He was going on the Sabbath day through the grain fields, and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of grain.
Parallel Translations
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He was going on the Sabbath day through the grain fields, and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of grain.
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And it chaunsed that he wet thorow the corne feldes on the Saboth daye: and his disciples as they went on their waye beganne to plucke the eares of corne.
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And it came to passe as hee went through the corne on the Sabbath day, that his disciples, as they went on their way, began to plucke the eares of corne.
Cross-references (3)
Passages linked to Mark 2:23 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Deuteronomy 23:24-25 When you come into your neighbor’s vineyard, then you may eat your fill of grapes at your own pleasure; but you shall not put any in your container. When you come into your neighbor’s standing grain, then you may pluck the ears with your hand; but you shall not use a sickle on your neighbor’s standing grain.
- Matthew 12:1-8 At that time, Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the grain fields. His disciples were hungry and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But the Pharisees, when they saw it, said to him, “Behold, your disciples do what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” But he said to them, “Haven’t you read what David did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him; how he entered into God’s house, and ate the show bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law, that on the Sabbath day, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are guiltless? But I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you wouldn’t have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
- Luke 6:1-5 Now on the second Sabbath after the first, he was going through the grain fields. His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said to them, “Why do you do that which is not lawful to do on the Sabbath day?” Jesus, answering them, said, “Haven’t you read what David did when he was hungry, he, and those who were with him; how he entered into God’s house, and took and ate the show bread, and gave also to those who were with him, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests alone?” He said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Word for word, on the Sabbaths, that is, on…
Word for word, on the Sabbaths, that is, on the holy days.
Secondarily, for that they make no difference between the laws which God made concerning the same things, and laws that are made of things which are utterly unlawful.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 23 And it came to pass, that he went…
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.
Ver. 23. {See Trapp on "Mat 12:1"}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain We had also this history in Mat 12:1-8, in…
We had also this history in Mat 12:1-8, in our notes upon which we considered all those passages relating to it which this evangelist hath, for the explication of which I refer my reader thither. See Poole on "Mat 12:1", and following verses to Mat 12:8. It refers to a story, 1Sa 21:1, where Ahimelech is said to have been the high priest. Abiathar was his son, as appeareth by 1Sa 22:20, who escaped the slaughter of his father’s family upon the information of Doeg the Edomite, and followed David. It was in the latter end of the priesthood of Ahimelech, and probably Abiathar assisted his father in the execution of the office, and so suddenly succeeded, that Mark calls it the time of his priesthood. Besides that those words, επι ’Aβιαθαρ, do not necessarily signify in the days of Abiathar, as we translate it, no more than επι μετοιχεσιας signifies in the carrying into captivity, but about the time, or near the time; which it was, for Ahimelech was presently after it (possibly within a few days) cut off, as we read, 1Sa 22:17,18; and Abiathar was a more noted man than his father Ahimelech, enjoying the priesthood more than forty years, and being the person who was made famous by carrying the ephod to David.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain Observe here, 1. The poverty, the low estate and…
Observe here, 1. The poverty, the low estate and condition, of Christ’s own disciples in this world; they wanted bread, and are forced to pluck the ears of corn to satisfy their hunger. God may, and sometimes doth, suffer his dearest children to fall in streights, to taste of want, for the trial of their faith, and dependence upon his power and providence.
Observe, 2. How the Pharisees (who accompanied our Saviour only with a design to cavil at, and quarrel with, every thing that either he or his disciples did) blame this action of the disciples, namely, the plucking the ears of corn on the sabbath-day.
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Yet note, 1. It was not any theft which the disciples were charged with; for to take in our necessity so much of our neighbour’s goods as we may reasonably suppose that, if he were present, and knew our circumstances, he would give us, is no theft. But it is the servile labour on the sabbath, in gathering the ears of corn, which the Pharisees scruple.
Whence observe, How zealous hypocrites are for the lesser things of the law, whilst they neglect the greater, and are superstitiously addicted to outward ceremonies, placing all holiness in the observation of them, neglecting moral duties.
Observe farther, 3. How our Saviour defends the action of his disciples in gathering the ears of corn in their necessity, by the practice and example of David. Necessity freed him from fault and blame in eating the consecrated bread, which none but the priests might lawfully eat. For in cases of necessity a ceremonial precept must give way to a moral duty. Works of mercy and necessity for preserving our lives, and for the better fitting us for sabbath-services, are certainly lawful for the sabbath-day.
Observe, 4. A double argument which our Saviour uses, to prove that the sabbath’s observation may be dispensed with in a case of absolute necessity; 1. Drawn from the end of the sabbath’s institution: the sabbath was made for man; that is, instituted of God for the good and benefit of mankind, both with respect to their souls and to their bodies. The outward observing and keeping of the sabbath is subordinate to the good of man, and therefore the good of man is to be preferred before the outward keeping of the sabbath.
2. Argument is drawn from the authority which Christ, the Institutor of the sabbath, has over it. The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath; that is, he has authority and power, both as God and as Mediator, to institute and appoint a sabbath, to alter and change the sabbath, to dispense with the breach of it upon a just and great occasion; and consequently, acts of mercy, which tend to fit us for works of piety, not only may, but ought to be done upon the sabbath-day: which was the proposition which our Saviour undertook to prove.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And the Pharisees said unto him,.... To Christ, the…
And the Pharisees said unto him,.... To Christ, the same they said to his disciples, Luk 6:2.
Behold, why do they on the sabbath day, that which is not lawful? see how they pluck the ears of corn and rub them, and eat things, which by the law, especially by the traditions of the elders, were not lawful to be done on the sabbath day; See Gill on Mat 12:2.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Matt. xii, 1; Luke vi, 1.
Matt. xii, 1; Luke vi, 1.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 23. Went through the corn fields] See Clarke…
Verse 23. Went through the corn fields] See Clarke on Mt 12:1.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Mar 2:23. He went through the corn-fields — This…
Mar 2:23. He went through the corn-fields — This passage we had Mat 12:1-8, where it was largely explained. In the days of Abiathar the high-priest — From the passage in the history referred to, (1Sa 21:1-9,) it appears that Abimelech, the father of Abiathar, was then high-priest; Abiathar himself not till some time after. This phrase, therefore, only means, In the time of Abiathar, who was afterward high- priest. The sabbath was made for man — And therefore must give way to man’s necessity. The Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath — Being the supreme Lawgiver, he has power to dispense with his own laws, and with this in particular.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain See Mat 12:1-8.
See Mat 12:1-8.
The cornfields - The fields sown with wheat or barley. The word “corn,” in the Bible, refers only to grain of that kind, and never to “maize” or “Indian corn.”
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To pluck the ears of corn - They were hungry, Mat 12:1. They therefore gathered the wheat or barley as they walked and rubbed it in their hands to shell it, and thus to satisfy their appetite. Though our Lord was with them, and though he had all things at his control, yet he suffered them to resort to this method of supplying their wants. When Jesus, thus “with” his disciples, suffered them to be “poor,” we may learn that poverty is not disgraceful; that God often suffers it for the good of his people; and that he will take care, in some way, that their wants shall be supplied. It was “lawful” for them thus to supply their needs. Though the property belonged to another, yet the law of Moses allowed the poor to satisfy their desires when hungry. See Deu 23:25.
Mar 2:24
That which is not lawful - That is, that which they esteemed to be unlawful on the “Sabbath day.” It was made lawful by Moses, without any distinction of days, but “they” had denied its lawfulness on the Sabbath. Christ shows them from their own law that it was “not” unlawful.
Mar 2:25
Have ye never read ... - See the notes at Mat 12:3.
Mar 2:26
Abiathar the priest - From 1Sa 21:1, it appears that Ahimelech was high priest at the time here referred to. And from 1Sa 23:6, it appears that “Abiathar” was the son of “Ahimelech.” Some difficulty has been felt in reconciling these accounts. The probable reason as to why Mark says it was in the days of “Abiathar” is that Abiathar was better known than Ahimelech. The son of the high priest was regarded as his successor, and was often associated with him in the duties of his office. It was not improper, therefore, to designate him as high priest even during the life of his father, especially as that was the name by which he was afterward known. “Abiathar,” moreover, in the calamitous times when David came to the throne, left the interest of Saul and fled to David, bringing with him the ephod, one of the special garments of the high priest. For a long time, during David’s reign, he was high priest, and it became natural, therefore, to associate “his” name with that of David; to speak of David as king, and Abiathar the high priest of his time. This will account for the fact that he was spoken of rather than his father. At the same time this was strictly true, that this was done in the days of “Abiathar,” who was afterward high priest, and was familiarly spoken of as such; as we say that “General” Washington was present at the defeat of Braddock and saved his army, though the title of “General” did not belong to him until many years afterward. Compare the notes at Luk 2:2.
showbread - See the notes at Mat 12:4.
