Matthew 15:29-39

Matthew 15:29-31 Crowds come to be healed

Although some Bibles have a footnote on this passage suggesting that these crowds may be Jews, there is overwhelming evidence that in this scene and the next, where Jesus feeds the 4,000, he is in Gentile territory:

• Jesus and the disciples were in Gentile territory in the previous passage.

• To get to this location, Jesus walks by the Sea of Galilee and continues on.  Mark 7:31 tells us that he went by the Sea of Galilee to the Decapolis, which was Gentile territory southeast of the Sea of Galilee.

• In the next passage – the feeding of the 4,000 (Matt. 15:32-39) – Matthew uses language that clearly signals that they are in Gentile territory.

• In the next chapter, he will be in the Gentile region of Caesarea Philippi (Matt. 16:13), north of the Sea of Galilee.

• Matthew doesn’t tell us Jesus is back in Jewish territory again until Matthew 17:22-24.  So it is pure supposition to put Jesus back in Jewish territory for this incident.

• Furthermore, this period of ministry in Gentile territory is central to the entire arc of the narrative of Matthew’s Gospel (see the study Matt. 1:1-17).  Matthew foreshadows in the early chapters that Jesus is for all people, Jewish and the Gentile, and then shows Jesus teaching and working miracles first in Jewish territory and then in Gentile territory before he goes to Jerusalem, dies, rises back to life, and tells the disciples to take the gospel to all nations.

In Matthew 5:1, Jesus went up on a mountain to teach the Jewish crowds in the “Sermon on the Mount” at the beginning of his ministry (Luke placed Jesus on a plain for this sermon).  Here, Matthew tells us that Jesus went up on another mountain, this time in  Gentile territory.  What do you think Matthew is signaling to us by placing Jesus on mountains in these passages?

What kinds of people come to Jesus on the mountain?

Why do you think they are coming to him and bringing sick people to him?

What does Jesus do?

Considering Jewish attitudes toward non-Jews (Gentiles) at the time of Jesus, how significant is it that Jesus is healing all the Gentiles who come to him?

Why were the crowds amazed, and how did they react?

Notice in verse 31 that the people “glorified the God of Israel.”  This is the only time Matthew uses the phrase “the God of Israel,” and Mark and John never use it at all (Luke uses it only once).  It would be rather redundant to say that Jewish people “glorified the God of Israel” – you would just say they glorified God.  But this is exactly what Gentiles would say.  Since the God of the Jews was not their God and they did not believe in the God of Israel, if they now wanted to acknowledge that God they would call him “the God of Israel.”

Why is it significant that these Gentiles are praising the God of Israel?

Jesus has made a significant breakthrough: crowds of Gentiles are honoring the God of the Jews, the one true God.

How do you think Jesus felt when he saw Gentiles, who did not believe in the one true God the Jews believed in, now glorifying the God of Israel because of his healings?

If scholars are right that one of the reasons Jesus “withdrew” from Jewish territory was to get away from the Jewish crowds and prepare his disciples for what was to come,  what lessons do you think his disciples were learning, or were supposed to be learning, from watching what he is doing?

Are there times when we need to re-learn that the mercy of God is for everyone?

How can we be as willing to minister to foreigners as Jesus was?

How might we bring this example of caring for the foreigner into our society and help our society be more caring about foreigners?

Matthew 15:32-39 The feeding of the 4,000

Jesus has been healing people, and probably teaching them too (that’s what he did when he sat down on a mountain for the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:1).  How do you think Jesus feels about this crowd who has bene with him for 3 days?

What does Jesus do?

How are the details of this story different than the details of the feeding of the 5,000 (Matt. 14:13-21)?

Some scholars think the only differences between the feeding of the 5,000 and the feeding of the 4,000 are the numbers, so they suggest that these are two different tellings of the same story.  They have missed key information and jumped to a false conclusion.

William Barclay, who was an expert in the Greek language of the New Testament, found nuances that others missed.  In this passage, he finds clear evidence that the people fed here are living in a Gentile culture, and that therefore this is a different event than the feeding of the 5,000 in Jewish territory.  He writes:

“When Jesus fed the five thousand (Matt. 14:15-21; Mark 6:31-44), we read that they sat down on the green grass (Matt. 14:19; Mark 6:39).  It was therefore the spring time, for at no other time would the grass be green in that hot land.  On this occasion when the crowd are bidden to sit down, they sit on the ground (epi tēn gēn) , on the earth; it was by this time high summer and the grass was scorched leaving only the bare earth….  The people and the place are different. The feeding of the four thousand in this passage took place in Decapolis; Decapolis literally means ten cities, and the Decapolis was a loose federation of ten free Greek cities.  On this occasion there would be many Gentiles present, perhaps more Gentiles than Jews.  It is that fact that explains the curious phrase in Matthew 15:31, ‘They glorified the God of Israel.’  To the Gentile crowds this was a demonstration of the power of the God of Israel.  There is another curious little hint of difference.  In the feeding of the five thousand the baskets which were used to take up the fragments are called kophinoi; in the feeding of the four thousand they are called sphurides. The kophinos was a narrow-necked, flask-shaped basket which Jews often carried with them, for a Jew often carried his own food, lest he should be compelled to eat food which had been touched by Gentile hands and which was therefore unclean.  The sphuris was much more like a hamper; it could be big enough to carry a man, and it was a kind of basket that a Gentile would use.” (Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 2, pp. 138-139).

Matthew says they “ate and were satisfied” (Matt. 15:37, NABRE) (or “filled,” NRSV).  What does that phrase say to you: they ate and were satisfied?

Jesus called himself the Bread of Life (John 6:35), and at the Supper he broke bread, gave it to his disciples, and said, “This is my body.”  Given the overtones of Eucharist or Holy Communion when Jesus feeds the people with bread, what are the spiritual implications of this story?  Going beyond the event itself, what deeper spiritual message does it offer you?

This story has a spiritual dimension, but it also has a practical, physical dimension.  God does not want anyone to go hungry.  God explicitly calls us to feed the hungry (Matt. 25:35; Is. 58:7; Prov. 22:9).  What does the fact that in Jesus’s ministry all the people “ate and were filled” say to us about our responsibility for the hungry?

Despite Jesus’s teaching and example, millions of people regularly go hungry in our nation and hundreds of millions of people go hungry around the world.  As Christians and followers of Jesus, what should we do about it?

Jesus had compassion for the crowd of Jews in Matthew 14:14, and he has compassion for this crowd of Gentiles (Matt. 15:32).  He cares for everyone.  How are we called to have God’s compassion for whoever is in need, regardless of whether they are part of “our” people?

What can we do to extend God’s compassion to others?  How can we find tangible ways to show care for people who are not of our own race, nationality, ethnic group, class, religion, or church?

How might this set of passages about Jesus’s ministry to the Gentiles (15:21-39) be seen as a follow-on to the previous passage (15:10-20) about what is and is not unclean?  And what does it say to us?

Jesus showed that the Gentiles are not unclean.  No one is unclean.  No one is excluded from the being fed by the Lord.  God is accessible to all and has compassion for everyone.

How might this insight be applied to marginalized groups in our society today?

What can you do to be like Jesus here?

Take a step back and consider this:

The feeding of the 5,000 comes near the end of Jesus’s public ministry to the Jews in chapters 5-14.  The feeding of the 4,000 comes near the end of this period of time when Jesus has been ministering to the Gentiles.  The Last Supper comes at the end of Jesus’s ministry in Jerusalem before his crucifixion and resurrection. 

How central to our faith is the image of being fed by the Lord? Why?

How central to your faith is the idea of feeding at the table of the Lord?  Why?