John 6:4-10

6:4 (Now the Jewish feast of the Passover ¹  was near.) ²  6:5 Then Jesus, when he looked up ³  and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, said to Philip, “Where can we buy bread so that these people may eat?” 6:6 (Now Jesus ⁴  said this to test him, for he knew what he was going to do.) ⁵  6:7 Philip replied, ⁶  “Two hundred silver coins worth ⁷  of bread would not be enough for them, for each one to get a little.” 6:8 One of Jesus’ disciples, ⁸  Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 6:9 “Here is a boy who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what good ⁹  are these for so many people?”

6:10 Jesus said, “Have ¹⁰  the people sit down.” (Now there was a lot of grass in that place.) ¹¹  So the men ¹²  sat down, about five thousand in number.

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¹ sn Passover. According to John’s sequence of material, considerable time has elapsed since the feast of 5:1. If the feast in 5:1 was Pentecost of a.d. 31, then this feast would be the Passover of a.d. 32, just one year before Jesus’ crucifixion.

² sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.

³ tn Grk “when he lifted up his eyes” (an idiom).

⁴ tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁵ sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.

⁶ tn Grk “Philip answered him.”

⁷ tn Grk “two hundred denarii.” The denarius was a silver coin worth about a day’s wage for a laborer; this would be an amount worth about eight months’ pay.

⁸ tn Grk “one of his disciples.”

⁹ tn Grk “but what are these”; the word “good” is not in the Greek text, but is implied.

¹⁰ tn Grk “Make.”

¹¹ sn This is a parenthetical note by the author (suggesting an eyewitness recollection).

¹² tn Here “men” has been used in the translation because the following number, 5,000, probably included only adult males (see the parallel in Matt 14:21).