Mar 2:27
The sabbath was made for man - For his rest from toil, his rest from the cares and anxieties of the world, to give him an opportunity to call off his attention from earthly concerns and to direct it to the affairs of eternity. It was a kind provision for man that he might refresh his body by relaxing his labors; that he might have undisturbed time to seek the consolations of religion to cheer him in the anxieties and sorrows of a troubled world; and that he might render to God that homage which is most justly due to him as the Creator, Preserver, Benefactor, and Redeemer of the world. And it is easily capable of proof that no institution has been more signally blessed to man’s welfare than the Sabbath. To that we owe, more than to anything else, the peace and order of a civilized community. Where there is no Sabbath there is ignorance, vice, disorder, and crime. On that holy day the poor and the ignorant, as well as the learned, have undisturbed time to learn the requirements of religion, the nature of morals, the law of God, and the way of salvation. On that day man may offer his praises to the Great Giver of all good, and in the sanctuary seek the blessing of him whose favor is life. Where that day is observed in any manner as it should be, order prevails, morals are promoted, the poor are elevated in their condition, vice flies away, and the community puts on the appearance of neatness, industry, morality, and religion. The Sabbath was therefore pre-eminently intended for man’s welfare, and the best interests of mankind demand that it should be sacredly regarded as an appointment of merciful heaven intended for our best good, and, where improved aright, infallibly resulting in our temporal and eternal peace.
Not man for the sabbath - Man was made “first,” and then the Sabbath was appointed for his welfare, Gen 2:1-3. The Sabbath was not “first” made or contemplated, and then the man made with reference to that. Since, therefore, the Sabbath was intended for man’s “good,” the law respecting it must not be interpreted so as to oppose his real welfare. It must be explained in consistency with a proper attention to the duties of mercy to the poor and the sick, and to those in peril. It must be, however, in accordance with man’s “real good on the whole,” and with the law of God. The law of God contemplates man’s “real good on the whole;” and we have no right, under the plea that the Sabbath was made for man, to do anything contrary to what the law of God admits. It would not be for our “real good,” but for our real and eternal injury, to devote the Sabbath to vice, to labor, or to amusement.
Mar 2:28
Therefore the Son of man ... - See the notes at Mat 12:8.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain Fourth, Conflict.—The Ears of Corn on the Sabbath; the…
Fourth, Conflict.—The Ears of Corn on the Sabbath; the Son of Man also Lord of the Sabbath. Mar_2:23-28
(Parallels: Mat_12:1-8; Luk_6:1-5.)
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23And it came to pass, that he went through the corn-fields [sowed-fields] on the Sabbath-day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn [began to make a way, by plucking off the ears: Meyer]. 24And the Pharisees said unto him, Be hold, why do they on the Sabbath-day that which is not lawful? 25And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungered, he, and they that were with him? 26How he went into the house of God, in the days of Abiathar the high-priest,16 and did eat the shew-bread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him? 27And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath: 28Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. See on the parallels of Matthew and Luke.—In regard to the time, it is to be observed that this event belongs to a later section of the life of Jesus (after He had returned from the Feast of Purim 17 in 782), when persecution took a decided form against Him. The same remark holds good of the healing of the man with a withered hand. But the motive of Mark in inserting the matter here was evidently to connect appropriate facts. The first offence and the first conflict referred to the forgiveness of sins, which Christ pronounced, and which was alleged against Him as a blasphemous invasion of the rights of God, meaning especially the rights of the priests; the second offence was the intercourse of Christ with publicans and sinners; the third, the opposition of His festal, social companionship to the ascetic and pharisaic fasts,—on which then follows in our narrative the account of the offence taken at the freer position which He and His disciples assumed towards the Sabbath.
Mar_2:23. Went through the corn-fields.—The παραπορεύεσθαι marks the circumstance that He opened His way right and left through the overhanging ears; whereas the disciples began to make their path by plucking and rubbing these ears. Thus does Meyer explain, and doubtless rightly, the ὁδὸν ποιεῖν τίλλοντες τοὺς στάχυας It is true that Mark says nothing directly about eating; but that is to be taken for granted in any rational rubbing of the ears, and is further manifest from the Lord’s justification of them, appealing to the fact of David having eaten the shew-bread. According to Meyer, the allusion to the history of David aimed only to vindicate the rubbing of the ears as an act of necessity; and he thinks that the unessential circumstance of the shew-bread having been eaten led to the insertion into the other Gospels of the tradition concerning eating the ears. This needs no refutation. It is impossible to make the rubbing corn in their hands, in order to clear the way, into an act of sheer necessity, such as eating the shew-bread was. In fact, Mark takes pleasure in presenting a vivid picture of everything. He here tells us how the disciples attained two objects by one and the same act. The less of the two, making a way, occupied his mind merely as the counterpart of Jesus’ πορεύεσθαι in another manner; and the suggestion of plucking the ears was quite enough to denote synecdochically the eating them also.
Mar_2:24. Why do they on the Sabbath-day that which is not lawful?—Meyer tries to establish this discrepancy between the other Evangelists and Mark, that he makes the Pharisees ask in this passage, Why do they on the Sabbath-day something that is forbidden in itself? 18 But in that case Jesus would have replied only to the first and less important part of their accusation. But if we regard their words as a question of surprise, abruptly asked, and as it were answered by themselves, the harmony of the accounts is sufficiently established. For the Sabbath traditions of the Rabbins, consult Braune. “It was not a journey, being only a walk through a by-path; 2,800 ells’ distance from the town were permitted by the law.”—“To pluck and rub with the hand ears from the field of a neighbor, was allowed; Moses forbade only the sickle (Deu_23:25). But the matter belonged to the thirty-nine chief classes (fathers), each of which had its subdivisions (daughters), in which the works forbidden on the Sabbath were enumerated. This was their hypocritical way, to make of trifling things matters of sin and vexation to the conscience.
Mar_2:26. In the days of Abiathar the high-priest.—According to 1Sa_21:1, Ahimelech was the high-priest who gave David the shew-bread (Joseph. Antiq. vi. 12, 6). His son Abiathar succeeded him, who was David’s friend (1Sa_22:20; 1Ki_1:7). Moreover, in 2Sa_8:17, Ahimelech is inversely called the son of Abiathar. So also in 1Ch_24:6; 1Ch_24:31. Hence it was early supposed that the father and son had both names (Euth. Zig.), or that the son was the vicarius of his father (Grotius); while some have proposed to modify the meaning of the ἐπί (under Abiathar). 19 Later expositors, on the other hand, have assumed that the names have been mistakenly interchanged; but to insist, with Meyer, upon this view, appears to us hypercritical and arbitrary, when we remember that in Exo_2:18 the same father-in-law of Moses is once called Raguel and then Jethro, and especially that Jewish tradition was possessed of many supplements of the sacred narrative, as appears from the discourse of Stephen (Acts 7), and the allusion to the Egyptian magicians, 2Ti_3:8. Here the Old Testament itself gave occasion to supplementary tradition, and the scriptural knowledge of the time incorporated and used it. Moreover, it is to be assumed that the priest’s son Abiathar stood in a nearer relation to David, which made the unusual proceeding more explicable. The tabernacle was then at Nob.
Mar_2:28. Therefore the Son of Man is Lord. —The Son of Man, and not merely as man (Grotius); not, however, the Messiah in the official sense, but the Son of Man in His inviolable holiness, and in His mysterious dignity (intimated in Daniel) as the Holy Child and Head of humanity appearing in the name of God.—Lord over the Sabbath; that is, administrating and ruling over it in its New Testament fulfilment and freedom (comp. Meyer).
A clause is found appended to Luk_6:5 in some Codd.: “The same day Jesus saw one working on the Sabbath, and said unto him, ‘Man, if thou knowest what thou doest, thou art happy; if thou knowest not, thou art accursed.’ ” This historically questionable saying has been placed by some in the same traditional category with the words, “To give is more blessed than to receive,” Act_20:35. See Meyer on Luke, and Braune, Evangelium.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. See on the parallels.—For the Jewish Sabbath and the Sabbath ordinances, consult the article in Winer. First, the opponents of Jesus thought that He sinned against sound doctrine; then they went further, and urged objections against His free treatment of discipline and pious usages; but now, finally, they would allege that He, in the person of His disciples, sinned against the decalogue, and against one of its most sacred commandments, that concerning the Sabbath. And if, at first, their exasperation against Him was only an internal matter, they now directly attack Him in the persons of His disciples, as appears without any disguise in the history that follows in the text.
