] The Lord takes punctual and particular notice of all circumstances, how far they came, how long they had been there, how little able they were to hold out fasting to their own homes, &c. And so he doth still recount how many years, days, hours we have spent with him; what straits, losses, heats, colds, dangers, difficulties we have encountered with and passed through; all is exactly registered in his book of remembrance; "I know thy work, and thy labour," saith he, Revelation 2:19. Men take much pains many times, and none regard it, reward it. But Christ takes notice, not of his people's works only, but of their labour in doing them, that he may fully recompence their labour of love, their loss of goods, &c. The godly shall know in themselves, not only in others, in books, &c., that they have "a better and an enduring substance," Hebrews 10:34 .