Daily Bible Reading 31st July 2026 // Luke 9:10-17
10 On their return the apostles told him all that they had done. And he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida. 11 When the crowds learned it, they followed him, and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who needed healing. 12 Now the day began to wear away, and the twelve came and said to him, “Send the crowd away to go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and get provisions, for we are here in a desolate place.” 13 But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.” They said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.” 14 For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, “Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15 And they did so, and made them all sit down. 16 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing over them. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. 17 And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.
The account of the feeding of the five thousand stands in marked contrast to the reference in the previous verses to King Herod's unbelief, as if to underline that such unbelief (leading to his rejection) takes place in the context and in the face of the grace of God that is able to meet all and every need. It is the only miracle recorded by all four gospel writers, and this must be a measure of the importance it had in the mind of the early Church (cf Mark 6:34; Matthew 14:13-21; John 6:1ff). There are different ways of studying the miracle. One is to take it quite simply, and in and by itself, as a miracle of Christ's power. This yields its own important lessons. But the more one studies it in its context and in its associations and in the significant pointers that some words and phrases give to interpretation, the more one sees that there is more to this story than at first meets the eye, and more to it than a simple story of miracle working. What we mean is this: in Mark's account (6:39) there is a graphic detail that commentators are quick to seize upon - green grass is mentioned, and it is observed that this would make the time of the miracle that of the Passover season (later, the grass would be withered by the hot sun). This is confirmed explicitly in John 6:4. This is a highly symbolic fact. For the Old Testament Passover itself was a shadow of things to come and illustrates Christ's death on the Cross. Christ is the Passover Lamb, as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 5:7, and it is by His death that He becomes the bread of life to men. It was the eating of the Passover Lamb that symbolised the setting free of the children of Israel from the bondage of Egypt; and it is the partaking of the flesh and blood of the Son of God that sets men free from the dark bondage of sin and brings them into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Jesus was therefore saying something in this symbolic miracle.