2. Christ, even in the silent corn-field, is not safe from the plots of His enemies.—The different manner in which Jesus and His disciples made their respective ways through the field.
3. Abiathar=Ahimelech; or, the freer relation of the New Testament believers to the Old Testament. For the shew-bread, consult the article in Winer, as well as the various writings on Old Testament Symbolism of BÆhr, Kurtz, Hengstenberg, Sartorius, etc.
4. The Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath.—The spirit of traditionalism and fanaticism perfectly inverts the ordinances of the kingdom of God; making the means the end, and the end the means.
5. The Son of Man the Lord; or the roots of the supremacy and dignity of Christ which are found in the relation of His sacred human nature to mankind. The Son of Many the Lord in all aspects and on all sides; therefore Lord of the Sabbath.—But the Lord is a ruler, administrator, and fulfiller of His ordinances; not the abolisher of them.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The Lord’s patience in making His way, and in abstaining, as contrasted with the conduct of His disciples.—Christ in the field among the ears of corn, a noble figure.—The blessing of nature and the blessing of grace in their unity.—The first tokens of the coming freedom of the disciples in its significance; or, Christian freedom a child of need and justification felt in the spirit of Christ.—The peculiar need of the moment pointing to the means of help for ever: 1. The failing way; the lacking bread; the idea that one need might be removed by the other. 2. The significance of this fact for the spiritual relations of the kingdom of God.—To make a way for the Lord the best means of nourishment for His disciples.—The Pharisees everywhere like a shadow of the free Gospel.—Man himself the oldest Divine institution, and what follows from it: 1. Nothing in favor of the arbitrary treatment of Divine institutions; 2. but much in favor of free dealing with human traditions.—The kingdom of heaven is preëminently a kingdom of personal life or of love.—The Sabbath for man; that Isaiah , 1. its law is for the life of the soul, 2. its rest is for devotion, 3. the ordinance for salvation.—The Sabbath for man, and therefore for his eternal Sabbath; and this also was made for man, as man for it.
Starke:—Quesnel:—Christ never performed miracles to feed Himself and His disciples in their hunger; in order to teach them that they should never without necessity seek extraordinary ways, and that their neighbors’ need should press on their hearts more than their own.—Jesus hungers, while His disciples eat; and thereby shows that a teacher, ruler, and leader should be more perfect than his disciples.—Osiander:—“We should learn to suffer want with Christ, and to abound with Christ.—Quesnel:—The pride of the Pharisaic nature drives a man to make himself a judge of others, and to demand of them an account of all they do.—Canstein:—God’s will is, that we should diligently read the books of the Old Testament, and set them before the people; that we may derive thence teaching and example.—Majus: —All errors must be refuted out of Holy Writ.—Quesnel:—The usages and ordinances of religion should have for their object the glory of God and the profit of men.—The true Sabbath festival.—Believers are with Christ and through Christ lords of the Sabbath, that they may use it for their own and their neighbors’ necessities.
Lisco:—The highest end is man himself. The whole law was only the means for the education of men, whom God keeps thus under external discipline until the law is inwardly and spiritually apprehended and obeyed. But believers adapt themselves, in the spirit of love, to all outward ordinances (although, of course, in the spirit of the Lord),—Gerlach rightly adds: To all outward ordinances that assist the need of the Christian Church.—Every arbitrary violation of legal discipline, without the justification of the spirit of grace and love in Christ, is a heavy sin.—Only the spirit of adoption makes free from the yoke of the law.—Braune:—As David was pitilessly persecuted by Saul, so were the disciples by the Pharisees.—Men are to find rest and refreshment in holy days, but not to suffer hunger and distress.—There is no law given to the righteous; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.—Schleiermacher:—The Redeemer might have more easily vindicated Himself had He referred to the words of the law, Deu_23:24, etc.; but He aimed at something higher, to show that all such laws were subjected to a higher spiritual law (the example of David).—The Son of Man Lord of the Sabbath; the Redeemer is the measure of all; the question must be, whether a thing is according to His mind and of advantage to His kingdom.—Bauer:—The Lord of the Sabbath has given to every believing mind a Sabbath-law, for its direction and not for its trouble: Thou shalt worship God in spirit and in truth.
Footnotes:
[16]Mar_2:26.—“Under Abiathar the high-priest” is wanting in D.; omitted on account of the historical difficulty.
[17]A festival introduced by Mordecai, to commemorate the deliverance of the Jews from the designs of Haman. It was celebrated on the 14th or 15th day of Adar, or March, and was called Purim, from a Persian word which signifies lot; because Haman ascertained by lot the day on which the Jews were to be destroyed. Est_3:7; Est_9:26.—Ed.
[18]Meyer would find a discrepancy between Mark and Matthew with Luke, in the fact that the former says nothing about eating the grain, but only speaks of “making a path” through it. According to him, the Pharisees objected merely to the travelling on the Sabbath and the labor therein involved, and the story of the eating is an interpolation. But aside from the fact that ὁδὸν ποιεῖν may be rendered as in the English version “to go,” it seems improbable that the disciples should have taken pains merely to “make a path” through the yielding grain by pulling it up or plucking it off, when the simple stride would tread it down.—Ed.
[19]Wetstein and Scholz suggest that it stands for coram. —Ed.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain § 33. — PLUCKING EARS OF CORN, Mar_2:23-28.
§ 33. — PLUCKING EARS OF CORN, Mar_2:23-28.
(See notes on Mat_12:1-8.)
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 23–28. The Disciples pluck the Ears of Corn
23–28. The Disciples pluck the Ears of Corn
23. on the sabbath day] St Luke tells us that this was a “second first Sabbath” i. e. either (1) the first Sabbath after the second day of unleavened bread; or (2) the first Sabbath in the second year of a Sabbatical cycle; or (3) the first Sabbath of the second month (Luk_6:1). See Wieseler’s Chronol. Synop. p. 353 sq.
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to pluck the ears of corn] From St Matthew we learn that they were an hungred (Mat_12:1). The act described marks the season of the year. The wheat was ripe, for they would not have rubbed barley in their hands (Luk_6:1). We may conclude therefore, the time was a week or two after the Passover, when the first ripe sheaf was offered as the firstfruits of the harvest. For the exact date of this Sabbath see Wieseler’s Chronol. Synop. p. 225 sq.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (23-28) And it came to pass.—See Notes on Mat_12:1-8.
(23-28) And it came to pass.—See Notes on Mat_12:1-8.
As they went . . .—More literally, they began to make a path (or perhaps, to make their way), plucking the ears of corn.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain If there is a rapid sequence in this part…
If there is a rapid sequence in this part of the narrative, the fasting referred to in the last verses may have taken place the day before. St. Luke (Luk_6:1) here adds to St. Mark"s account the words, "and did eat, rubbing them that is, the ears of corn in their hands;" an incidental evidence of a simple life, that they did not here eat prepared food, but the simple grains of wheat, which they separated from the chaff by rubbing the ears of corn in their hands. This passage marks with some nicety the time of the year. The corn in that district would be ripening about May. It would, therefore, be not long after the Passover. The difficult expression in St. Luk_6:1, en sabbatw deuteroprwtw , and which is rendered in the Authorized Version "on the second sabbath after the first," is reduced by the Revisers of 1881 to the simple phrase (en sabbatw), "on a sabbath," there not being sufficient evidence to persuade them to retain the word deuteroprwtw . But other evidences seem to show that the incident occurred earlier than as recorded by St. Matthew. The Fathers are fond of spiritual applications of this rubbing of the ears of corn. Bede, in remarking upon the fact of the disciples plucking the ears of corn, and rubbing them until they get rid of the husks, and obtain the food itself, says that they do this who meditate upon the Holy Scriptures, and digest them, until they find in them the kernel, the quintessence of delight; and St. Augustine blames those who merely please themselves with the flowers of Holy Scripture, but do not rub out the grain by meditation, until they obtain the real nourishment of virtue.
Vers. 23-28. The sabbath.
