Mark 2.23-28,
Matthew 12.1-8,
Luke 6.1-5.
As I said in
Just like it came up
Mark 2.23-24 KWL 23 Jesus himself happens to travel through the fields on sabbath.- His students begin plucking the grain along the road.
24 Pharisees tell Jesus, “Look,- why are they doing what one shouldn’t on sabbath?”
Matthew 12.1-2 KWL 1 At that time, Jesus goes through the fields on sabbath.- His students are hungry,
- and begin to pluck the grain and eat.
2 Seeing this, Pharisees tell Jesus, “Look,- your students are doing what one shouldn’t do on sabbath.”
Luke 6.1-2 KWL 1 Jesus himself happens to go through the fields on sabbath.- His students are plucking and eating,
- rubbing the grain in their hands.
2 Some of the Pharisees say,- “Why are they doing what one shouldn’t on sabbath?”
Mark doesn’t mention they were eating the grain, so this sounds more like petty vandalism—as kids will do. But no, it wasn’t that; the other gospels point out they ate it. And no, that’s not theft. The Law stated people were permitted to do so.
Leviticus 19.9-10 NET 9 “ ‘When you gather in the harvest of your land, you must not completely harvest the corner of your field, and you must not gather up the gleanings of your harvest.10 You must not pick your vineyard bare, and you must not gather up the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You must leave them for the poor and the resident foreigner. I am the LORD your God.”
God capped certain commands with “I’m the L
This is part of God’s welfare plan for the poor: When they’re hungry, let them eat from the edges of your fields, or pick up whatever you left behind after harvest, and God would bless you and make up for it. The people were kinda on the honor system: They could glean what they needed… so long that they don’t grab a sickle and reap a swath of it.
Regardless of feeding the poor: It was sabbath, and you might recall Pharisees had a whole list of stuff you mustn’t do on sabbath. In the Mishnah’s list of 39 forms of prohibited work, number 3 would be reaping, and number 5 would be threshing. That whole “rubbing it their hands” bit Luke mentioned—shucking the chaff from the seeds—counts as threshing. And if you really wanna get anal about it, by selecting which heads of grain to pluck, the students were sorting—which’d be number 7.
Three different kinds of work, and work is banned on sabbath. It’s in the Ten Commandments, remember?
So why didn’t the Pharisees just grab the students and haul ’em before the town council? Because though teenagers were legal adults, they were still under the tutelage of their rabbi, who was supposed to teach ’em better. Bringing it to Jesus was the proper procedure for Pharisees: “Hey, your kids are breaking sabbath. Deal with it.” And if he didn’t deal with it, he actually had to answer for them.
Pharisee logic.
Jesus’s response doesn’t necessarily make sense to westerners. We assume he’s correct because he’s Jesus—of course he’s correct!—but we can’t necessarily tell you why he’s correct, ’cause what we call “logic” comes from Aristotle. But Pharisee rabbis had come up with logic on their own, and their rules are a little different.
First, Jesus’s response.
Mark 2.25-26 KWL 25 Jesus tells them, “You never read what David did?- When he was in need and hungry—
- he and those with him—
26 how he went to God’s house,- under Evyathar the head priest,
- and ate the bread of God’s presence,
- which shouldn’t be eaten except by priests,
- and also gave it to those with him?”
Matthew 12.3-4 KWL 3 Jesus tells them, “You’ve not read what David did?- When he was hungry—
- and those with him—
4 how he went to God’s house- and ate the bread of God’s presence,
- which isn’t meant to be eaten,
- nor by those with him, except by priests alone?
- and also gave it to those with him?”
Luke 6.3-4 KWL 3 In reply Jesus tells them, “You didn’t read this?—- what David did when he was hungry—
- he and those who were with him—
4 how he went to God’s house,- took and ate the bread of God’s presence,
- and gave it to those with him?
- It shouldn’t be eaten except by priests alone.”
The passage Jesus referenced is this one.
1 Samuel 21.1-6 KWL 1 David went to Ahimelech the priest in Nob. Ahimelech was shaking with fear when he met David, and said to him, “Why are you by yourself with no one accompanying you?”2 David replied to Ahimelech the priest, “The king instructed me to do something, but he said to me, ‘Don’t let anyone know the reason I am sending you or the instructions I have given you.’ I have told my soldiers to wait at a certain place.3 Now what do you have at your disposal? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever can be found.”4 The priest replied to David, “I don’t have any ordinary bread at my disposal. Only holy bread is available, and then only if your soldiers have abstained from relations with women.”5 David said to the priest, “Certainly women have been kept away from us, just as on previous occasions when I have set out. The soldiers’ equipment is holy, even on an ordinary journey. How much more so will they be holy today, along with their equipment!”6 So the priest gave him holy bread, for there was no bread there other than the Bread of the Presence. It had been removed from before the LORD in order to replace it with hot bread on the day it had been taken away.
