Mark 2:27

This scene is one of five conflicts between Jesus and the religious leaders that Mark sets side by side, four in Mark 2 and the last in Mark 3:1–6. Before it, Jesus has forgiven and healed a paralysed man (Mark 2:1–12), called Levi the tax collector (Mark 2:13–17) and answered a question about fasting (Mark 2:18–22). Each time his authority is questioned, and each time he answers. The next story, the healing of the man with the withered hand, also happens on a Sabbath, so the whole run of Mark 2:1–3:6 closes with the Sabbath at the centre of the dispute, and the opposition it stirs up leads on toward the cross.

“It came to pass” translates gínomai, a verb meaning to become or come about, used here simply to open a new scene. Jesus and his disciples are walking through cultivated fields, most likely on a path that ran through them. In the KJV “corn” is the old English word for grain of any kind, here wheat or barley, the staple crops of Israel. The “ears of corn” are the heads of grain, stáchys, and to pluck is tíllō, to pull off by hand. It is a small and simple act. The disciples pick heads as they walk, likely rubbing them between their hands to free the kernels from the chaff, the quick meal of hungry travellers.

The law of Moses allowed exactly this. A man passing through his neighbour’s standing grain could pluck the ears with his hand and eat (Deuteronomy 23:25). The question was the day. The Sabbath, sábbaton, a word that comes from the Hebrew for rest, is the seventh day, which God set apart in the fourth commandment as a day of rest from labour and a holy day (Exodus 20:8–11). Over the centuries the teachers of Israel, and the Pharisees most of all, built a large body of rules around it, meant as a fence around the law so that no one would break the commandment by accident. These traditions, later written down in the Mishnah, listed thirty-nine kinds of forbidden work, among them reaping, threshing and winnowing. By that reckoning plucking the grain was reaping, and rubbing it in the hands was threshing and winnowing.

The Pharisees, Pharisaîos, were a Jewish party known for keeping the law of Moses strictly and for their detailed oral traditions about it. The name comes from a Hebrew root meaning “to separate”. They saw themselves as guardians of the law, and they speak to Jesus because they hold him responsible for what his disciples are doing.

“Behold” is íde, an interjection, “see! lo!”, that calls for attention and gives weight to what follows. What follows is a charge: “why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?” The words for “not lawful” are ou éxesti, the plain word for “not” joined to the verb for what is permitted. The question asks for no information. It accuses the disciples, and through them their teacher, and it was meant to put Jesus on the spot.

Their verdict rested on their own reading of the law, since the written law allowed the plucking itself. It was the day that made them object. God gave the Sabbath as a holy rest in memory of his creation and of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt (Exodus 20:8–11, Deuteronomy 5:12–15). The Pharisees’ rules were meant to protect that holiness, but in practice they loaded the day with prohibitions that hid its first purpose of rest, refreshment and mercy. Jesus met the same objection whenever he did good on the Sabbath, as in Luke 13:10–17, where he heals on the Sabbath and is challenged for it.

Jesus answers from Scripture: “Have ye never read what David did...?” The verb anaginṓskō means to read, and it comes from “to know again”, said of written letters. The force lies in the question. These men knew the Scriptures well and had read this story many times, and Jesus asks them whether they have taken in what it shows.

He chooses David, Dabíd, the king Israel honoured above all others, “a man after mine own heart” in God’s own words (Acts 13:22). In Hebrew his name carries the sense “loving”. The Pharisees could hardly condemn David, and if they accepted what he did, they would have to think again about the disciples.

The story is told in 1 Samuel 21:1–6. David was fleeing from King Saul, and he and his men were hungry. Jesus says that he “had need, and was an hungred”. The verb peináō means to be hungry, with a real and pressing hunger, and it can describe famine. Jesus also names “they that were with him”, so David’s companions stand where the disciples stand.

David “went into the house of God”, and the verb eisérchomai is the ordinary word for going in or entering. In David’s day the house of God was the tabernacle, here at Nob. There he did eat, phágō, the plain verb “to eat”, the shewbread. In Hebrew this is lechem panim, “bread of the presence”: twelve loaves set out before the LORD each week in the holy place, a sign of God’s constant provision for the twelve tribes of Israel. The law gave the bread to Aaron and his sons, to be eaten by them in a holy place (Leviticus 24:5–9). That is why Jesus adds “which is not lawful to eat but for the priests”. The words “but for” are ei mḗ, “if not” or “except”, which marks the one exception the law made, and David stood outside it. He “gave also to them which were with him”, so the holy bread fed a hungry company.