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The grounds upon which the Pharisees and scribes took offense at our Lord and his ministry were various. Some of these as, e.g. , his claim to pardon sin were very serious; for in such a case Jesus was either an impostor and blasphemer, or he was the Son of God. Others were very trivial, as, e.g. , his neglect of some unauthorized traditions, or his preference of moral duty to observance of the ceremonial law. In this and in the following incident, the sabbath was the ground of misunderstanding, and Christ"s preference of humanity to ceremonial compliance occasioned, on the part of his adversaries, hatred, enmity, and conspiracy. Still, the malice of Christ"s foes furnished opportunities for the assertion of great religious principles. From this narrative we learn that human need should take precedence of ceremony and tradition. There is ever a danger lest the outward husk of religion should be mistaken for the precious kernel. Nowhere is this danger more stringently guarded against than in the conduct and the discourses of Christ. The principle is vindicated
I BY AN APPEAL TO OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. It was a masterstroke of controversy on the part of the great Teacher to appeal to the Scriptures, which the Pharisees professed to hold in such reverence. The conduct of David, one of the great heroes and saints of their national history, was quoted in justification of the conduct of the disciples of Jesus. To eat is a necessity of human nature, and some kind of action, of rudimentary labour, is necessary in order to eating. The disciples of Jesus had plucked cars of corn, had rubbed the grain free from husk in their hands, and had eaten, in order to satisfy their hunger. Possibly in so doing they had violated the tradition of the elders, which maintained that anything approaching to labour on the sabbath day was an infraction of the Divine command. However, the Lord vindicated them by the example of David, who, for the purpose of providing food for himself and his companions, had not hesitated to take the shewbread of the sanctuary, which was reserved for the use of the priests alone; and this probably also on the sabbath day. Punctiliousness of observance must give way before those necessities which the Creator has impressed upon our human nature.
II BY THE ASSERTION THAT THE SABBATH IS THE MEANS TO WHICH HUMAN WELFARE IS THE END. HOW blessed an institution is the weekly day of rest! The importance of the sabbath to man"s bodily and spiritual welfare is very much overlooked by many advocates for the employment of labour on that day, and by many Christians who, in their zeal for men"s instruction and salvation, labour seven days a week instead of six. Yet, as we are here taught, we are not to make an idol of even so precious an institution. The day of rest was designed for man"s good; and it must be maintained that man"s good comes first, and the sabbath next. Thus it is allowable and it is required to perform "works of necessity and mercy" on the sabbath, and even on the Lord"s day, which may be regarded as the higher sabbath of the Christian. Those who preach and teach, who visit the sick and the afflicted, although their doing these things may make them labour seven days in the week, may make them "sabbath-breakers," are held guiltless by the application of the great principle of the text.
III BY THE CLAIM OF CHRIST TO LORDSHIP OVER THE SABBATH DAY, Christ is indeed Lord of all. He uses his lordship not so much to institute as to abrogate ceremonies, not so much to burden the religious life with observances as to set it free from such trammels. He imparts the true sabbatic spirit; he gives the rest of heart, which is even more important than bodily repose. He sanctifies all days by his Spirit, making every day to the Christian better and more sacred than the holiest festival or the most solemn fast to the Jew of old. If the day be begun, continued, and ended in him, and if all our works be done under his lordship and by his inspiration, life itself will be a true sabbath, filled with the rest of his love and with the music of his praise.
PRACTICAL LESSONS.
1. Guard against a merely external, ceremonial religion, which is ever prone to degenerate into superstition.
2. Consider the preciousness of the weekly day of rest; it was given for our advantage; it should be used for the glory of God, in the welfare of those for whom Christ lived and died.
3. Think aright of him who, without presumption, could claim a prerogative so lofty as lordship over the sabbath. To be filled with his spirit, to yield ourselves to his authority, this is the best means of fulfilling the spiritual law of the God who is a Spirit, and who asks for spiritual homage and service.
Vers. 23-28. The sabbath made for man.
I The purpose of The sabbath IS TO BE KEPT IN VIEW IN INTERPRETING ITS OBLIGATIONS.
II RULES WHICH DO NOT HAVE REGARD TO THIS MAY VIOLATE WHAT THEY PROFESS TO PRESERVE.
1. The disciples were within the written permission of the Law. "To pluck and rub with the hand ears from the field of a neighbor was allowed; Moses forbade only the sickle. (Deu_23:25) But the matter belonged to the thirty-nine chief classes (fathers), each of which had its subdivisions (daughters), in which the works forbidden on the sabbath were enumerated. This was their hypocritical way, to make of trifling things matters of sin and vexation to the conscience" (Braune).
2. "Men see that others neglect rules, when they see not their own violation of principles" (Godwin).
III THE BEST INTERESTS OF MAN ARE TO SERVED BY THE SABBATH.
1. "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. " This is proved by an incident from the life of David. As they revered David, the allusion was an argumentum ad hominem as well as an illustration of a general principle. By that occurrence it was shown that even the sanctities of the temple were subordinated to the welfare of God"s anointed and his followers. If, then, these things bent to the highest interests of man, so must the sabbath.
2. "The Son of man is Lord of the sabbath. " This is an inference from the foregoing principle. For Christ claimed this authority not merely as a man, but as "the Son of man in his inviolable holiness, and in his mysterious dignity (intimated in Daniel) as the holy Child and Head of humanity appearing in the name of God" (Lange). He summed up in his own person the highest interests of the race. And as Lord of the sabbath he uses it ever for the advancement of holiness and the development of spiritual freedom in his saints. M.
Vers. 23-28. Love greater than law.
I HUMAN LIFE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE MEANS OF LIVING. All laws, ceremonial or otherwise, may be regarded as means towards ends. What end do we know higher than human weal and bliss? Christ points out that this is the real end of legislation man, his education, his good, physical and spiritual.
II IT IS A GROSS FALLACY TO PUT THE MEANS BEFORE THE END. This the Pharisees did. They said, "Man for the sabbath." Christ said, "The sabbath for man." Ceremonies are all means of spiritual culture, Not so with moral ideals. They are our end.
III LAW IS ROOTED IN LOVE. Christ is the representative of Divine love. If he by example or precept declares that a law is to be suspended or abrogated, this is in the interests of love. How absurd would it be, on a desert island, for a shipwrecked crew, almost starving, to refuse to avail themselves of food cast in their way, e.g. by a chance flight of birds, because it was a fast day! Analogous was the case mentioned by Christ (ver. 26). The sabbath had no meaning except as an expression of Divine love; and the rigid observance of it in defiance of love"s dictates would be a mockery. Christ is Lord of love, and therefore Lord of law. J.
Ver. Mat_12:1-8 Luk_6:1-5. Sabbath observance.
I WORSHIP, NOT AMUSEMENT, SUITS THE SABBATH. The common heading of this section in the Gospels is, "The disciples pluck the ears of corn on the sabbath day," On this occasion our Lord and his disciples were out walking on the sabbath; but they were not walking for pleasure or even for health. They were on their way to the house of God, as we learn from the parallel passage in St. Matthew, where we read that "when he was departed thence, he went into their synagogue." The two main ideas associated with the sabbath are rest and worship; the former held the first place in the old dispensation, the latter the second. In the gospel dispensation their position seems reversed; for, while never sundered and never to be separated, worship comes more to the front, holding a primary, while rest holds a secondary place. On the sabbath our Lord and his disciples attended the usual place of Jewish worship; on the sabbath the apostles, after our Lord"s death and resurrection, met for the service of God; on the sabbath, thenceforth the first day of the week, the Holy Spirit descended in Pentecostal power and plenty, while by means of St. Peter"s sermon three thousand were converted that same day; on the sabbath the primitive Christians, taught by apostles and following apostolic example, met together to break bread, to read God"s holy Word, or hear it preached, as also for prayer and praise, and to contribute for the necessities of the saints. Refreshment for the spirit and rest for the body went hand in hand; but worldly amusement found no place on the sabbath, and worldly pleasure formed no part of its service.
II WORKS OF NECESSITY ALLOWABLE ON THE SABBATH. Stretches of corn-land abound in the fertile plain of Gennesaret. A pathway frequently ran through these unfenced fields, and on these pathways seed often fell and grain grew, as was the case with the wayside in the parable of the sower. Our Lord was passing by one of these, through the fields of corn (literally, sown places), alongside the grain. The disciples were "plucking and eating," as St. Matthew tells us, or, as St. Mark more graphically describes it, they "made a way" for themselves by plucking the stalks that had sprung up on what had previously been a path, and being a hungred, that is, in a state of hunger for St. Matthew adds this important fact of their being hungry (epeinasan) "they began to rub the ears of corn in their hand," as St. Luke informs us, and thus sought to appease the cravings of appetite. This was, of course, a work of necessity, and of urgent necessity, on the part of these hungry men. They had, however, only begun this operation (hrxanto), when the Pharisees rudely checked them, administering the sharp rebuke recorded in this passage.
