Citations: Matthew 15:32-39 || Mark 8:1-9, the second multiplication-of-loaves miracle, distinct from the [Feeding of the Five Thousand].
Narrative
A great crowd has been with Jesus three days in a remote place and has nothing left to eat. Jesus says, "I have compassion on the multitude… if I send them away fasting to their home, they will faint on the way." The disciples ask, "From where could one satisfy these people with bread here in a deserted place?"
He asks how many loaves they have: "Seven, and a few small fish." He directs the crowd to sit on the ground, gives thanks, breaks the loaves and fish, and gives them to the disciples to distribute. All eat and are filled. They take up seven baskets of broken pieces that are left over. Those who ate were about four thousand men, besides women and children (Matthew 15:38). Then he sends them away and crosses by boat to the region of Magdala/Dalmanutha.
The "two feedings" question
Because this so resembles the Feeding of the Five Thousand, some critical scholars treat the two as doublets, two tellings of a single tradition. The gospels themselves, however, present them as two distinct events, and Jesus later refers to both, carefully distinguishing their numbers and even the two different basket-words: "When I broke the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?" … "When the seven loaves fed the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?" (the two basket-words are kophinous and spyridōn) (Mark 8:19-20). This synthesis follows the texts and treats them as two events, while recording that the doublet view exists.
The two narratives also differ in detail: five loaves vs. seven; 5,000 vs. 4,000; twelve small wicker baskets (kophinos) vs. seven large hampers (spyris, the kind that could hold a man, cf. Acts 9:25); a Jewish lakeside setting vs. (by location) the largely Gentile Decapolis.
Theological framing
Gentile-inclusion reading, the four thousand are fed in or near the Decapolis, Gentile territory, just after Jesus heals the Syro-Phoenician woman's daughter and a Decapolis deaf-mute (Mark 7:24-37). Many read the seven loaves and seven baskets symbolically (seven = completeness; some link the seven to the seventy nations or the seven Hellenist deacons of Acts 6), the second feeding extending the bread of the Kingdom to the nations, as the first did to Israel (twelve baskets ≈ twelve tribes).
Compassion motif, as with the five thousand, the miracle springs from Jesus' compassion for a hungry, faint crowd.
Eucharistic echo, the now-familiar fourfold action, took, gave thanks, broke and gave, anticipates the Last Supper and is read eucharistically across traditions.
The disciples' slowness, that the Twelve ask "From where could one satisfy these people with bread" so soon after the five thousand becomes, in Mark, a foil for Jesus' rebuke, "Do you not yet understand?" (Mark 8:17-21), a lesson about spiritual perception, not merely logistics.