† 28. Plucking Grain on the Sabbath

General

In this episode, the Pharisees accuse the Lord of leading His disciples to break the Sabbath.

The response of the Lord is threefold:

He gives two examples in the Old Testament of those who were otherwise considered faithful seemingly breaking the Law:
- David eating the showbread when he was under duress, and
- the priests working on the Sabbath.
He claims that He Himself is greater even than what David and the priests were profaning—the temple.
He proclaims the Sabbath serves man, not the other way around.

The disciples are not in fact breaking the Law (Deuteronomy 23:25), but that's not the point of the examples He gives. Jesus is pointing out the Pharisees' hypocritical thinking: they want to prevent poor people from eating one day every week! This is clearly not the "rest" and "refreshment" God had in mind when He instituted the Sabbath.

Exodus 23:12
Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman, and the alien, may be refreshed.

There is a real danger of majoring in minors if we do not see and keep before us the entire context of Scripture. Perhaps we could see someone in ancient times having a question as to whether plucking grain by hand constitutes work. But the answer should be obvious: Does the Lord really demand poor people not eat on Saturdays?

Matthew 23:23–24
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!

Situational Ethics?

Some abuse the text to claim that Jesus employed situational ethics. They claim the example of David is meant to show sin is allowable under certain circumstances. Therefore, they reason, sin is never absolutely defined but must be determined by the situation at hand in every case. Their reasoning—and their claim that Jesus espoused it—are false.

Jesus says plainly His disciples are "guiltless" (Matthew 12:5), and the Law certainly agrees (Deuteronomy 23:25). The disciples are not sinning, and Jesus is not rationalizing their behavior.

Jesus is calling attention, rather, to the Old Testament foreshadowing Him. The king and the priests are types of the Christ, who Himself is King and Priest!

Hebrews 7:1
This Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God….
Hebrews 8:1–2
Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man.

Just as David suffered persecution from the one who ruled before him, so also Jesus is suffering at the hands of the rulers of Israel in the first century. Like King Saul, the Pharisees were an authority in Israel who turned from God, leading to their being deposed by Him. Like King David, Jesus is the Lord's chosen King, here to take His rightful place on the throne of spiritual Israel. And like King David, Jesus is present during the reign of the deposed rulers, who respond not by embracing Him but by persecuting Him. David and his men were in need at a time when they should have been supported and celebrated. Jesus and His disciples are also in need when they should have been supported and celebrated.

The priests of old had to work on the Sabbath, teaching and making offerings and feeding their own families without being penalized. So also Jesus is working in teaching and preaching and can meet His own needs and the needs of those with Him without penalty.

Matthew 12

1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.
2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.”
3 He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him:
4 how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?
5 Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?
6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.
7 And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.
8 For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

hungry

The word translated "hungry" (πεινάω) carries a meaning of being pained or in need. It was also used in Matthew 4:2, "after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry."

The disciples are not getting enough to eat, and they are walking through grain fields. These are signs of being in need, not financially supported. They are now laboring in preaching and teaching, having left their secular employment to follow Jesus. And there is considerable opposition to their message.

not lawful to do on the Sabbath

The Pharisees are incorrect. The Law permits the poor to pluck grain by hand from the fields, and it requires landowners to leave some grain for the poor to do so.

Deuteronomy 23:25
If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.

Leviticus 19:9–10
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God.
Leviticus 23:22
And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.

Now, the verse in Deuteronomy where plucking grain is addressed does come in the middle of a passage about observing the Sabbath. And perhaps wielding a sickle would constitute work (and therefore be disallowed on a Sabbath), but eating is not work.

what David did

When David began to flee from Saul, he asked the priest Ahimelech to give him and his servants some food for the hasty journey they were about to undertake.

1 Samuel 21:1
Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?”

What the priest did not know is that Saul had already determined to put David to death.

1 Samuel 20:30–31
Then Saul’s anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said to him, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness? For as long as the son of Jesse lives on the earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established. Therefore send and bring him to me, for he shall surely die.”