Jesus freely grants that David acted outside the letter of the law, and the priests who guarded the bread did not condemn him. The lesson is that God’s law is given for the good of the people who live under it. When a man and his companions were hungry, keeping them alive came first, and mercy outweighed the ceremony. God says it through the prophet: “For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6). In Matthew’s account of this same day Jesus quotes the verse, “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice” (Matthew 12:7), a word he had already given the Pharisees (Matthew 9:13).

The argument also runs from the lesser to the greater. Plucking a few heads of grain was a small thing beside eating the holy bread. If David, acting out of need, could do that blamelessly, how much more may the Son of man allow his hungry disciples to eat. Matthew records Jesus saying it outright: “in this place is one greater than the temple” (Matthew 12:6). Matthew tells the whole scene in Matthew 12:1–8, and Luke in Luke 6:1–5.

Then Jesus gives the principle behind the whole dispute: “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.” God made the Sabbath at the beginning, when he rested on the seventh day and blessed it (Genesis 2:2–3). He gave it to Israel in the fourth commandment and made it a sign between himself and his people (Exodus 31:13–17).

“Was made” is gínomai, the verb behind “it came to pass” in verse 23, meaning to come into being. The purpose lies in the little word “for”, diá, which with this construction means “for the sake of”. The Sabbath came into being for man’s sake. The word for man is ánthrōpos, the general word for a human being, so Jesus speaks of the day as God’s gift to humanity, with its rest meant for people everywhere.

So the order is God’s own. The day serves people, and people receive it as a gift. Rest from work, refreshment of body and spirit, worship, and remembering what God has done are the things it was given to bring. When the disciples were hungry, their need mattered to the God who gave the day, and a rule that turned his gift into a burden had lost sight of the Giver. Every command of God is given in the same spirit, as a path to life and blessing.

“Therefore”, hṓste, draws the conclusion. Since the Sabbath was made for man, the Son of man is Lord of it. “Man” in both verses is the same word, ánthrōpos, and the step from one to the other carries the claim. The day God made for humanity belongs to the one who stands at the head of humanity with authority from God.

“The Son of man”, huiós (son) with ánthrōpos, is the title Jesus uses for himself most often in the Gospels. It speaks of his true humanity, and it also points to the figure in Daniel’s vision who comes with the clouds of heaven and receives dominion, glory and an everlasting kingdom (Daniel 7:13–14). The title joins the man walking through the grain fields with the King who will judge and reign.

“Lord” is kýrios, master, one supreme in authority, the word that so often stands for the God of Israel himself. To be Lord of the Sabbath is to own it, with the right to say what it is for and how it is kept. The teachers of the law could only interpret the Sabbath, and Jesus claims to stand over it as its master. Because the Sabbath was God’s own institution, the claim places Jesus where God stands. The word “also” adds the Sabbath to the authority he has already shown in this chapter, where he forgave sins, and his lordship reaches to all things. Matthew and Luke both close the scene with this saying (Matthew 12:8, Luke 6:5).

This is why the saying stirred such anger. To the Pharisees the Sabbath was God’s direct command, defined by centuries of tradition, and Jesus claimed the right to say what it meant. In the next scene he asks them whether it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath days (Mark 3:4), and when he has healed the man, they go out and plot against him (Mark 3:6).

The Sabbath was a shadow of the rest God intends for his people, and the Lord of the Sabbath is the one who gives that rest. “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9–10), and whoever enters it ceases from his own works. Jesus himself calls, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28–30). Through his death and resurrection he gives rest from the striving of works and the burden of sin, and he sets his people free from the yoke of bondage (Galatians 5:1). “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

The bread in David’s story points to him as well. David fed his hungry men with holy bread, and Jesus is the bread of God that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world (John 6:33). “I am the bread of life,” he says (John 6:35).

So this short scene in a grain field shows us who God is. He notices when his people are hungry. He gave the Sabbath as a kindness, and every command he gives is for our good. And the one who has authority over his holy day is Jesus, who uses that authority to feed, to defend and to give rest. The rest he offers is his own, and it is given to all who come to him.