Luke 9:17

9:17 twelve baskets of leftovers: God abundantly provides for his people.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

(17) Twelve baskets.—See Note on Mat_14:20.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17. of fragments] Compare 2Ki_4:43-44. These were collected by the order of Jesus, who thus strikingly taught that wastefulness even of miraculous plenty is entirely alien to the divine administration.

twelve baskets] Cophini, probably wicker-baskets (salsilloth, Jer_6:9). Every Jew carried such a basket about with him to avoid the chance of his food contracting any Levitical pollution in heathen places (Juv. Sat. iii. 14, vi. 542). The baskets used at the miracle of the four thousand were large rope-baskets, ‘frails’ (spurides). The accuracy with which each word is reserved by all the narrators for each miracle is remarkable.

At this point there is a considerable gap in the continuity of St Luke’s narrative. He omits the amazement of the multitude which made it likely that they would seize Jesus to make Him king; His compelling His reluctant disciples to sail back towards the other—the western—Bethsaida; the gradual dismissal of the multitude; His flight, φεύγει, Joh_6:15, א) to the hill top to escape those who still lingered, and to pray alone; the gathering of the storm; the walking on the sea; the failure of Peter’s faith; the very memorable discourse at Capernaum, intended to teach what was the true bread from heaven, and to dissipate the material expectations of the popular Messianism; the crisis of offence caused by these hard sayings; the dispute with the Pharisees on the question of the Oral Law or Tradition of the Elders; the deepening opposition and the one great day of conflict and rupture with the Pharisees (which St Luke appears to relate out of chronological order in Luke 11); the flight among the heathen as far as Tyre and Sidon; the incident of the Syrophoenician woman; the feeding of the four thousand; the return to Galilee and demand for a sign; the sailing away, and the warning against the leaven of the Pharisees; and the healing of a blind man at Bethsaida Julias during His second journey northwards. These must be sought for in Mat_24:1 to Mat_26:12; Mar_6:45—viii. 30; John 4. For my view of them, and their sequence, I may perhaps be allowed to refer the reader to my Life of Christ, I. 403-11. 9.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And it came to pass, as he was alone praying,.... To his God and Father, for himself as man, and mediator; for the success of his Gospel, and the increase of his interest; and for his disciples, that they might have a clearer revelation of him; and which they had, as appears in their after confession of him by Peter, as the mouth of them all. The place where he now retired for private devotion, was somewhere in the coasts of Caesarea Philippi; for he was now gone from the desert of Bethsaida, as appears from Mat 16:13 and when he is said to be alone, the meaning is, that he was retired from the multitude, but not from his disciples; for it follows,

his disciples were with him, in this solitary place:

and he asked them, being with them alone;

saying, Whom say the people that I am? what are the sentiments of the common people, or of the people in general concerning me? The Alexandrian copy, and the Arabic version read, "men", as in Mat 16:13. See Gill on Mat 16:13.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

17 And they did eat, and were all filled: and there was taken up of fragments that remained to them twelve baskets.

Ver. 17. {See Trapp on "Luk 9:13"}

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And they did eat, and were all filled: and there was taken up of fragments that remained to them, twelve baskets. A very impressive lesson from the Creator himself against waste or extravagance. St. John expressly tells us that this order to gather up the fragments of their meal emanated from Jesus himself. Carefulness, thrift, and economy in small things as in great, form part of the teaching of the loving Master. From such passages as Mar_6:37 and Joh_13:29, it seems probable that the disciples, acting under their Master"s direction, were in the habit of distributing, out of their comparative abundance, food to those persons in the villages who were poorer than themselves. It was, no doubt, for some such hallowed object as this that the careful collection of the fragments which filled twelve baskets was made. The "baskets" (cophinus) were usually carried by travelling Jews to keep their food from contracting Levitical pollution in Gentile places. Juvenal, in a well-known passage ("Sat.," 3:14), writes of the Jews travelling about Italy with no baggage save a little bundle of hay to serve as a pillow, and this cophinus, or basket, for their food. So abundant had been the provision created by Jesus, that the fragments collected far exceeded the original stock of food which the disciples gave to Jesus to bless, to break, and to distribute among the five thousand and upward who were fed that memorable afternoon. This miracle is the only one in the entire Galilaean ministry which is told by all the four evangelists. It evidently had a very prominent place in the teaching of the first days. Rationalizing interpretation in the case of this miracle is singularly at fault. After eighteen centuries of unremitting hostility to the teaching of Jesus Christ, not even a plausible explanation of this miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes has been found by adverse critics. In our own days, Renan, following the ancient interpretation of Paulus, simply suggests that the multitudes were fed by materials provided by themselves. "Every one took his little store of provision from his wallet; they lived on very little an explanation, as it has been happily termed, "ludicrously inadequate.

