Mark 6:35-44 — A Table in the Wilderness

FRANK EDWARDS: "He makes me lie down in green pastures." Sheep lie down for two reasons: they have eaten, and they feel safe. A flock lying in green grass is a flock that is full and has nothing to fear. Today, in a wilderness with no food anywhere, five thousand men lie down on green grass because a Shepherd tells them to, before there is a single loaf to see. And the disciples bring along a budget that says it cannot be done. LINDA BROWN: Welcome to Dig Deeper. I'm Linda Brown, here with Frank Edwards, and this is step five of our sixteen steps through Psalm 23. On step three Jesus stepped out of a boat, saw a crowd like sheep without a shepherd, and began to teach them many things. Today, the same crowd, the same remote place, later that same day. Mark chapter six, verses thirty-five to forty-four. By now the hour was already late. So the disciples came to Jesus and said, "This is a desolate place, and the hour is already late. Dismiss the crowd so they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat." But Jesus told them, "You give them something to eat." They asked Him, "Should we go out and spend two hundred denarii to give all of them bread to eat?" "Go and see how many loaves you have," He told them. And after checking, they said, "Five—and two fish." Then Jesus directed them to have the people sit in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, Jesus spoke a blessing and broke the loaves. Then He gave them to His disciples to set before the people. And He divided the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. And there were five thousand men who had eaten the loaves. FRANK EDWARDS: On step four we took this line apart. "Green" is deshe, the fresh new grass after rain. "Pastures" comes from a word for a settled place to stay. And "He makes me lie down" is one word, yarbitseni. Today Mark puts the line into a scene. And it starts with a problem. It is late, they are in what Mark calls a desolate place, the same word, eremos, that we met on step three, and thousands of people have nothing to eat. LINDA BROWN: The disciples' suggestion is sensible, even kind. Send them now, while there is time to reach the villages and buy food. Then Jesus says, "You give them something to eat." FRANK EDWARDS: Greek verbs already include their subject, so a speaker adds the pronoun only when he wants it heard. Jesus adds it: hymeis, you. You give them something to eat. They answer with the budget. Two hundred denarii. Matthew 20 tells of workers paid "a denarius for the day," so that is roughly two hundred days' wages, more than half a year's pay. And several of these men had left their boats to follow a traveling teacher. LINDA BROWN: Then he sends them to count what they have. Five loaves and two fish. Do we know anything about the food? FRANK EDWARDS: John 6 says, "Here is a boy with five barley loaves and two small fish." Barley bread was the cheap, everyday bread of ordinary people. Revelation 6 pictures hard times as "three quarts of barley for a denarius" against one quart of wheat. The fish were most likely small and salted or dried, food that kept on the road. It is the plainest meal in Galilee, and it is nowhere near enough. LINDA BROWN: Then, before anything is broken, he has everyone sit down "on the green grass." Last time you said Mark is the only Gospel writer who gives the grass a color. FRANK EDWARDS: Matthew says grass, John says plenty of grass, and only Mark says green. The word is chloros, fresh green, the root of our word chlorophyll. And here is something worth hearing. The Greek translation of Psalm 23 that many of Mark's readers knew says the Shepherd settles me "in a place of green grass," and its word for that green grass comes from the same family as Mark's chloros. Mark never quotes the psalm. But a reader who knew it in Greek could hardly miss the color. LINDA BROWN: And the posture. Mark's verb means to recline, the way guests lie back at a meal. FRANK EDWARDS: That is the psalm's verb in action. Not sit and wait, but lie down as guests, before there is any dinner to see. And then "He makes me lie down." The verb is causative: the shepherd brings the sheep to rest; they do not get there on their own. The disciples' plan was to send everyone off to fend for themselves. Jesus has them lie down, and everything after that is his doing. LINDA BROWN: You said on step three that Ezekiel 34 promised God himself would come and shepherd his flock. Does that chapter say anything about lying down? FRANK EDWARDS: It says it in the psalm's own words. Ezekiel 34:15: "I will tend My flock and make them lie down, declares the Lord GOD." "Tend" is the shepherd verb of Psalm 23:1, and "make them lie down" is the same form as "He makes me lie down." The LORD promised to do it himself. And a verse earlier, "I will feed them in good pasture... There they will lie down in a good grazing land." On the grass beside the lake, Jesus does word for word what God said he would do in person. LINDA BROWN: These people lie down before there is any food. That seems like trust. FRANK EDWARDS: It is. Sheep do not lie down when they are anxious. The prophets use this verb for the safety God gives. Isaiah 14: "the needy will lie down in safety." Zephaniah 3: "they will feed and lie down, with no one to make them tremble." Lying down is what a flock does when it has been fed and there is nothing left