III AS EXEGETICAL CONSIDERATION. The common English Version requires to make two assumptions in behoof of its rendering:
1. That odo is the same as odo , though the former in reality is to make a path viam sternere vel munire einen Weg machen," as Fritzsche expresses it; while the latter is to go on one"s way iter facere or progrcdi, which is the rendering of the Vulgate.
2. That the chief force here, as occasionally elsewhere, lies in the participle.In this way is reached
(1) the usual free rendering, "His disciples began as they went to pluck the ears of corn;" but
(2) the more correct translation is certainly that which is insisted on by the most accurate scholars, such as Fritzsche and Meyer, namely, "His disciples began to make a path or way plucking the ears." Though the Revised Version follows the ordinary rendering, it gives, in a note on this passage, an approximation to what we consider the right rendering, viz. "began to make their way plucking.
IV THE RIGOROUS SABBATARIANISM OF THE PHARISEES. The question of the Pharisees is explained, or indeed translated, by some
(1) as signifying, "Lo, what are they doing on the sabbath? That which is not lawful;" while by others it is rendered
(2) "Lo, why are they doing on the sabbath what is not lawful?" In neither case can it properly mean that the thing was unlawful in itself, and still more unlawful because of its being done on the sabbath day. The superstitious sabbatarianism of the Pharisees suggests the real gist of the question. The action in itself was perfectly allowable, according to the Law as it stands written in Deu_23:25, "When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbor, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand." The Pharisees, guided by oral tradition, interpreted the law of the sabbath so rigorously as to identify the plucking, of the ears with reaping, and the rubbing of them in their hands with thrashing, so that the Law, as they explained it, was violated by both operations.
V SABBATH DESECRATION FALSELY LAID TO THE CHARGE OF THE DISCIPLES. Our Lord undertakes the vindication of his disciples; he justifies their conduct by reminding their accusers of an incident in the life of David, when ceremonial observance yielded to moral necessity, and positive precept to the requirements of mercy. The occasion was that on which David found himself at Nob, a sacerdotal town to the north-east and within sight of Jerusalem, in a state of destitution had need" (creian esce), such is the general statement; and ready to perish with hunger a hungred" (epeinasen), this is the particular specification. The "bread of the face" or presence, according to the Hebrew, or "the loaves of proposition," as rendered by the Vulgate, were twelve loaves one for each tribe, placed in the presence of Jehovah as a symbol of the people"s dependence on their heavenly Father for daily bread. None was permitted the use of these loaves but the priests; they were their perquisite. This rigid rule was relaxed in favor of David; and not only of David, whose eminence might be thought such as to entitle him to greater consideration, and sufficient to make his case exceptional, but in favor of those who were with him. Our Lord adduces this instance of violating the letter of the Law, asking the Pharisees, according to a formula of their own, but with scornful irony, or rather in a tone of severe reproof, "Did ye never read?" or, as it is expressed in St. Luke, "Did ye not even read this? ye who are such sticklers for the Law and adepts in Scripture knowledge.
VI SOLUTION OF A DIFFICULTY. The name of Abiathar instead of Ahimelech has given trouble. Of the many attempted solutions, such as in the presence of Abiathar, afterwards high priest, for it was Ahimelech, father of Abiathar, who really gave the shewbread to David and his men; or that he had both names; or that the deed was done by Ahimclech in the pontificate of Abiathar his son, as Theophylact explains it; or in the section or paragraph of Abiathar the high priest; or that the insertion of the article distinguishes the lifetime from the pontificate of Abiathar, according to Mid-dleton; of all these it must be said that they either involve error or have the appearance of mere shifts or evasions. Of them all, Middleton"s is perhaps best known, and has been adopted by not a few critical scholars. Thus, in the first edition of Scrivener"s "Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament," we find the following statement: Mar_2:26, epi AB arc , "in the time that Abiathar was high priest," would be historically incorrect; while epi AB, tou arc , "in the days of Abiathar the high priest," is suitable enough." But this insertion of the article is a matter of dispute, for though it is found in four respectable uncials, including A and C, as also in the following cursives: 1, 33, and 69, of which 33 is known as the "Queen of the cursives;" yet it is absent in this place from a, B, L, and many other uncials, and is rejected by most of the critical editors. We cannot, therefore, build an argument on it. We are inclined to Fritzsche"s opinion, that the real removal of the difficulty appears to be effected by the position of the words epi AB arc , which implies that the transaction took place in the time of Abiathar, afterwards high priest; while epi arc AB . would restrict the occurrence to the actual time of his priesthood, though it is admitted that with a participle, as arcontov or basileuontov , for example, the position does not thus alter the sense. For the mention of Abiathar instead of Ahimclech several reasons might be assigned. He was more celebrated than his father, as also better known to the readers of Old Testament Scripture; besides, the mention of him as being present, and a consenting party to the transaction, would be calculated to obviate the possible retort which the Pharisees might otherwise make, namely, that Ahimelech paid the penalty of his profanation by his being slain.
VII THE CHARGE OF SABBATH-BREAKING BY THE DISCIPLES FURTHER REFUTED. Additional arguments are found in the Gospel of St. Matthew to disprove the charge of sabbath profanation, which these narrow, bigoted Pharisees" urged against the disciples. The rather labourious service of the priests on the sabbath, in sacrificing, removing the shewbread, and other duties, was an apparent profanation of the sabbath; but in their case the Law was relaxed, or rather the principle of God"s love to man, which lay at the foundation of the Law, and was the animating spirit of the Law, took precedence of the letter. He taxes them with culpable and disgraceful, if not wilful, ignorance of such a plain Scripture as "I will have mercy and not sacrifice." If, then, the necessity of David and his men prevailed over the letter of the Law; if the sabbath services of the priests made sabbath labour to some extent a duty; and if the claim of mercy be prior to and higher than that of sacrifice, our Lord claims exemption for his hungry disciples from the unbending rigour of the Law, or rather from the harsh, superstitious misinterpretation of it by those cold, heartless, cavilling, censorious Pharisees.
VIII THE SABBATH DESIGNED TO BE SUBSERVIENT TO MAN. Our Lord proceeds to take higher ground. The sabbath was made for the sake of man, Gentile as well as Jew; it originated for his benefit; it is only the means to an end, and man"s interests are that end; it owes its existence to man, and has the reason of its existence in man. It is a memorial of his creation, a remembrancer of his redemption, and a foretaste as well as pledge of his future and everlasting rest. It is most valuable in its essential nature and right use; but if the circumstantial come into collision with the essential, or the ceremonial conflict with the moral, in either case the former, in the very nature of things, is bound to give place.
IX THE SON OF MAN"S LORDSHIP WITH RESPECT TO THE SABBATH. The Son of man here mentioned is, in spite of all rationalistic quibbling, the Saviour, and he is Lord of the sabbath. In St. Mark and St. Luke kai stands before "sabbath;" it is likewise inserted in St. Matthew by some, but excluded by others. It may mean even or also. In the first of these two significations it implies that much as they valued the ordinance of the sabbath above all the other commandments of the Decalogue, and superstitious as was the veneration with which they regarded it, the Son of man was Lord even of the sabbath; and so he could make it elastic as the exigencies of any particular case might require; he could modify it according to any special emergency; he could determine the mode of its observance between the two limits of man"s benefit on the one hand, and the Law"s behest on the other. But if we take the meaning of the copulative to be also, then it signifies that, amid and in addition to his other lordships, the Son of man possesses this also that he is Lord of the sabbath day. He is Lord of angels, for they worship him; he is the Lord from heaven, and all its hosts do acknowledge him; he is Lord of earth, for by him it was made, and through him it is upheld; he is the Lord of all creation, for he is the firstborn of every creature, that in all things he should have the preeminence; "he is Lord also of the sabbath." He vindicates his law from the lax observance of the worldling or pleasure-seeker on the one hand, and from the narrowness of Pharisaic superstition on the other. He manifests its true nature for the rest and refreshment the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual blessing of mankind.
