A Hundred Fed

Twenty little loaves of barley bread. A hundred hungry men. Do the maths, and it does not work. And yet a prophet says: hand them out.

We are in the northern kingdom of Israel, about eight hundred and fifty years before Jesus. There is a famine in the land. The rains have failed, the fields are poor, and food is scarce. The prophet Elisha, who took up the work of the great prophet Elijah, is staying at Gilgal with a company of prophets, a group of men who are learning from him and serving God together. There are about a hundred of them. And they are hungry. Earlier that same day, a pot of stew had been ruined by poisonous wild gourds, until Elisha threw in some flour and made it safe to eat. Food is on everybody's mind.

Then a man arrives from a place called Baal-shalishah. He is carrying a gift for Elisha, the man of God. In his sack are twenty loaves of barley bread made from the first grain of the harvest, and some fresh ears of grain. These are not big loaves like ours. They are small, flat, round breads, the kind one person might eat at a meal. Barley was the grain of ordinary and poor people, the first crop to ripen in spring. And this is his firstfruits, the very first of his harvest. In a famine, that is a costly gift.

Elisha looks at the bread, and then at the hundred men around him. And he says to his servant, “Give it to the people, that they may eat.” The servant cannot believe his ears. “What, should I set this before a hundred men?” Twenty little loaves for a hundred grown men. Everyone would get a crumb and go away hungry. But Elisha says it again. “Give it to the people, that they may eat. For thus says the Lord: they will eat, and will leave some of it.” It is not Elisha's own idea. It is a word from God. Not just enough. Some left over.

So the servant does it. He sets the bread in front of the men. They eat. And they keep eating. And when they have finished, there is bread left over, exactly as the Lord said. The Bible tells the whole miracle in just three verses, quietly, without fuss. A generous man gave the first of what he had. A prophet trusted God's word. And God made a small gift feed a crowd, with some to spare.

The man brought his firstfruits to Elisha, and that was unusual. The law of Moses said the first of the harvest should go to the priests at God's sanctuary. But in Elisha's time the northern kingdom worshipped at shrines set up by its kings, with golden calves at Bethel and Dan. Many faithful people in the north seem to have brought their gifts to God's prophets instead.

A hundred fed. You can read it in Second Kings chapter four, verses forty-two to forty-four. Hundreds of years later, Jesus took five barley loaves from a boy on a hillside by the Sea of Galilee, and fed five thousand people, with baskets left over. The God who fed the prophets fed the crowds, and Christians at Christmas remember that the child born in Bethlehem, whose name means house of bread, called himself the bread of life. So here is a question to carry with you. A man brought a small gift, and God made it more than enough. What small thing could you give this Christmas, trusting God to use it?