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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Matthew 14:20 - 14:20
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Were filled (echortasthēsan). Effective aorist passive indicative of chortazō. See note on Mat 5:6. From the substantive chortos grass. Cattle were filled with grass and people usually with other food. They all were satisfied.
Broken pieces (tōn klasmatōn). Not the scraps upon the ground, but the pieces broken by Jesus and still in the “twelve baskets” (dōdeka kophinous) and not eaten. Each of the twelve had a basketful left over (to perisseuon). One hopes that the boy (Joh 6:9) who had the five loaves and two fishes to start with got one of the basketsful, if not all of them. Each of the Gospels uses the same word here for baskets (kophinos), a wicker-basket, called “coffins” by Wycliff. Juvenal (Sat. iii. 14) says that the grove of Numa near the Capenian gate of Rome was “let out to Jews whose furniture is a basket (cophinus) and some hay” (for a bed). In the feeding of the Four Thousand (Matthew and Mark) the word sphuris is used which was a sort of hamper or large provisions basket.