Feeding 5,000

Jesus Feeds a Great Crowd

1 After this, Jesus went across Lake Galilee (or, Lake Tiberias, as it is also called). 2 A large crowd followed him, because they had seen his miracles of healing those who were ill. 3 Jesus went up a hill and sat down with his disciples. 4 The time for the Passover Festival was near. 5 Jesus looked round and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, so he asked Philip, “Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?” 6 (He said this to test Philip; actually he already knew what he would do.) 7 Philip answered, “For everyone to have even a little, it would take more than 200 silver coins to buy enough bread.” 8 Another of his disciples, Andrew, who was Simon Peter’s brother, said, 9 “There is a boy here who has five loaves of barley bread and two fish. But they will certainly not be enough for all these people.” 

10 “Make the people sit down,” Jesus told them. (There was a lot of grass there.) So all the people sat down; there were about 5,000 men. 11 Jesus took the bread, gave thanks to God, and distributed it to the people who were sitting there. He did the same with the fish, and they all had as much as they wanted. 12 When they were all full, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces left over; let us not waste any.” 13 So they gathered them all up and filled twelve baskets with the pieces left over from the five barley loaves which the people had eaten. 

14 Seeing this miracle that Jesus had performed, the people there said, “Surely this is the Prophet who was to come into the world!” 15 Jesus knew that they were about to come and seize him in order to make him king by force; so he went off again to the hills by himself.