Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar and Nevim Arith Hayomim:
Mark 6:52: “For they considered not the miracle of the loaves for their heart was hardened.”
John 6:26: “Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.”
I find these two passages to be very curious, particularly when you examine them in the Aramaic.  Jesus spoke in the Northern Aramaic dialect but his words were later translated into Greek.   In Mark 6:52 the passage tells us that the disciples did not consider the miracle of the loaves.   From the time I first heard this story in Sunday School as a child, I wondered why the writer only said “loaves” and not “loaves and fishes.”  Maybe even back then I was finding my calling as a Bible student, but doesn’t that bother anyone else or raise some obvious questions in your mind as to what was really being taught here?  In the Aramaic the word “loaves” is “lechem” which is the word for “bread” in both Aramaic and Hebrew.  Bread had great spiritual implications and even as a little child in Sunday School I could not help but ponder the significance of the disciples not considering the miracle of the bread or their failure to see the spiritual implication of the miracle.
Then in another Sunday School class I heard the story of the people following Jesus in John 6.  In this story Jesus rebukes them saying that they only sought Him because he provided food for them and did not consider the miracles.   This had a profound effect on me because even as a little child I found myself praying: “Jesus, I am not going to be like these people, I will follow you because I love you and not because you feed me.”    Perhaps, this is why, fifty five years later I am still on a quest to search out the Word of God to understand God’s heart and not to discover how to perform miracles or get my prayers answered.  Maybe I am so single minded that all I see in Scripture is God’s love and his tender heart and not a Santa Claus making a list and checking it twice trying to find out who deserves a miracle or not.
But, once again I am digressing and need to get back to the topic. The first thing to consider in Mark 6:52 is the disciples did not “consider” the bread not “the miracle” of the bread.  The word miracle does not appear in this verse either in the Greek or Aramaic; it is only put into our English Bible as a commentary because the translator believed it was a reference to the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. In fact, if you look at this from an Aramaic and Semitic standpoint it was not the miracle that the disciples were not considering but the nature of Jesus’s teaching as the bread of life.  In John 6:25, we learn that the people did not consider the “miracle” but only the satisfying of their physical need.  The word “miracle” in this verse is a play on words in the Aramaic.  It is the word “ata” which is spelled “Aleph, Taw, Aleph” which literally means “God is the beginning and the end.”
If the writer meant the feeding of the 5,000 in Mark 6:52, he would have said the “loaves and the fishes.”   The disciples were gawking at the miracle that took place with the ceasing of the storm rather than considering that fact that Jesus walked through this storm to join them on the boat.  I mean why did He not just end the storm and then come out to them?  Rather He waited until he reached them in the boat to end the storm.  Here He was trying to teach them a spiritual lesson as the bread of life, the life giver no matter what the storms of life brings.  Instead they just focus on the special effects that Jesus used to bring His message of tender loving care. They did not “consider” the significance of their Savior as the bread.   The word in the Greek for “consider” is synekan which means to understand, perceive, put together.  That corresponds directly to the Aramaic word used here for “consider” which is “sabar” and means to put together, to consider, hope or make an association with.  It is also the word used for a positive imagination.
The disciples, as the people in John 6, were so focus on the event, the natural, physical benefit of the miracles that they did not even stop to imagine something even greater than calming a storm or feeding 5,000 people.   They did not stop to consider that God Himself came in a human form and stood right before them and even walked through a storm or have dinner with them just to be with them.
I remember in Bible College I had a roommate who was going to go home for a weekend to visit his fiancée.  This guy was so in love, it didn’t matter that there was a major blizzard, road closings, and warnings out not to drive.  He was going to make that 150 mile trek to be with his beloved.   He wanted to, no, he had to tell her in person that he loved her.   He didn’t tell me but I am sure when he appeared at her house she did not say: “Wow, you made it through this storm? Tell me what the roads were like, did you get stuck?  Did you stop at a rest area?  Were there any white outs? OOOH! What an adventure!”   No, I think when he walked through that door she only said the words that he traveled 150 miles in a storm to hear: “I love you.” Then they did something that they could not do by phone that only a 150 mile trip through a snow storm could allow – they just held each other.
I have walked out of many healing or prophetic meetings where I heard people say: “Why did that person get healed and not me?  Why did that person get a prophetic word and not me?”  Rather than to “sabar (consider, understand, imagine, make an association with)” the Bread of Life and say: “Prophetic word?  Healing? What prophetic word? What healing? All I remember is my sabar (my understanding, my positive imagination) of Jesus holding me and telling me He loved me.”
Oh, just a side note from my liberal friends.  Although the Bible clearly calls the feeding a miracle (Greek: Simeion – miraculous event, Aramaic: ata – miraculous event to show God is the beginning and the end of all things), the people most likely did not see anything miraculous because it was not unusual for holy men to feed large groups.  People always carried bread and some meat with them and in large group teaching sessions the holy man would take his lunch bag, open it and pass its entire contents out to the group.  The members of the group would then respond in like kind and you have a big session of every one sharing their lunch.  Not what happened here but some people, like today, would not know a miracle if it knocked them on the head and that they spend so much time trying to explain it away as a natural event,  that they miss the spiritual point entirely.

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