Mark 8:2 Commentary and Bible Study

Christ declares his compassion on the multitude. There seems to be a kind of re-enactment of the feeding of the five thousand, even to the disciples’ response. The crowd, the Greek says, was ‘all great’, in other words, as big as any crowd ever seen. It was what we would call a capacity crowd, an enormous multitude of people. They had been with the Lord three days, which means at least two nights. For three days they had been listening to him, and now they had ‘nothing to eat.’ They had probably brought some limited provisions, maybe for a single day out hearing this great teacher, but they certainly hadn’t brought sustenance for three days, two nights – perhaps a part of a day, a whole day and a part of a day; three days would cover that as well as a literal three full days. What had they been listening to? They had been listening to the gospel of repentance and remission of sin. For three days they had listened to this normally unwelcome message. We do not like being told that we are sinners, that we cannot approach God except through the merits, and suffering and death of a Saviour. This crowd had listened to the message of salvation and all the arguments and the reasonings of the Lord for three days and they had hung on his every word, and their devotion to his teaching had meant that all their food was now exhausted, so the crowd was hungry and the Lord had great compassion upon them. The original Greek word indicates a great yearning for them. He says, ‘if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will feint by the way, for diverse of them came from far.’