Note verse 6. Now, guess which day the holy bread was scheduled to be taken away from the L
See, this holy bread, which we often call showbread (
In fact there was no sin. The Law prescribes no penalty for a non-priest eating the showbread. The only thing Jesus said—and correctly so—is it was appropriate for only priests to eat it. No one else was expected to. Being week-old matzoh, few else would want to.
Jesus quoted this passage because he was making a qal ve-khomér, “light versus heavy” comparison. Works like so.
- We’re trying to prove P is true.
- Q is a well-known story, similar to P, widely accepted as true.
- Q is more extreme. More significant. “Heavy.” P is comparatively “light.”
- If Q is true, P must be true.
So if David went to “God’s house”—at the time, the tabernacle—and the head priest gave him ritual showbread, which only priests were meant to eat,
Whereas eating a little grain on sabbath: That’s the light story. If it’s okay for David to eat showbread, it should be okay for Jesus’s kids to pluck a little grain on sabbath.
This isn’t the only time Jesus used the qal ve-khomér argument. He does it in
Matthew 7.11 NET - “If you then, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
And we can detect it other places in his teachings. And in the apostles’. And no, it’s not the only qal ve-khomér argument Jesus uses in this story. In Matthew’s version of the story, Jesus throws in an extra argument:
Matthew 12.5-7 KWL 5 “Or don’t you read in the Law that on sabbath,- the priests in temple violate sabbath—
- and aren’t to blame?
6 I tell you this is greater than temple.7 If you know what this means—- ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’
Ho 6.6 - —you won’t pass judgment on those who aren’t to blame.”
There’s no one verse which states priests violate sabbath. But there are various commands about temple worship on sabbath, like burning two offerings,
I should point out though: Western logic calls the qal ve-khomér argument an a fortiori argument, and often considers it a logical fallacy. Because it can be easily abused. Sometimes it’s valid: “If earning $10 an hour is good, $15 an hour is better.” But sometimes it’s dangerously false: “If two pills dull the pain, 20 pills oughta kill it.” No, 20 pills oughta kill you. How reasonable the argument is, always depends on how reasonable the arguer is.
We don’t know whether Pharisees thought Jesus gave a reasonable explanation. We just know the authors of the gospels sure thought so, ’cause they included it. And didn’t follow up the story.
I will point out plenty of Christians sure think it’s a reasonable explanation—because they falsely believe Jesus did away with the Law, and that’s why he could break sabbath commands willy-nilly. His students too. After all, David broke ’em, right? If David broke the Law, and the priests broke the Law by giving him the showbread, and Jesus endorsed all this Law-breaking behavior, anybody can break the Law! No more Law! Anarchy! ANARCHY!
But no, Jesus upholds sabbath. Which I’ll get to. First I gotta deal with
What Jesus got wrong.
Are the inerrantists gone? Goody. So you might’ve noticed Jesus said the David story happened “under Evyathár the head priest.”
If you read the rest of 1 Samuel, you’ll also notice David didn’t actually have any servants waiting for him. Nor was he actually sent on a mission from King Saul. The entire story was made up. He was fleeing Saul, who wanted him dead,
Only Mark brought up Evyathár. Matthew and Luke made sure to edit that mistake out. But they totally missed “he and those with him,” so in three gospels Jesus incorrectly stated David wasn’t alone, contrary to
Now, since these factual errors don’t at all change the point Jesus was making, we can easily and safely ignore them. They’re not relevant.
The only reason you wouldn’t ignore them, and would in fact insist we can’t ignore them, is if you believe in biblical inerrancy. If you insist the bible has no errors whatsoever—worse, if you claim if the bible did have any errors, it means we can no longer trust it anymore—well, now what do you do? Because here’s some errors! You’re kinda boned, aren’t you?
But in the interest of fairness, here’s how inerrantists try to explain away these errors.
THEY WEREN’T IN THE ORIGINALS! Most inerrantists won’t claim our current bibles have no errors… because obviously they do. I just showed you one, and there are others. What they instead claim is the original manuscripts of the bible had no errors. Over time, thanks to overzealous or lazy copyists, errors crept in.
