16:5-12 Christ speaks of spiritual things under a similitude, and the disciples misunderstand him of carnal things. He took it ill that they should think him as thoughtful about bread as they were; that they should be so little acquainted with his way of preaching. Then understood they what he meant. Christ teaches by the Spirit of wisdom in the heart, opening the understanding to the Spirit of revelation in the word.

Verse 7. - They reasoned among themselves. With a crass literalness, the apostles utterly misunderstood the drift of their Master's warning, and thought that he alluded to their forgetfulness in coming without bread. They were always slow to apprehend the metaphorical and spiritual signification of their Master's language. Thus at the synagogue in Capernaum they failed to grasp his meaning when he spoke of himself as the Bread of life (John 6.), and at Jacob's well they interpreted of material food his Divine words concerning the nourishment of the soul (John 4.). It is well remarked by Sadler (in loc.) that "it is no small proof of the good faith and consequent truth of the gospel, that the apostles should have recorded things so against themselves as this account. If they had written for any purpose except the simple exhibition of the truth, they could easily have suppressed facts such as this, so very discreditable to their spiritual, indeed to their mental, perception. But if we had lost accounts such as these, we should have lost the proof of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, miracle of its kind; for no miraculous change in the spirit of man which God has wrought can be accounted greater than this - that men who, before the resurrection and the Day of Pentecost, should have exhibited such utter want of the lowest spiritual discernment, should, after the descent of the Spirit, have written such searching spiritual documents as the catholic Epistles of Peter and John." In the present case some commentators take it that the apostles fancied Christ was warning them against procuring any leavened bread from Pharisees and Sadducees, whom Jesus so sternly denounced; but it is more probable that their anxiety arose simply from the want of provisions, not from the consideration that they were debarred from obtaining them at the hands of certain parties. These doubts they seem to have whispered one to another.

Either what should be the meaning of this caution of Christ's, and upon what account he should say this to them; or they were anxiously concerned what they should do for provision:

saying, because we have taken no bread; for the phrase, "it is", is a supplement, and is not in the original text, which confines the sense to the first way of interpretation; the words may be read without it, and confirms the other sense, and which receives strength from what follows.

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