Matthew 15:38
A total of four thousand men were fed, in addition to women and children.
BSB
ASV
And they that did eat were four thousand men, besides women and children.
KJV
And they that did eat were four thousand men, beside women and children.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
As that first multitude which He fed answers to the people among the Jews that believed; so this is compared to the people of the Gentiles, the number of four thousand denoting an innumerable number of people out of the four quarters of the earth.
And they that did eat, were four thousand men,.... This number of men, as well as of the baskets of fragments, clearly shows this to be a distinct miracle from the former of this kind, recorded in Mat 14:
Four thousand - Let the poor learn from these miracles to trust in God for support. Whatever his ordinary providence denies, his miraculous power will supply.
The beginning of this passage contains three points which deserve our special attention. For the present let us dwell exclusively on them. In the first place, let us remark how much more pains people take about the relief of their bodily diseases than about their souls. We read that “ great multitudes came to Jesus having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed and many others.” Many of them, no doubt, had journeyed many miles, andgone through great fatigues. Nothing is so difficult and troublesome as to move sick people.
