Mark 6:43

And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

6:30-44 Let not ministers do any thing or teach any thing, but what they are willing should be told to their Lord. Christ notices the frights of some, and the toils of others of his disciples, and provides rest for those that are tired, and refuge for those that are terrified. The people sought the spiritual food of Christ's word, and then he took care that they should not want bodily food. If Christ and his disciples put up with mean things, surely we may. And this miracle shows that Christ came into the world, not only to restore, but to preserve and nourish spiritual life; in him there is enough for all that come. None are sent empty away from Christ but those who come to him full of themselves. Though Christ had bread enough at command, he teaches us not to waste any of God's bounties, remembering how many are in want. We may, some time, need the fragments that we now throw away.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

twelve baskets - Baskets belonging to the disciples, in which they carried their provisions, or, perhaps, belonging to some of the multitude.

Fragments - Broken pieces of the bread that remained.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

43. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes—"Therefore (says Joh 6:13), they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten." The article here rendered "baskets" in all the four narratives was part of the luggage taken by Jews on a journey—to carry, it is said, both their provisions and hay to sleep on, that they might not have to depend on Gentiles, and so run the risk of ceremonial pollution. In this we have a striking corroboration of the truth of the four narratives. Internal evidence renders it clear, we think, that the first three Evangelists wrote independently of each other, though the fourth must have seen all the others. But here, each of the first three Evangelists uses the same word to express the apparently insignificant circumstance that the baskets employed to gather up the fragments were of the kind which even the Roman satirist, Juvenal, knew by the name of cophinus, while in both the narratives of the feeding of the Four Thousand the baskets used are expressly said to have been of the kind called spuris. (See Mr 8:19, 20.)

Matthew Poole's Commentary

See Poole on "Mark 6:34"

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments,.... Of the broken pieces of bread, after all had eaten, and were satisfied:

and of the fishes; what remained of them:, for though there was but one loaf for a thousand persons and more, and two small fishes to be divided among five thousand and more: yet, through the wonderful power of Christ increasing both, as they were distributing and eating, there was enough of both for them all, and such a quantity of each left as filled twelve baskets.

Geneva Study Bible

And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

Mark 6:43. καὶ ἦραν, etc., and they tool up, as fragments (κλάσματα, [57] [58]), the fillings (πληρώματα) of twelve baskets.—καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἰχθύων, and of the fishes, either over and above what was in the twelve baskets (Fritzsche), or some fragments of the fishes included in them (Meyer).

[57] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

[58] Codex Regius--eighth century, represents an ancient text, and is often in agreement with א and B.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

43. they took up] in obedience to our Lord’s command (John 6:12), Who would teach them that wastefulness even of miraculous power was wholly alien to the Divine economy.

baskets] “tuelue coffyns full,” Wyclif. All the Evangelists alike here use cophinoi for the small common wicker-baskets, in which these fragments were collected, at the feeding of the Five Thousand, and the word spurides, or large rope-baskets, when they describe the feeding of the Four Thousand. These wicker baskets were the common possession of the Jews, in which to carry their food in order to avoid pollution with heathens; “Judaeis, quorum cophinus foenumque supellex,” Juv. Sat. III. 14. The same distinction is made by our Lord when He alludes to both miracles (Mark 8:19-20; Matthew 16:9-10).

Mark 6:43

Vincent's Word Studies

Baskets full (κοφίνων πληρώματα)

Lit., fillings of baskets. See on Matthew 14:20. Mark alone adds, and of the fishes.