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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Matthew 14:20 - 14:20
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Were filled (ἐχορτάσθησαν)
See on Mat 5:6.
Baskets (κοφίνους)
Wyc., coffins, a transcription of the Greek word. Juvenal, the Roman satirist, describes the grove of Numa, near the Capenian gate of Rome, as being “let out to the Jews, whose furniture is a basket (cophinus) and some hay” (for a bed), “Sat.” iii., 14. These were small hand-baskets, specially provided for the Jews to carry levitically clean food while travelling in Samaria or other heathen districts. The word for basket used in relating the feeding of the four thousand (Mat 15:37) is σπυρίς, a large provision-basket or hamper, of the kind used for letting Paul down over the wall at Damascus (Act 9:25). In Mat 16:9,Mat 16:10, Christ, in alluding to the two miracles, observes the distinctive term in each narrative; using κοφίνους in the case of the five thousand, and σπυρίδας in the other. Burgon (“Letters from Rome”) gives a drawing of a wicker basket used by the masons in the cathedral at Sorrento, and called cóffano. He adds, “Who can doubt that the basket of the gospel narrative was of the shape here represented, and that the denomination of this basket exclusively has lingered in a Greek colony, where the Jews (who once carried the cophinus as a personal equipment) formerly lived in great numbers?”