“And he spake to his disciples, that a small ship should wait on him because of the multitude, lest they should throng him.”
Because of the crowd he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him, to keep the people from crowding him — the practical detail of the boat kept ready for Jesus communicates the press of the crowd — large enough that Jesus needs a rescue route from the surge. The detail is also characteristic Markan specificity: not a teaching about crowd management but an actual arrangement made in a particular situation. The boat will reappear throughout Mark as Jesus' transportation across the lake and occasional floating pulpit (as in the parables discourse of chapter 4). The boat ready is the disciples' first practical service — before they understand the mission, they manage the logistics.
Church Fathers on Mark 3:9
The Pharisees, thinking it a crime that at the word of the Lord the hand which was diseased was restored to a sound state, agreed to make a pretext of the words spoken by our Saviour.
But the soldiers of Herod the king are called Herodians, because a certain new heresy had sprung up, which asserted that Herod was the Christ. For the prophecy of Jacob intimated that when the princes of Judah failed then Christ should come; because therefore in the time of Herod none of the Jewish princes remained, and he, an alien, was the sole ruler, some thought that he was the Christ, and set on foot this heresy. These, therefore, were with the Pharisees trying to kill…
Read all 8 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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