X THE PERPETUAL OBLIGATION OF THE SABBATH. In proof of its perpetual obligation we may refer to its Divine appointment, so long prior to the division of Adam"s family into the two great sections of Jew and Gentile before the call of Abram and the existence of the Jewish nation; before the promulgation of the Law from Sinai and the establishment of the Jewish polity. We may trace the proof of its observance in the division of time into weeks among almost all nations and from the remotest antiquity; in certain incidental notices afforded by the history of the period between creation and the publishing of the Law; in the miraculous supply of a double portion of manna, which, even before the latter event, Israel received on the sixth day as a provision for the seventh; in the note of memory prefixed, implying at once its appointment and observance before the giving of the Law, and intimating not a new enactment merely national in its range, but the republication to a particular nation of an old one, that from the beginning had been binding on all. The latitude of its extent to the Gentile stranger, as well as to the Jew, may be argued from the terms of the command itself, "Nor the stranger that is within thy gates." Some importance, too, may be attached to its central position in the Decalogue, linking together the duties we owe our Father in heaven, and those which we owe our brother man on earth; while it blends, moreover, the joint memorials of creation and Calvary, and combines at the same time the creature"s comfort and the Creator"s glory in the words, "To you a holy day, a sabbath of rest to the Lord." We must have in recollection, besides, that it was written, as well as the other precepts of the moral law, by the finger of God on the stone tablet, in token, it would seem, of its durability. Further, we may observe the tense of the verb used in the last verse of this chapter, viz. "the Son of man is that is, continues of the sabbath;" consequently Lord, not of an obsolete or decaying ordinance, but of a present, ever-abiding institution. Thus, indeed, it appears that "the sabbath was made for man," for the species, coeval and coextensive with the race man," as has been well observed, "from the beginning; for man till the end; for man generally, at all times, in all countries, and under all circumstances." And when, we may ask, or where, or how was this original sabbath law either repealed or relaxed? J.J.G.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain And it came to pass, that He went through…
Mar_2:23-24
And it came to pass, that He went through the cornfields on the Sabbath day.
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A knowledge of the law without the true spirit of the law
He who has only the knowledge without the spirit of the law, very often opposes when he thinks he is defending it. Pharisaical pride makes men set themselves up for judges of everything, and require an account of everything to be given them. When a man is once full of himself, he decides confidently, especially when it is to condemn others. Those who love to domineer are not content to exercise their authority upon their own disciples, but would fain bring those of others under their dominion. (Quesnel.)
Scrupulosity
Scrupulosity is considered by some as identical with conscientiousness. It is not so. It is a tare that resembles the wheat, but is not wheat; a disease of the conscience, not a refinement of it. You must not judge an eye by its sensitiveness to light, but by its power of seeing. When light pains the eye it is because there is inflammation, not because the organ is a fine one. So it is with conscience. The health of conscience is not to be measured by its sensitiveness, its protests, and its objections; but by its power to lead a man into all genial activities and self-denying charities. Conscientiousness is a happy child, whose language is-What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits? Scrupulosity is a slave, whose language is-What must I do to avoid Gods rebuke? Conscientiousness acts on great principles; scrupulosity on little rules. Conscientiousness serves God, blesses man, and protects him who cherishes it; scrupulosity is often useless to everybody. Conscientiousness makes man an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile; but scrupulosity often makes him an Ishmaelite indeed, in whom there is often a good deal. The Pharisees were full of scrupulosity, and it produced in them all uncharitableness. (R. Glover.)
Through the cornfields
Looking out upon the cornfields of wheat we see-
I. Unity in variety. To the unaccustomed eye the wheat seems one, and yet it is various. There is the white wheat, the rod wheat, and beneath these, varieties and sub-varieties in great number. Yet what unity in the variety. Variety, too, meets us as we look out upon the vast field of humanity; yet what unity. One hand has made us all; in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, bond nor free. In Him all we are brethren.
II. Fruitfulness through death is taught us by the fields of wheat. The field of burial shall become the field of resurrection.
III. The permanence of character is suggested to us by the ripening fields of wheat-Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
IV. The vast productiveness of good is suggested by the fields of wheat-And bring forth fruit, some an hundredfold. Christianity, truth, work for God, yield much fruit.
V. Human dependence is taught us by the cornfields; God giveth the increase. (G. T. Coster.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain CHAPTER 2:23-28 (Mar_2:23-28)
CHAPTER 2:23-28 (Mar_2:23-28)
THE SABBATH
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"And it came to pass, that He was going on the sabbath day through the cornfields; and His disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn. And the Pharisees said unto Him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful? And He said unto them, Did ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungered, he, and they that were with him? How he entered into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which it is not lawful to eat save for the priests, and gave also to them that were with him? And He said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: so that the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath." Mar_2:23-28 (R.V.)
TWICE in succession Christ had now asserted the freedom of the soul against His Jewish antagonists. He was free to eat with sinners, for their good, and His followers were free to disregard fasts, because the Bridegroom was with them. A third attack in the same series is prepared. The Pharisees now take stronger ground, since the law itself enforced the obligation of the Sabbath. Even Isaiah, the most free-spirited of all the prophets, in the same passage where he denounced the fasts of the self-righteous, bade men to keep their foot from the Sabbath (Isa_58:13-14). Here they felt sure of their position; and when they found the disciples, in a cornfield where the long stems had closed over the path, "making a way," which was surely forbidden labor, and this by "plucking the ears," which was reaping, and then rubbing these in their hands to reject the chaff, which was winnowing, they cried out in affected horror, Behold, why do they that which is not lawful? To them it mattered nothing that the disciples really hungered, and that abstinence, rather than the slight exertion which they condemned, would cause real inconvenience and unrest.
Perhaps the answer of our Lord has been as much misunderstood as any other words He ever spoke. It has been assumed that He spoke across the boundary between the new dispensation and the old, as One from whose movements the restraints of Judaism had entirely fallen away, to those who were still entangled. And it has been inferred that the Fourth Commandment was no more than such a restraint, now thrown off among the rest. But this is quite a misapprehension both of His position and theirs. On earth He was a minister of the circumcision. He bade His disciples to observe and do all that was commanded from the seat of Moses. And it is by Old Testament precedent, and from Old Testament principles, that He now refutes the objection of the Pharisees. This is what gives the passage half its charm, this discovery of freedom like our own in the heart of the stern old Hebrew discipline, as a fountain and flowers on the face of a granite crag, this demonstration that all we now enjoy is developed from what already lay in germ enfolded in the law.
David and his followers, when at extremity, had eaten the shewbread which it was not lawful for them to eat. It is a striking assertion. We should probably have sought a softer phrase. We should have said that in other circumstances it would have been unlawful, that only necessity made it lawful; we should have refused to look straight in the face the naked ugly fact that David broke the law. But Jesus was not afraid of any fact. He saw and declared that the priests in the Temple itself profaned the Sabbath when they baked the shewbread and when they circumcised children. They were blameless, not because the Fourth Commandment remained inviolate, but because circumstances made it right for them to profane the Sabbath. And His disciples were blameless also, upon the same principle, that the larger obligation overruled the lesser, that all ceremonial observance gave way to human need, that mercy is a better thing than sacrifice.
And thus it appeared that the objectors were themselves the transgressors; they had condemned the guiltless.
A little reflection will show that our Lord's bold method, His startling admission that David and the priests alike did that which was not lawful, is much more truly reverential than our soft modern compromises, our shifty device for persuading ourselves that in various permissible and even necessary deviation from prescribed observances, there is no real infraction of any law whatever.
To do this, we reduce to a minimum the demands of the precept. We train ourselves to think, not of its full extension, but of what we can compress it into. Therefore, in future, even when no urgency exists, the precept has lost all beyond this minimum; its sharp edges are filed away. Jesus leaves it to resume all its energy, when mercy no longer forbids the sacrifice.
The text, then, says nothing about the abolition of a Day of Rest. On the contrary, it declares that this day is not a Jewish but a universal ordinance, it is made for man. At the same time, it refuses to place the Sabbath among the essential and inflexible laws of right and wrong. It is made for man, for his physical repose and spiritual culture; man was not made for it, as he is for purity, truth, and godliness. Better for him to die than outrage these; they are the laws of his very being; he is royal by serving them; in obeying them he obeys his God. It is not thus with anything external, ceremonial, any ritual, any rule of conduct, however universal be its range, however permanent its sanctions. The Sabbath is such a rule, permanent, far-reaching as humanity, made "for man." But this very fact, Jesus tells us, is the reason why He Who represented the race and its interests, was "Lord even of the Sabbath."
