Matthew 14:16

‘But Jesus said to them, “They have no need to go away. You give them to eat.”

Then Jesus quietly turned to the disciples and said, ‘There is no need for them to go away. You give them to eat.' (The ‘you' is emphatic). It is difficult to avoid the impression that Jesus has 2 Kings 4:42 in mind, where Elisha says to his followers, ‘Give to the people that they may eat', at a time when there was patently too little food for everyone. There it was followed by the insufficient becoming sufficient and to spare. Was Jesus then testing out His disciples to see what they would do, and how they would respond, as He will shortly test out Peter (Matthew 14:29)? After all they had claimed that they had ‘understood' about the coming of the Kingly Rule of Heaven (Matthew 13:51). Did they have sufficient understanding for this moment? There may have been a slight hope at the back of His mind that it would be so, but the more probable significance in what He is doing is that He wants His disciples to recognise that in following Him and being His Apostles they must take responsibility for believers, not leave them to themselves.

(In LXX Elisha says, ‘dote tow laow' - ‘give to the people'. Here Jesus says ‘dote autois' - ‘give to them'. LXX then uses esthio while Jesus uses phagein, but it should be noted that LXX then has phagomai in verse 43 where ‘the Lord' says they shall eat. Matthew's source may well have been distinguishing Jesus from Elisha by deliberately using the verb ‘the Lord' used).