And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
All Commentaries on Matthew 14:21 Go To Matthew 14
Jerome
AD 420
Wherein He calls the Apostles to breaking of bread, that the greatness of the miracle might be more evident by their testimony that they had none.
While the Lord breaks there is a sowing of food; for had the loaves been whole and not broken into fragments, and thus divided into a manifold harvest, they could not have fed so great a multitude. The multitude receives the food from the Lord through the Apostles; as it follows, “And he gave the loaves to hiedisciples, and the disciples to the multitude.”.
Each of the Apostles fills his basket of the fragments left by his Saviour, that these fragments might witness that they were true loaves that were multiplied.
To the number of loaves, five, the number of the men that ate is apportioned, five thousand; “And the number of them that had eaten was about five thousand men, besides women and children.”.
But all these things are full of mysteries; the Lord does these things not in the morning, nor at noon, but in the evening, when the Sun of righteousness wasset.
Or, they are bid to lie down on the grass, and that, according to another Evangelist, by fifties and by hundreds, that after they have trampled upon their flesh, and have subjugated the pleasures of the world as dried grass under them, then by the presence of the number fifty, they ascend to the eminent perfection of a hundred.
There partook five thousand who had reached maturity; for women and children, the weaker sex, and the tender age, were unworthy of number; thus in the book of Numbers, slaves, women, children, and an undistinguished crowd, are passed over unnumbered.