The priest should not have given David and his crew the showbread, but he invented a condition to allow it: if they have kept themselves from women.

1 Samuel 21:3–4
[David said,] “Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.”

David immediately fled to hide in a foreign land.

1 Samuel 21:10
And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath.

The Law is clear that eating the showbread is a sin if you aren't a priest (Leviticus 24:5–9); what is not clear is whether David knew this. He was told by the priest that he and his crew would be allowed to partake of the bread under a certain condition. It is the priest's job to know such things, and David—really, all Israel—would have relied on the priests to give the ruling of God on many occasions.

The tragic consequences of the priest's actions are captured in 1 Samuel 22:11–19. Ahimelech's genuine ignorance of the struggle unfolding between Saul and David did not save him and all the priests from a violent end.

the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath

The priests of old were indeed doing work, especially on the Sabbath. They were offering on behalf of the people, teaching in their synagogues, and providing the sacrificial food for their families as God directed.

1 Corinthians 9:13
Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings?

1 Corinthians 9:9
For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned?
1 Timothy 5:17–18
Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”

Even though the temple service was work, the priests and Levites engaged in it even on a Sabbath without blame. This was the arrangement of God in exchange for an inheritance.

Numbers 18:21–23
To the Levites I have given every tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service that they do, their service in the tent of meeting, so that the people of Israel do not come near the tent of meeting, lest they bear sin and die. But the Levites shall do the service of the tent of meeting, and they shall bear their iniquity. It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations, and among the people of Israel they shall have no inheritance.

something greater than the temple

In the Lord's examples, the temple seems almost subservient to the needs of the king and the priesthood who were carrying out the Lord's work. Israel's earthly kings and priests sometimes subjected the temple (and its rules) to themselves. But among them in the first century was the Son of God, something even greater than the temple!

I desire mercy, and not sacrifice

Jesus quotes from Hosea. The larger context shows the leaders in Israel were neither genuine nor consistent in their love for God. They substituted money and human intellect for the true Law of God. Jesus thus rebukes the Pharisees for their hypocritical claim to be zealous for the Law while taking a position that is diametrically opposed to it. Their teaching "condemns the guiltless" (v.7).

Hosea 6:4–7
What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes early away.
Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets;
I have slain them by the words of my mouth,
and my judgment goes forth as the light.
For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
But like Adam they transgressed the covenant;
there they dealt faithlessly with me.

Hosea 7:14
They do not cry to me from the heart,
but they wail upon their beds;
for grain and wine they gash themselves;
they rebel against me.

Hosea 8:4
They made kings, but not through me.
They set up princes, but I knew it not.
With their silver and gold they made idols
for their own destruction.
Hosea 8:11–13
Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning,
they have become to him altars for sinning.
Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands,
they would be regarded as a strange thing.
As for my sacrificial offerings,
they sacrifice meat and eat it,
but the LORD does not accept them….

For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath

This is said by way of explanation for the interpretation of Hosea. The meaning is made even clearer in Mark's reading, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

Mark 2

23 One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain.
24 And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”
25 And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him:
26 how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?”
27 And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
28 So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Here Jesus is describing the institution of the Sabbath in Exodus.

Exodus 23:12
Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman, and the alien, may be refreshed.

Mark's formulation brings great clarity to the saying captured in all three accounts, "The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath." The meaning is that God cares for humanity. This thought should control interpretations of the Sabbath.

Hebrews 4:9
So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God….

Luke 6

1 On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands.
2 But some of the Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?”
3 And Jesus answered them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him:
4 how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?”
5 And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

rubbing them in their hands

Luke captures exactly what the disciples were doing that garnered the ire of the Pharisees. It's clear that the Pharisees were watching closely to catch any perceived violations!

We noted earlier that Deuteronomy 23:25 forbids a sickle while allowing people to pluck heads of grain. The Pharisees are so focused in on the method the disciples are using to eat that they are overlooking the most serious problem: Jesus and His disciples should not be poor! And a major reason why they are is the Pharisees' stubborn rejection of His kingship.

§ 8. Jesus' Ministry in Galilee Continued