Feeding Miracles

Basic Info

These miracles occur in both the Old and New Testaments. Manna appears in the morning in the desert and quail in the evening while the People of Israel are wandering in the wilderness (Exodus 16:1–15). Moses strikes a rock and water flows (Exodus 17:1–7). Jesus feeds 5,000 people at one time (Matthew 14:13–21, Mark 6:30–44, Luke 9:10–17, John 6:1–14) and 4,000 people at another time (Matthew 15:32–39, Mark 8:1–10) with just a few loaves of bread and a few fishes.

The stories tend to be about faith and abundant new life in God. In the wilderness, the people are grumbling that life as slaves was better than life in the wilderness with God. The food sustains them until they can understand themselves not as slaves but as a people free to be in relationship with God. In the stories of Jesus’ feeding people, the people have come to be fed by the words Jesus is speaking and have not taken care over physical food. Their hunger for, and faith in, the Word of God is symbolically rewarded with food that sustains them physically as well.

What to Look For

• Indications of faith
• Indications of doubt
• The food
• Indications of abundance
• How life with God is depicted
• The role of Jesus’ disciples or the elders in Moses’ camp or similar figures

Questions to Focus a General Interpretation

Is the artwork more about spiritual or physical feeding?

Is the artwork’s focus more on the faith of those being fed, the power of God, or the satisfied feeling that comes from being fed by God?

Questions to Guide a Personal Interpretation

Does the artwork call to mind your physical or spiritual hungers? Does it satisfy those hungers?

Questions to Suggest a Historical Interpretation

What might have been going on during the artist’s place and time that might have swayed the emphasis toward either physical or spiritual feeding (e.g., famine)?