This story seems out of character:
1. Jesus took the man aside.
2. He seemed to adopt a magician's role.
both in his words and his actions.
3. People started telling everyone
in disobedience to what they were told.

It sounds like a change of policy.
They have returned from foreign parts
and adopted a new, more aggressive, attitude.

Jesus may be commanding silence
but his followers want to get on with it.
' Was a stammerer now able to speak clearly?
Was a deaf man now able to hear what others said?
This is told as proof of the credentials of Jesus.
Here we have the inheritance of Moses,
the new leader, Messiah, of Israel.'

More practically:
The messenger who greeted Jesus,on his return from Tyre and Sidon,
would speak to no one but Jesus himself; seemed to ignore what others said to him.
Jesus took him aside to hear his message; spoke to him privately, in secret,
exchanging the secret password: "Ephphathal";
gesturing the need for ongoing discretion.

The follow up seems to have been that great assembly
known to us as the feeding of the four thousand,
which follows directly in the Gospel' story..
Perhaps the messenger brought news of the arrangements,
after all 4,000 people don't assemble of their own accord.

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