Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 14:19

"And he commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass; and he took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples to the multitudes." — Matthew 14:19 (ASV)

He commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass — This, too, was done with a calm and orderly precision. They were to sit down in companies of fifty or a hundred each, and thus the number of those who were fed became a matter of easy calculation. St. Mark, with a vivid picturesqueness, describes them as presenting the appearance of so many beds of flowers in a well-ordered garden. The bright colors of Eastern dress probably made the resemblance more striking than it would be with a similar multitude so arranged among us.

Looking up to heaven, he blessed, and broke — The act was natural and simple enough, the “saying grace” (St. John uses the word, “giving thanks”) of the head of a Jewish household as he gathered his family around him. The formulas in such cases were commonly short and simple, like our own, for example, “May God, the ever-blessed One, bless what He has given us.” Looking, however, to the teaching which followed the miracle, as in John 6, and to our Lord’s subsequent use at the Last Supper of the same words and acts, with others which gave them a new and higher meaning, we can hardly be wrong in thinking that as He now distributed the earthly bread to the hungry crowd, through the agency of His apostles, there was present to His mind the thought that in the future He would, through the same instrumentality, impart to souls that hunger for righteousness the gift of communion with Himself, so that they might feed on the true Bread that comes down from heaven.

As a miracle of the highest order, the process of multiplication is naturally inconceivable in its details. Did each loaf, in succession, supply a thousand with food and then come to an end, its place taken by another? Was the structure of the fish—bone, skin, and head—reproduced in each portion that was given to the guests at that great feast? We do not know, and the Evangelists did not care to ask or to record. It was enough for them that the multitude did all eat, and were filled.