Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 14:15

"And when even was come, the disciples came to him, saying, The place is desert, and the time is already past; send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves food." — Matthew 14:15 (ASV)

And when it was evening — The narrative that follows is, in many ways, one of the most important in the Gospel accounts. It has several key distinctions:

1. It is the only miracle recorded by all four Evangelists and is therefore one of the chief data for interweaving the supplemental account of John with that of the other three.
2. It was the fullest manifestation of the Son of Man’s sovereignty over the natural world. If we accept the facts, the act was distinctly one of creative power and, unlike some of the healing miracles, does not allow for being explained away as the result of strong faith or excited imagination on the part of its recipients. The only rationalizing explanation ever offered—that our Lord, by His example of sharing the five loaves and two fish, stirred the multitude to bring out the small provisions that each person had selfishly concealed—is ludicrously inadequate. The narrative must be accepted or rejected as a whole; if accepted, it is, as we have said, a proof of supernatural, if not absolutely divine, power.
3. No other miracle narrative offers so many signs of authenticity, both in the vividness with which it is told and in the clearly unintentional coincidences it presents. It is hardly possible to imagine four independent writers—even if two of them drew from a common source—reproducing a mere legend in this way.
4. The strength of this evidence becomes clear when we combine the facts from the four records as we proceed.
5. The miracle was important, as we see from John 6, because of its doctrinal symbolism. It became the text for the dialogue at Capernaum in which (not to anticipate the notes on the fourth Gospel) communion with the life of Christ was symbolized by the figure of eating the flesh of Him who is the true Bread from heaven.

His disciples came to him — In John’s narrative, Philip and Andrew are prominent as speakers, and our Lord puts the question to the former, “Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” As Philip and Andrew both belonged to one of the Bethsaidas, their local knowledge made the question natural.

It was apparently after this private conversation that the main body of the disciples came to their Master, urging Him to dismiss the multitude so they could buy food in the nearest villages. They were met by what must have seemed to them the marvelous calmness of the answer: “They need not depart; give ye them to eat.”

When Philip’s rough estimate was passed on to the others, they replied that it would take two hundred pennyworth of bread to feed such a large number (Mark 6:37; John 6:7). (The Roman penny, as a coin, was worth 7½d. in the author's currency, but its value is better measured as the average day’s wage for a soldier or laborer, according to Matthew 20:2).

Then Jesus asks them, “How many loaves have ye?” and Andrew, as the spokesman for the others, replies that they have found a boy with five loaves (which John notes were barley loaves, the food of the poor) and two fish (John 6:8).