Trevor Laurence
In Mark 6, Jesus and his apostles come through water to a “desolate place” (ἔρημος; vv. 32, 35) where a great crowd has gathered ahead of them. As evening descends and the need for a meal becomes apparent, Jesus miraculously multiplies five loaves and two fish and has his disciples distribute it to the people—arranged in groups by hundreds and by fifties (v. 40)—so that a multitude with five thousand men eats to satisfaction (v. 42).
The contours of the story are familiar. Moses brought a multitude through water to a wilderness (ἔρημος; LXX Exod 16:1). As the pangs of hunger turned to grumbling, the Lord miraculously rained bread from heaven such that the people gathered as much as they could eat (Exod 16:18). In the wilderness, Moses too divided the multitude into groups—of thousands and hundreds and fifties and tens—and appointed trustworthy men to care for the people under his authority (Exod 18:21–26). Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand is the exodus action of a man who is leading the Israel gathered around him on a new exodus.
Additional details in Mark’s account fill out this picture. Aware of his impending death, Moses asked the Lord to appoint a successor to lead Israel so that the people might not be “as sheep that have no shepherd” (Num 27:17). Joshua (Gk. Ἰησοῦς), possessed of the Spirit, would in turn continue the work begun in the Exodus, leading the people into the land where they would be planted in the presence of the Lord. When Jesus (Gk. Ἰησοῦς) pities the crowd “because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34) and provides for their needs in the pattern of Moses, he emerges as Moses’ true successor, another Joshua who will lead his followers back into the land, restoring Israel as the temple-kingdom of the Lord.
Elisha, a Joshua figure who took up the mantle of the Mosaic Elijah, entered the land on a prophetic conquest of cleansing (2 Kgs 2).1 Surrounded by a faithful remnant of Israel, Elisha miraculously supplied them with food:
A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. And Elisha said, “Give to the men, that they may eat.” But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred men?” So he repeated, “Give them to the men, that they may eat, for thus says the LORD, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’” So he set it before them. And they ate and had some left, according to the word of the LORD. (2 Kgs 4:42–44)
Jesus recapitulates and amplifies Elisha’s provision of bread because Jesus—successor of the Moses- and Elijah-esque John the Baptist—is a more-than-Elisha who creates a new Israel around himself and engages in a ministry of cleansing conquest, toppling the wicked and idolatrous leaders of Israel and driving out the powers that oppress God’s people.
Jesus’ recognition that the Israelites who have flocked to him are “like sheep without a shepherd” also connects his actions to the promises of Ezekiel 34. Through the mouth of the prophet, the word of the Lord condemns Israel’s shepherds for feeding themselves instead of feeding the sheep and, in a metaphor for exile, declares that the sheep of Israel “were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts” (Ezek 34:5). The shepherds who are effectively no shepherds will be held to account by God (v. 10), and Yahweh “will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (v. 23). By feeding the shepherdless sheep of Israel, Jesus does the work of the coming Davidic king, the Messiah under whose rule Israel will finally flourish in blessing.
Yet, even as God promises in Ezekiel 34 to set up his Davidic shepherd, the Lord announces that he—God himself—will shepherd Israel where Israel’s former shepherds had failed:
“Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice.” (vv. 11–16)
Like Yahweh, Jesus sees that the people are like sheep without a shepherd. Like Yahweh, Jesus sits his flock down “on the green grass” (Mark 6:39). And like Yahweh, Jesus feeds the people who have suffered under self-serving, predatory shepherds. By enacting the promises of Ezekiel 34, Jesus unmistakably demonstrates his identity as the Lord of Israel—the presence of Yahweh among his people.2
But significantly, Ezekiel 34 does not merely depict God as the feeder of his sheep. He is more specifically the shepherd who “will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land” (v. 13), who restores Israel from her exile among the nations. Beyond demonstrating his identity as the Lord of Israel, Jesus’ miraculous feeding in the fashion of Ezekiel 34 declares that he is Yahweh come to bring Israel’s ongoing experience of exile to an end, releasing his people from every captive power and reestablishing them as the temple-kingdom who dwells in the holy presence of God.
Though it is easily neglected and frequently sentimentalized, Mark’s mention of Christ’s compassion toward the crowd contributes to his intertextual portrait of Jesus as the divine deliverer from exile, for compassion is throughout the Old Testament connected to Yahweh’s regathering of scattered Israel:
- “So it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind in all nations where the LORD your God has banished you, and you return to the LORD your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the LORD your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you.” (Deut 30:1–3)
- “For the LORD will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel, and will set them in their own land, and sojourners will join them and will attach themselves to the house of Jacob.” (Isa 14:1)
- “And after I have plucked them up, I will again have compassion on them, and I will bring them again each to his heritage and each to his land.” (Jer 12:15)
- “Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will now bring Jacob back from captivity and will have compassion on all the people of Israel, and I will be zealous for my holy name.” (Ezek 39:25)
Jesus’ compassion is the compassion of Yahweh toward an exiled people whom he is determined to restore to life in the presence of God.
The numerous allusive threads in Mark 6:30–44, though distinct and possible to trace individually, weave together into a remarkably coherent intertextual tapestry. Israel needs a Moses to lead them on a new exodus, a Joshua to guide them back into the land, an Elisha to perform a new conquest, and a David to reconstitute a fractured nation under his reign because—regardless of her geographic location—Israel is still scattered among the nations, exiled from the domain where God rules and resides in glory. But underneath it all, Israel needs nothing less than Yahweh himself to bring his sheep back into the place where he dwells—into the fullness of his temple-kingdom—where he will feed them, grant them rest, heal their wounds, and shepherd them in justice.
And that is precisely what Jesus has come to do.
Trevor Laurence is the Executive Director of the Cateclesia Institute
Image: Daniel Hallé, La Multiplication des Pains
- See esp. Peter J. Leithart, 1 & 2 Kings, BTCB (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006), 172.[↩]
- Cf. Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2016), 70.[↩]