Let those who deny the Divine authority of this great institution ponder well the phrase which asserts its universal range, and which finds it a large assertion of the mastery of Christ that He is Lord "even of the Sabbath." But those who have scruples about the change of day by which honor is paid to Christ's resurrection, and those who would make burdensome and dreary, a horror to the young and a torpor to the old, what should be called a delight and honorable, these should remember that the ordinance is blighted, root and branch, when it is forbidden to minister to the physical or spiritual welfare of the human race.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 23. He went through the corn fields on the…
23. He went through the corn fields on the sabbath. See notes on Matt. 12:1–8. Compare Luke 6:1–11.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Mar_2:23. Began, as they went, to pluck.—A very good…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mar_2:23. Began, as they went, to pluck.—A very good rendering, though free. Cp. Latin “iter facere,” French “faire chemin.” From LXX. in Jdg_17:8, it is clear that the classical distinction between ὁδὸν ποιεῖν, “to make a road,” ὁδὸν ποιεῖσθαι, “to make a journey,” must not be pressed in Hellenistic Greek. Such a piece of wanton mischief as “to make a road” through the corn by plucking the ears would never have been tolerated on any day, let alone the Sabbath. Nor would the action attributed to the disciples have sufficed “to make a road”: for that, they would have had not to break off the ears, but to break down the stalks.
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Mar_2:26. In the days of Abiathar the high priest.—This seems, at first sight, to contradict 1Sa_21:1-6, where Ahimelech, the father of Abiathar, is mentioned as the high priest who gave the loaves to David. Many attempts have been made to reconcile the two passages; the most successful is, perhaps, that of Bede: “There is no discrepancy, for both were there, when David came to ask for bread, and received it: that is to say, Ahimelech, the high priest, and Abiathar, his son; but Ahimelech having been slain by Saul (very shortly after), Abiathar fled to David, and became the companion of all his exile afterwards. When he came to the throne, Abiathar himself also received the rank of high priest, and the son became of much greater excellence than the father, and therefore was worthy to be mentioned as the high priest, even during his father’s lifetime.” An elaborate and ably expressed argument in favour of another explanation will be found in McClellan’s New Testament, vol. i., pp. 671, 672.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mar_2:23-28
(PARALLELS: Mat_12:1-8; Luk_6:1-5.)
The Sabbath and its Lord.—The malignity of the Pharisees being now fully aroused by Christ’s disregard of their scrupulosities and conventionalities, they are henceforth to be found constantly dogging His steps, watching His every action, catching up His every word, in order that His influence with the people may be neutralised, or at least lessened. Especially on the Sabbath were they careful to shadow Him wherever He went, for there was no clearer proof of His divergence from current tradition than as regards the observance of the rest-day. “On no other subject,” says Dr. Edersheim, “is Rabbinic teaching more painfully minute and more manifestly incongruous to its professed object. For if we rightly apprehend what underlay the complicated and intolerably burdensome laws of Pharisaic Sabbath observance, it was to secure, negatively, absolute rest from all labour, and, positively, to make the Sabbath a delight. The Mishnah includes Sabbath desecration among those most heinous crimes for which a man was to be stoned. This, then, was their first care: by a series of complicated ordinances to make a breach of the Sabbath rest impossible. The next object was, in a similarly external manner, to make the Sabbath a delight. A special Sabbath dress, the best that could be procured; the choicest food, even though a man had to work for it all the week, or public charity were to supply it,—such were some of the means by which the day was to be honoured, and men were to find pleasure therein. The strangest stories are told how, by the purchase of the most expensive dishes, the pious poor had gained unspeakable merit, and obtained, even on earth, Heaven’s manifest reward. And yet, by the side of these and similar strange and sad misdirections of piety, we come also upon that which is touching, beautiful, and even spiritual. On the Sabbath there must be no mourning, for to the Sabbath applies this saying: “The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it” (Pro_10:22). The object which Rabbinism vainly strove to attain by the multiplication of restrictions, Christ set Himself to accomplish by a totally different method. Brushing aside all later accretions of traditionalism, He provoked the inquiry, What was the original law and design of the Sabbath?
I. The accusation by the Pharisees.—Right gladly would they have accused the disciples of theft, had there been the slightest vestige of excuse for doing so; but the law made express provision for the satisfying of hunger when passing through corn-fields (Deu_23:25). But that any one should take advantage of this merciful provision on the Sabbath horrified them—or they pretended it did. According to them, such an action involved at least two sins: the plucking the ears was equivalent to reaping, the rubbing in the hands to sifting or winnowing! And yet, had the owner of the field wanted, in harvest-time, to shift any of his sheaves, he had only to lay on each a spoon in common use, when, in order to remove the spoon, he might also remove the sheaf on which it lay! To men who spent their time in the invention and study of puerilities of this kind, it mattered nothing that the disciples were really hungry, and that abstinence would occasion far greater unrest of body and mind than the infinitesimal exertion of plucking and rubbing a few ears of corn. “Sabbath means rest—rest of spirit as well as of body—rest from all that is carnal and selfish, and the surrender of the whole being to God in spiritual worship. But these zealots were restless in their endeavours to overcome One whom they hated, and their hearts were rankling with jealousy and envy, instead of swelling with praise and prayer.” How pitiful it is when men seek to substitute elaborate ceremonial for the sacrifice of the inner being!
II. The answer of our Lord.—Christ meets the objectors on their own ground, and shows how, even if it were admitted that the disciples had broken the letter of the law (which they had not done, but only the Rabbinic gloss), they were amply justified in doing so. An eminent scholar, on being asked his opinion of certain classical editors, once replied, “They know the rules; but they do not know when the rules are right, and when they are wrong.” So it was with these Pharisees. They had every minutest detail of the Mosaic Law at their fingers’ ends, so far as the mere letter was concerned; and even their excessive zeal in interpreting and expanding its provisions need not have led to any serious harm, had they only exercised the same care with respect to its spiritual side. But this they had now lost sight of altogether. Christ, therefore, in His reply, ignoring all minor issues, insistence upon which would only have been certain to prejudice and embitter them still further, brings them face to face with the great principle which they themselves admitted—that when two laws clash, the higher one overrides the lower. “A single Rabbinic prohibition is not to be heeded,” they said, “where a graver matter is in question.” Bearing this in mind, we can see how impregnable was the position that Christ took up on behalf of His disciples. David and his followers, when at extremity, had eaten the shewbread, which it was not lawful for them to eat, but only for the priests, and yet they were held blameless, Jewish tradition vindicating their conduct on the plea that “danger of life superseded the law.” From St. Matthew (Mat_12:5) we learn that our Lord followed this up with another argument drawn from the Temple usages. “What,” He asks, “were the multiplied sacrifices, and incense-burnings, and washings, but so many breaches of the letter of the law? Had they not given birth to the proverb, ‘There is no Sabbatical rest observed in the sanctuary’?—and yet no one ever thought of blaming the priests.” Nor does any blame attach to the disciples, who were but acting upon the same principle—that the greater obligation overrules the lesser, that all ceremonial observance is subordinate to human necessity, that God prefers mercy to sacrifice.
III. The true law of Sabbath observance.—
1. “The Sabbath was made.” The setting apart of one day in seven for rest from labour and special religious effort is no haphazard arrangement of human invention, but God’s own beneficent gift to His weary creatures. It is stamped with Divine sanctity and authority.
2. “The Sabbath was made for man”—to subserve his highest interests and promote his spiritual welfare. Now since man is a complex creature, with a tripartite nature (1Th_5:23), it is necessary to provide for him as such, not ignoring either his physical or his social or his religious needs, otherwise the end for which the Sabbath was made will be frustrated. It is related in the life of a pious Presbyterian minister of this generation, how his home looked upon a public park in the suburbs of a crowded city, and how, when he saw some of his fellow-citizens taking a quiet walk for the sake of fresh air and innocent relaxation on a Sunday afternoon, he wondered that the earth did not open her mouth and swallow them up! The same spirit was manifested by the inhabitants of St. Kilda a few years ago, when they subjected some shipwrecked people to agonies of hunger rather than permit a ship, with provisions on board, to land on what they called “the Sabbath,” i.e. the Lord’s Day! Well might they have been asked, “Have ye never read what the Lord’s disciples did, when they had need and were hungry; how, going through the corn-fields on the Sabbath, they plucked the ears of corn, and rubbed them in their hands, and ate; and how the Lord defended them for so doing, and declared that the Sabbath is not man’s master, but his servant?” And as to the other instance mentioned of Sabbatic intolerance, may we not say, with Dean Luckock, that it is not only permissible but a manifest duty to furnish the masses with the means of bodily recreation, and to draw them from their squalid homes into pure air which will invigorate the frame; and no less a duty to elevate their tastes, to offer them, as far as possible, variety of scene and relief from the monotony of their daily drudgery?
