Mark 6:30 Commentary and Bible Study

The apostles have completed the preaching tour which Christ had sent them to carry out, and now they return to him, coming back from different parts of Galilee in their appointed pairs. It would have taken a little while for them all to return to him, and so Mark says that they ‘gathered themselves together to Jesus’, no doubt at some prearranged time. They are full of joy at what they have been able to accomplish for him, and they want to tell him all that has happened: ‘what they had done, and what they had taught.’ They have carefully carried out his instructions (Matthew 10:1; Mark 6:7; Luke 9:1) and have many wonderful accounts to share about how God has provided for them, and the response of the people to their message. He had told them in outline what to preach, but they had expanded on this according to their understanding at the time, and what they had heard him preach and teach.They have worked hard and so now he calls them to come aside from the work and rest for a while: by implication, to spend time alone with him. ‘And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.’ Luke adds that ‘he took them, and went aside privately into a desert place belonging to the city called Bethsaida’ (Luke 9:10). It seems clear that he intended them to understand this as a time apart from the crowds, when they could be alone with him. But it is curious that he says this for this reason: he knew all things, and he knew perfectly well that the multitude would follow them where they were going. They were not going to rest awhile. So they took ships and arrived in the north-east corner of the Sea of Galilee, and there was a fishing village named Bethsaida, not to be confused with the larger Bethsaida that also features in the Gospels (distinguished by the name Bethsaida of Galilee, and – from where the feeding of the five thousand took place – in the general direction of Capernaum on the west of Galilee (John 6:17; Mark 6:45)) on the other side of the lake (see Hendriksen on Mark 6:45; John 6:1 for a discussion of whether there were one or two places named Bethsaida). This was a little place later called Bethsaida Julias, and it was a fishing village, a small place. In fact there were not many people living in that part at all. It was fertile; it was green; Mark tells us this (Mark 6:39). He went there and the moment the ship landed, there were crowds there that had raced round the northern edge of the lake when they saw which way he was heading. Christ had left Capernaum with his disciples on the north west shore of the Sea of Galilee and now he had come, cutting off a portion of the north coastline and he had come to the north east shore. The distance is thought to be about 4 miles directly by sea, but maybe 8 miles by land going round the coast. There was already a vast multitude gathering, and so he began to teach. Where then was the rest? We can either explain this by saying that the rest was in hearing Christ’s teaching: ‘Come and hear my teaching and be refreshed after your toils, after your mission work’, or we must say that, although the disciples deserved rest and Christ was willing to give it to them, they had to learn to cope with the unexpected. The work of the kingdom of heaven has precedence even over our reasonable plans of rest. So too Christians make good plans which do not necessarily work out, because God in his wisdom overrules. ‘They departed into a desert place’, not a desert in the sense of a sandy desert – because there was green grass there – but a desert in the literal sense, ‘a deserted place’. There was not much of a population, just little villages scattered around. And yet the crowds came from all the towns and the cities.