- 23 And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn. 24 And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful? 25 And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?
- 26 How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him? 27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: 28 Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.
- Compare: Matthew 12:1-8; Luke 6:1-5
Jesus: Lord of the Sabbath?
Among the ways Jesus challenged or defied religious tradition, his failure to observe the Sabbath in the manner expected seems to have been one of the most serious. Other incidents, like not fasting or eating with disreputable people, raised some eyebrows but didn’t necessarily amount to a sin. Keeping the Sabbath holy was, however, commanded by God — and if Jesus failed to that, then his claims about himself and his mission could be questioned.
What does Jesus do to arouse the ire of religious leaders? Nothing, personally — he isn’t depicted as having done anything himself here, but his disciples are “working” on the Sabbath by plucking ears of corn (presumably to eat because they were hungry). It couldn’t have really been corn because that is a New World crop, unknown in Europe or Asia at this time. A better translation is “ears of grain.”
These don’t appear to be their grain fields and hence their grain, so it’s curious that the Pharisees don’t complain about what seems to be theft. Some scholars have argued that the disciples were eating that which had already fallen at the side of a road, as if that made it acceptable; but this isn’t supported by the text.
In fact, what are the Pharisees doing there to begin with? Do they just wander through random fields on the sabbath? Of course not — but Jesus’ opponents, whether scribes or Pharisees or someone else, always manage to appear at just the point Mark needs them to. This should be a signal to readers of the literary, rather than historical, nature of the text.
Jesus is targeted by the Pharisees because, if the disciples were his followers, then it could be presumed that their activities met with his approval. Jesus defends the actions of his disciples by arguing that when a person is hungry, it should be acceptable for them to take whatever action is reasonably necessary in order to stop being hungry. He bases this on an incident involving David when he took bread that was supposed to be restricted to priests, yet Jesus gets the details of the story wrong.
First, David was alone at the time of this incident and therefore could not have given bread to anyone who was “with him.” Moreover, the priest from whom David received the bread is named in 1 Samuel 21 as Abimelech, not Abiathar. Abiathar is Abimelech’s son and successor, but is not mentioned until 1 Samuel 22. Why would Jesus make such errors — unless the words are actually those of Mark, who often makes mistakes about what the scriptures say?
Whatever the accuracy of Jesus’ (or Mark’s) memory, the fact remains that even David’s actions receive no justification — it is simply assumed that unless otherwise noted in the scriptures, David’s actions were honorable. The only justification may be that human needs are placed above religious laws — so, when a person needs to eat, that is more important than any laws prohibiting certain actions on the sabbath.
Thus the Pharisees are presented with a difficult choice: allow Jesus to be exonerated by the parallel actions of David, or undermine their own traditions of accepting the actions of David as just and good. Because we don’t hear any more of this and charges about this are not brought up later, we could assume that the Pharisees go with exonerating Jesus, although that surely annoyed them to no end.
Jesus’ statement that the “Son of man” is lord of the sabbath is interesting because he does not base this on the idea that God is lord of the sabbath — something we should expect if “Son of man” is a title with divine connotations. Instead, Jesus bases this on the fact that the sabbath was made for the sake of men and, presumably, that men are more important than the sabbath. This suggests that the title “Son of man” has purely mundane and human connotations.