So the original of Mark didn’t have these errors in it. But years later, some Christian copied it wrong—or remembered it differently, thought Mark got it wrong, and “fixed” it. And that’s the version of Mark we now have.
If this story is true, the copyist tweaked Mark quite soon after it was written—’cause Matthew and Luke, who took their story from Mark, got it wrong too. Or the same erring copyist “fixed” all three of these gospels.
THERE’S A SECRET BOOK OUT THERE. Mark literally wrote epí Aviathár arhieréos, “under head priest Evyathár.” The Greek preposition epí means a lot of different things, depending on the noun-case and context. It could mean “upon,” “in,” “by,” “on,” “towards”—or “in the time of,” which is how people usually translate this instance of epí.
But certain Christians speculate Jesus was referring to a book of Evyathár. Not the time-period, not the man himself, but a book which contains this story. Including the factual inaccuracy that David had companions when he got the showbread.
No, we know of no such book. Neither do these inerrantists.
IT REFERS TO EVYATHÁR’S DAYS, NOT HIS REIGN. In his
Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason Archer doesn’t deal with David’s made-up companions. But as for why Jesus mixed up his head priests, Archer claims he didn’t really. When Jesus said “Under Evyathár the head priest,” he didn’t mean during Evyathár’s time in office, which would’ve started upon the death of his father Ahimelech. Jesus instead meant during Evyathár’s lifetime.Archer compared it to saying, “When young King David was a shepherd boy…” even though the boy shepherd David certainly wasn’t king yet, and wouldn’t be till age 30—when he was no longer young David either.
Thing is, when the ancients referred to a time period, they usually tried to nail it down by referring to the reigns of people in power. You know, like Luke does.
Lk 1.5, 2.1-2, 3.1-2 You might refer to Evyathár’s day if Evyathár himself is in the story, but he’s not. Ahimelech, who was the reigning head priest, is. So this explanation is a big stretch. But hey, if it settles ya.JESUS WAS MISINFORMED. In the
Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Walter W. Wessel points out there are three Old Testament verses which refer to the head priest not as Evyathár ben (“son of”) Ahimelech, but as Ahimelech ben Evyathár.2Sa 8.17, 1Ch 18.16, 24.6 Yep, more errors—this time in the Old Testament. (Which they’ll explain away by going back to the old “but they weren’t in the originals!” line.)So, figured M.R. Mulholland in the first edition of
Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, it’s entirely possible the mixup extended to Jesus’s day, with some rabbis believing the proper names of the head priests were flipped. Evyathár gave the showbread to David, and Ahimelech succeeded him, and served as one of David’s head priests thereafter. Dictionary 1I bring up the first edition of the Dictionary of Jesus ’cause
the second edition simply deleted the entire “Abiathar” article. I won’t speculate why.
Well, this is an academic exercise that’s already gone on too long. Like I already said, these are minor errors which have nothing to do with Jesus’s main point. We can ignore them. So, let’s.
The purpose of Sabbath.
Now to Jesus’s conclusion.
Mark 2.27-28 KWL 27 Jesus tells them, “Sabbath is created for people.- Not people for sabbath.
28 Thus the master, the Son of Man,- is over sabbath.”
Matthew 12.8 KWL - “For the Son of Man is master of sabbath.”
Luke 6.5 KWL - Jesus tells them, “The Son of Man is master of sabbath.”
You’ll notice Matthew and Luke bounce straight to the fact the Son of Man (
But only Mark tells us why this is: Sabbath was created for us. Not the other way round. The L
The priests broke sabbath to perform sabbath ritual offerings. Worship is work. But some commands take precedent over others, and (to use my own qal ve-khomér comparison here), humans take precedent over sabbath. It was created for us. It was created to give us a day off. Not stress us out with the work of trying to figure out what we can and can’t do on sabbath. Or whether to bust others for doing what we wouldn’t.
Since sabbath is made for us, we’re free to observe it, not by the rabbis’ interpretation of what constitutes work, but by our own consciences. If it’s not really work, it’s not sin. Plucking a few heads of grain—how’s that constitute work, much less sin? Now, if you’re attempting some ridiculous, transparent argument in order to squeeze out an extra work day, you’re not fooling anyone, including yourself. But the nitpicking sort of details we read in the Mishnah: Come on. Parsing them is harder work than plucking grain.
Basically, if you gotta suffer for sabbath’s sake, you’re hardly resting. You’re doing it wrong.
And since we take precedence over sabbath, and the Son of Man is our master, it’s basic logic: The Son of Man is also sabbath’s master. If he deems it work, or not, there ya go. If he declares good deeds don’t count on sabbath,