to fear. Here the crowd lies down on the Shepherd's word, and the feeding comes after. LINDA BROWN: David says something close to that in Psalm 4. "I will lie down and sleep in peace, for You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety." FRANK EDWARDS: Rest that comes from someone else's care. That is the line we opened with, and it is what this crowd was given on the grass. Isaiah 11 takes the same verb as far as it can go: "the leopard will lie down with the goat." Safety so complete that the hunter and the hunted rest side by side. LINDA BROWN: Mark describes the groups very precisely. "Groups of hundreds and fifties." Why bother with that? FRANK EDWARDS: Mark uses two vivid words, and English flattens both into "groups." The first is symposia, parties eating together, doubled, group by group. The second, in verse forty, is prasiai, garden plots, also doubled, bed by bed. From a little way off, the seated crowd would have looked like planted beds spread across the green. Some readers think of Moses organizing Israel in the wilderness under leaders "of hundreds, of fifties," in Exodus 18. Mark does not draw that line, so we hold it loosely. What he makes clear is that this is an ordered meal with a host, laid out across a green pasture. LINDA BROWN: Then the host gives thanks. "Looking up to heaven, Jesus spoke a blessing," over five loaves everyone has just agreed are not enough. FRANK EDWARDS: A Jewish host would bless God before breaking bread, thanking him as the giver. And the four verbs that follow are worth hearing one at a time. He took the loaves, he spoke a blessing, he broke them, and he gave them. Mark uses that same sequence at another meal later in the Gospel: "Jesus took bread, spoke a blessing and broke it, and gave it to the disciples." That is Mark 14, the night before the cross, and we will reach it later in this series. The meal on the grass already has its shape. LINDA BROWN: The verb I keep coming back to is "gave them to His disciples to set before the people." The men who wanted the crowd sent away are the ones handing out the bread. FRANK EDWARDS: They are in the middle of the miracle. Jesus told them, "You give them something to eat," and in the end they do, but only from his hands. They could not produce the bread. They could deliver it. Mark does not say at what point the loaves multiplied. He tells us the result. LINDA BROWN: "They all ate and were satisfied." All of them. FRANK EDWARDS: And satisfied has a link to the grass that English hides. The verb is chortazo, to feed until full, and it is built on chortos, the word for grass in verse thirty-nine. It was first a word for fattening animals on pasture. So the flock that lay down on the grass was filled, in Mark's Greek, with a word made from grass. That is "He makes me lie down in green pastures" in a single verb. Psalm 145 says it of God: "You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing." Beside the lake, that open hand was breaking bread. LINDA BROWN: Then twelve baskets of leftovers. Jesus does not let the disciples forget them. In Mark 8 he asks, "When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of broken pieces did you collect?" "Twelve," they answered. FRANK EDWARDS: The word is kophinos, a sturdy basket of the kind people took on a journey. Twelve come back full, as many as there were apostles, the men who said it could not be done. Then he asks, "Do you still not understand?" The baskets were evidence that this Shepherd's flock does not lie down hungry. LINDA BROWN: The number is bigger than it sounds, too. Mark says five thousand men, and Matthew adds "besides women and children." FRANK EDWARDS: So the budget was more hopeless than it looked. And underneath it is an old question. In Psalm 78, Israel in the desert asked, "Can God really prepare a table in the wilderness?" He had already answered with manna: "Behold, I will rain down bread from heaven for you." Moses explained the point in Deuteronomy 8, "that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD." Here, in an eremos, the question comes back, and the answer is standing on the grass giving thanks. LINDA BROWN: Word and bread, and in that order. He taught them first, on step three, and then fed them. John 6 records what some of the crowd made of it: "Truly this is the Prophet who is to come into the world." FRANK EDWARDS: The next day, in John 6, Jesus says what the bread was pointing to: "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger." The Shepherd who makes his flock lie down in green pastures feeds them, in the end, with himself. And what was asked of the disciples is still the pattern: see honestly what you have, bring it to him, and hand out what he gives back. He does the rest, and his flock lies down full. Hear the verses again, and then the psalm line. Then Jesus directed them to have the people sit in groups on the green grass. They all ate and were satisfied. He makes me lie down in green pastures. [long pause] LINDA BROWN: For a way to take this into an ordinary week, the Apply This Today section in the app picks it up. Next time we go back to the psalm, to verse four, the valley of the shadow of death, and the line at the very center of the psalm: "You are with me." FRANK EDWARDS: Dig Deeper is a free app, and you can find it at dig deeper dot A I. LINDA BROWN: Thanks for listening, and for spending today with five loaves and the green grass.