And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.
All Commentaries on Matthew 14:20 Go To Matthew 14
John Chrysostom
AD 407
And another thing too we learn, the self-restraint of the disciples which they practised in necessary things, and how little they accounted of food. For being twelve, they had five loaves only and two fishes; so secondary to them were the things of the body: so did they cling to the things spiritual only.
And not even that little did they hold fast, but gave up even it when asked. Whereby we should be taught, that though we have but little, this too we ought to give up to them that are in need. Thus, when commanded to bring the five loaves, they say not, and whence are we to have food? Whence to appease our own hunger? but they obey at once.
And besides what I have mentioned, to this end, as I at least think, He makes it out of the materials which they had, namely, that He might lead them to faith; for as yet they were rather in a weak state.
Wherefore also He looks up to Heaven. For of the other miracles they had many examples, but of this none.
He took the loaves, therefore, and broke them, and gave them by His disciples, hereby to honor them; and not in honor to them only, but also that, when the miracle had been done they might not disbelieve it, nor forget it when it had past, their own hands bearing them witness.
Wherefore also He suffers the multitudes first to have a sense of hunger, and waits for these to come to Him first and ask Him, and by them makes the people sit down, and by them distributes; being minded by their own confessions and actions to prepossess them every one.
Therefore also, from them He receives the loaves, that the testimonies of what was doing might be many, and that they might have memorials of the miracle. For if even after these occurrences they forgot, Matthew 16:9 what would not have been their case, had He omitted those provisions?
And He commands them to sit down on the trampled grass, instructing the multitudes in self-denial. For His will was not to feed their bodies only, but also to instruct their souls. As well by the place therefore, as by His giving them nothing more than loaves and fishes, and by setting the same before all, and making it common, and by affording no one more than another, He was teaching them humility, and temperance, and charity, and to be of like mind one towards another, and to account all things common.
And He broke and gave to the disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. The five loaves He broke and gave, and the five multiplied themselves in the hands of the disciples. And not even here does He stay the miracle, but He made them even to exceed; to exceed, not as whole loaves, but as fragments; to signify that of those loaves these were remains, and in order that the absent might learn what had been done.
For this purpose indeed He suffered the multitudes to hunger, that no one might suppose what took place to be illusion.
For this also He caused just twelve baskets to remain over, that Judas also might bear one. For He was able indeed to have appeased their hunger, but the disciples would not have known His power, since in Elijah's case also this took place. 1 Kings 17:16
At all events, so greatly were the Jews amazed at Him for this, that they wished even to make Him a king, John 6:15 although with regard to the other miracles they did not so in any instance.