After the relation of the great miracle of feeding the five thousand, St. Luke omits in his Gospel a variety of incidents and several discourses told at greater or lesser length by the other evangelists. For instance, the reverential amazement of the people when the nature of the stupendous miracle in connection with the creation of the loaves and fishes flashed upon them, they wished to recognize him as King Messiah; the walking on the sea; the long and important discourse on the true Bread at Capernaum, the text of which was the late great miracle of the loaves; the journey among the heathen as far as Tyre and Sidon; the meeting with the Syro-phoenician woman; the feeding of the four thousand, etc. These incidents are related in Mat 14:1-16:12 Mar 6:45-8:30 Joh 6. No commentator has satisfactorily explained the reason of this omission of important portions of our Lord"s public ministry. The reason for St. Luke"s action here probably will never be guessed. We must, however, in all theories which we may form of the composition of these Gospels, never lose sight of this fact, that while SS. Matthew and Peter (Mark) were eyewitnesses of the events of the life, St. Luke, and his master, Paul, simply reproduced what they had heard or read. We may, therefore, suppose that St. Luke exercised larger discretionary powers in dealing with materials derived from others than the other two, who desired, no doubt, to reproduce a fairly general summary of their Divine Master"s acts. On such a theory of composition, a gap in the story like the one we are now alluding to, in the more eclectic Gospel of St. Luke, would seem scarcely possible in the first two Gospels. We, of course, make no allusion here to the Fourth Gospel; the whole plan and design of St. John was different to that upon which the first three were modelled.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17. κλασμάτων. Compare 2Ki 4:43-44. These were collected by the order of Jesus, who thus strikingly taught that wastefulness even of miraculous plenty is entirely alien to the divine administration.

κόφινοι δώδεκα. Probably wicker-baskets (salsilloth, Jer 6:9). Every Jew carried such a basket about with him to avoid the chance of his food contracting any Levitical pollution in heathen places (Juv. Sat. III. 14, VI. 542). The baskets used at the miracle of the four thousand were large rope-baskets, ‘frails’ (σπυρίδες). The accuracy with which each word is reserved for its own proper miracle by all the narrators is remarkable.

At this point there is a considerable gap in the continuity of St Luke’s narrative. He omits the amazement of the multitude which made it likely that they would seize Jesus to make Him king; His compelling His reluctant disciples to sail back towards the other—the western—Bethsaida; the gradual dismissal of the multitude; His flight (φεύγει, Joh 6:15, א) to the hill top to escape those who still lingered, and to pray alone; the gathering of the storm; the walking on the sea; the failure of Peter’s faith; the very memorable discourse at Capernaum, intended to teach what was the true bread from heaven, and to dissipate the material expectations of the popular Messianism; the crisis of offence caused by these hard sayings; the dispute with the Pharisees on the question of the Oral Law or Tradition of the Elders; the deepening opposition and the one great day of conflict and rupture with the Pharisees (which St Luke appears to relate out of chronological order in 11); the flight among the heathen as far as Tyre and Sidon; the incident of the Syrophoenician woman; the feeding of the four thousand; the return to Galilee and demand for a sign; the sailing away; the warning against the leaven of the Pharisees; and the healing of a blind man at Bethsaida Julias during His second journey northwards. These must be sought for in Mat 14:1 to Mat 16:12; Mar 6:45 to Mar 8:30; John 6. For my view of them, and their sequence, I may perhaps be allowed to refer the reader to my Life of Christ, I. 403–II. 9.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17.] κλασ. in Matt. is joined with τὸ περισσεῦον,—in Mark with κοφίνους πλήρεις: here it may be taken with τὸ περισ. (ordinarily, and De Wette) or κόφ. (Meyer), but best, it appears to me, the latter,—because the article is not expressed as in Matt.

