I’ve had more than one person ask me about the lyrics to my song Water into Wine. The confusion is around the difference in the lyrics when I’m singing about Jesus feeding the multitudes. Early in the song the lyrics are:
“He fed five thousand people
With five small loaves of bread
Two fish was all the meat they had
But everyone was fed”
Later in the song, I sing the following:
“He fed four thousand people
With seven loaves of bread
A few small fish was all the meat they had
But everyone was fed”
Why the difference in the number of people? Is it 4 or 5 loaves? Why 2 fish in one case and a few small fish in the other? The answer is simple: these are two separate stories about Jesus feeding multitudes. It isn’t even a difference accounts from different books of the Bible. Both stories can be found in the book of Matthew. In Matthew 14:13-21, we get the story of Jesus feeding 5,000 people. This story talks about 5 loaves of bread and two fish. In a similar story in Matthew 15:29-39, Jesus feeds only 4,000 people but has seven loaves of bread. We don’t get a specific number of fish in this account, only that they were small fish.
One of the reasons we know that these are two separate stories is in Matthew 16 when he tells the disciples to guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees. In verse 9 he refers to the first story while in verse 10 he references the second. When I wrote Water into Wine, I wanted the narrator of the song to be a witness to both miracles. He has either seen or heard about these and other miracles of Jesus. Because he talks about Jesus turning water into wine, he knows about the earliest days of Jesus’ ministry. He is also the rich young man from the story in Matthew 19:16-26 and the main part of the song focuses on that encounter with Jesus.