Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”
In the past there has been a tendency to spiritualize the bread and fish so that the two fish are made to represent the two sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper and teh 5 loaves the other five sacraments of the Roman Catholic church, but this is puerile. We are just supposed to see the futility of feeding so many with so little. Again Liberals have suggested that everybody had their packed lunches and the young man volunteering his shamed them into producing theirs. That's just a device to avoid the miraculous.
There is an obscure story in 2 Kings 4:42 about Elisha feeding a hundred men with just 20 loaves (barley loaves as here) and there was food left over. Perhaps that story is hinted at here, but one greater than Elisha is here!
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