Immediately after this miracle, Matt., Mark, and John relate the walking on the sea, which, and the whole series of events following as far as Mat 16:12,—the healings in the land of Gennesaret, the discourse about unwashen hands, the Syrophœnician woman, the healing of multitudes by the sea of Galilee, the feeding of the 4000, the asking of a sign from Heaven, and the forgetting to take bread,—are wholly omitted by our Evangelist. Supposing him to have had Matt. before him, how is this to be explained?

It is also an important observation, that the omission by Luke of the second miracle of feeding is not to be adduced against its historical reality, as has been done by Schleiermacher (transl. p. 144), since it is only omitted as occurring in the midst of a large section, which the accounts gathered by Luke did not contain. We see also, that the characteristic κοφίνους of the first feeding is preserved, without any confusion of terms: σπυρίδας being always used in relating and referring to the second,—Mat 15:37; Mat 16:10: Mar 8:8, Mar 8:20.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17. The verbal resemblance between the three accounts continues. For ἐχορτάσθησαν see on 6:21, and take κλασμάτων after τὸ περισσεῦσαν (De W. Hahn). All four mention the twelve κόφινοι, as also does Mt. in referring to this miracle (16:9); whereas at the feeding of the four thousand (Mat 15:37; Mar 8:8), and in referring to it (Mat 16:10), the word used for basket is σπυρίς. It is the more remarkable that Lk. and Jn. both have κόφινοι because they do not mention the other miracle. The σπυρίς was large, capable of holding a man (Act 9:25). The κόφινος was the wallet carried by every travelling Jew, to avoid buying food from Gentiles: Judæis quorum cophinus fænumque supellex (Juv. Sat. iii. 14). Comp. nupsisti, Gellia, cistifero, “thou hast married a Jew” (Mart. Epig. v. 17, 4). These exact details would scarcely have been maintained so consistently in a deliberate fiction or in a myth. Still less would either fiction or myth have represented one who could multiply food at will as giving directions that the fragments should not be wasted (Joh 6:12). The possessor of an inexhaustible purse is never represented as being watchful against extravagance.

Note the climax in ver. 17. They not only ate, but were satisfied,—all of them; and not only so, but there was something over,—far more than the original supply.

Weiss well remarks that “the criticism which is afraid of miracles finds itself in no small difficulty in the presence of this narrative. It is guaranteed by all our sources which rest upon eye-witness; and these show the independence of their tradition by their deviations, which do not affect the kernel of the matter, and cannot be explained by any tendencies whatever. In the presence of this fact the possibility of myth or invention is utterly inadmissible. … Only this remains absolutely incontrovertible, that it is the intention of all our reports to narrate a miracle; and by this we must abide, if the origin of the tradition is not to abide an entirely inexplicable riddle” (L. J. 2. pp. 196-200, Eng. tr. 2. pp. 381-385). The explanation that Christ’s generosity in giving away the food of His party induced others who had food to give it away, and that thus there was enough for all, is plainly not what the Evangelists mean, and it does not explain their statements. Would such generosity suggest that He was the Messiah, or induce them to try to make Him king? Still more inadequate is the suggestion of Renan: Grace à une extrême frugalité, la troupe sainte y vécut; on crut naturellement voir en cela un miracle (V. de. J. p. 198, ed. 1863).

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Were filled. See on Mt 5:6.

There were taken up of fragments that remained to them twelve baskets [και ηρθη το περισσευσαν αυτπις κλασματων κοφινοι δωδεκα] . The Rev. is more accurate, putting the comma after aujtoiv, to them, instead of after klasmatwn, fragments; and making the latter word depend on kofinoi, baskets. Render, therefore, And there was taken up that which remained over to them, of broken pieces, twelve baskets.

Baskets. See on Mt 14:20.

18 - 21. Compare Mt 16:13 - 20. Mr 8:27 - 30.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.