IV. The supremacy of the Son of Man over the Sabbath.—“The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath”; and as its Lord He exercises the right to eliminate from it all that is merely Judaic, and to re-establish it in its original simplicity and benignity. During His earthly ministry He makes it the day not of idle self-contemplation, but of gracious words and blessed deeds. Then after death—His mission to the spirits in Hades having been accomplished on the Sabbath (1Pe_3:18-20; 1Pe_4:6)—He chooses the first day of the week for His resurrection; and that day has ever since been observed by His followers as the Lord’s Day—His peculiar possession, and their peculiar privilege—a day which is a thousand times more precious and sacred to them than the Sabbath could ever be to a Jew. The Sabbath was but the shadow of good things yet to come; on the Lord’s Day especially (though far from exclusively) the believer realises that these good things have now come, and that he is already a partaker of them in Christ. He therefore regards the weekly rest-day as a boon of unspeakable value, for which he is indebted to his Saviour. To him, indeed, all days are equally holy: he does not imagine for a moment that God requires of him a better service or a purer soul on one than on another; but while striving to serve God truly all the days of his life, he thanks God particularly for every opportunity afforded him of withdrawing for a season from the turmoil of worldly business, and devoting himself without distraction to the things of the Lord.
Mar_2:23-28. The Sabbath and the Lord’s Day.—I. The first principle embodied in the Lord’s Day is the duty of consecrating a certain proportion of time, at least one-seventh, to the especial service of God. This principle is common to the Jewish Sabbath and to the Christian Lord’s Day. “Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath Day” means for us Christians, “Remember that thou keep holy one day in seven.” Keep the day holy; consecrate it. Such consecration implies two things: a separation of the thing consecrated from all others, and the communication to it of a quality of holiness or purity. To this idea of the especial consecration of a section of time, it is objected that in a true Christian life all time is consecrated. The answer is that the larger obligation of love is not ignored because the smaller one of duty is insisted on. All a Christian’s time is properly consecrated time; but practically, in many cases, none would be consecrated unless an effort were made to mark a certain proportion of it by a special consecration. The case is parallel to that of prayer. Our Lord says that men ought always to pray, and not to faint. The apostle says, “Pray without ceasing.” And the life of a good Christian is, no doubt, a continuous prayer: the spirit of prayer penetrates and hallows it; each duty is intertwined with acts of the soul which raise it above this earthly scene to the throne and presence of Christ. But, for all that, in all Christian lives stated times of prayer, private as well as public, are practically necessary, if the practice of prayer is to be consistently maintained. And in like manner the especial consecration of one day in seven does not involve an implied rejection of the rights of Jesus Christ over all Christian time. It is like those small payments known to the law, which do not profess to give an equivalent for that which they represent, but only technically to acknowledge a much larger claim; it implies that all our time belongs to God, although, considering our weakness, He graciously accepts a prescribed instalment or section of it. And apart from its importance in the life of the servants of God, the public setting apart of a certain measure of time to God’s service is a witness to His claims borne before the world, and calculated to strike the imaginations of men. From this point of view, our English Sunday, whatever may be said about mistakes in the detail of its observance, is a national blessing. It brings the existence and claims of God before the minds even of those who do not make a good use of it. And religious foreigners have not seldom told us that it fills them with envy and admiration; and that we shall do well to guard that which, once lost, is certain to be well-nigh, if not altogether, irrecoverable.
II. A second principle represented in the Lord’s Day is the periodical suspension of human toil. This is closely connected with that of the consecration of time. In order to make the day, by this prohibition, unlike other days, in order to make room for the acknowledgment of God on it, ordinary occupations are suspended. Here again we have a second principle common to the Jewish Sabbath and to the Christian Lord’s Day. In the Old Testament a variety of particular occupations are explicitly forbidden on the Sabbath: sowing and reaping, gathering wood and kindling a fire for cooking, holding markets, every kind of trade, pressing grapes, carrying any sort of burden. In a later age the Pharisees added largely to these prohibitions. They held it unlawful to pluck an ear of corn in passing through a corn-field, or to assist and relieve the sick; although they ruled that an animal which had fallen into a ditch might be helped out, that guests might be invited to an entertainment, and that a child of eight days old might be circumcised. There were thirty-nine Rabbinical prohibitions on the Sabbath, of which one limited a Sabbath-day’s journey to two thousand cubits, and another forbade killing even the most dangerous vermin, while a third proscribed the use of a wooden leg, or a crutch, or a purse. These and other prohibitions illustrate the tendency of mere law to become, sooner or later, through excessive technicality, the caricature and the ruin of moral principle. And it was against these Pharisaic perversions of the Sabbath that our Lord protested by act and word, reminding His countrymen that the Sabbath was made for the moral good of man, and not man for the later legal theory of the Sabbath. But the broad principle of abstinence from labour, however misrepresented in the later Jewish practice, was itself sacred; and it passed into the Christian observance of the Lord’s Day. We see this plainly in notices of the observance in the early times of the Christian Church. Thus Tertullian, writing at the end of the second century, calls the day both Sunday and the Lord’s Day; says that it is, a day of joy, and that to fast on it is wrong; yet adds that “business is put off on it, lest we give place to the devil.” And thus when, under Constantine, the Imperial Government had acknowledged the faith of Christ, and Christianity made itself felt in the principles of legislation, provision was very soon made for the observance of the Lord’s Day. Even four years before the Council of Nicæa, Constantine issued an edict ordering the judges, the town populations, the artists and tradesmen of all kinds, to cease from labour on the Lord’s Day. He allows agricultural labour to go on, if the safety of crops or the health of cattle depends on it. And when we examine the Codes of the Emperors Theodosius and Justinian, in which the experience and traditions of the great Roman lawyers are combined with and modified by the softening influences of Christianity, we find that the observance of the Lord’s Day is carefully provided for. Works of necessity, whether civil or agricultural, are allowed; others are forbidden. Public spectacles of all kinds and the games of the circus are suppressed. And the great teachers of the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries did what they could to second the imperial legislation by exhorting the faithful to abstain from works or sights which profaned the Holy Day of the Christian week. This insistence on a day of freedom from earthly labour is not inconsistent with a recognition of the dignity and the claims of labour. On the contrary, it protects labour, by arresting the excessive expenditure of human strength; and it raises and consecrates labour by leading the workman’s mind to acknowledge the Source and Support of his exertions. It is sometimes asked why this abstinence from labour should be dictated to us; why each man cannot make a Sunday for himself, when his strength or health demands it. The answer is, Because, in a busy, highly worked community, unless all are to abstain from work, none will abstain; since, in point of fact, none can afford to abstain. This is the principle of the Bank holidays: the State comes in to do for labour four times a year, on a small scale, what the Church does on a large scale every week; it essays to make a general rest from work possible by an external sanction. If the sanction of the Sunday rest from toil were to be withdrawn, it would, in a civilisation like ours, go hard, first with labour, and then, at no distant interval, with capital. The dignity and obligation of labour are sufficiently recognised in the precept, “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all that thou hast to do”; and the health and happiness and moral well-being of the labourer are secured by a seventh day, in which the labourer is to” do no manner of work.”
III. Thus the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day agree in affirming two principles: the hallowing a seventh part of time, and the obligation of abstinence from servile work on one day in seven. But are the days identical? May we rightly call the Lord’s Day the Sabbath? These questions must be answered in the negative. Observe that the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Lord’s Day, while agreeing in affirming two principles, differ in two noteworthy respects. First, they differ, as has already been implied, in being kept on distinct days. The Sabbath was kept on the last day of the week: the Lord’s Day is kept on the first. The change was made because there was an imperative reason for making it. For the Lord’s Day and the Sabbath Day differ, secondly, in the reason or motive for observing them. The Sabbath was the weekly commemoration of the finished work of God. It brought before the mind of the Jew the ineffable majesty of the Great Creator, between whom and the noblest work of His hands there yawns an impassable abyss. Thus the Sabbath observance, apart from its directly sanctifying effect upon individual life, was the great protection to the Jews against the idolatry with which they came in contact in Egypt, in Phœnicia, in Babylon, and against the Greek modes of thought which tried them so sorely at Alexandria and in Palestine under the Macedonian kings of a later time. The Christian motive for observing the Lord’s Day is the resurrection of Christ from the dead. That truth is to the Christian Creed what the creation of the world out of nothing is to the Jewish. The Lord’s Day marks the completed Redemption, as the Sabbath had marked the completed Creation. The Resurrection is also the fundamental truth on which Christianity rests; and thus it is as much insisted on by the Christian apostles as is God’s creation of all things by the Jewish prophets. Not, of course, that the creation of all things by God is less precious to the Christian than to the Jew; but it is more taken for granted. In Christian eyes the creation of the world of nature is eclipsed by the creation of the world of grace; and of this last creation the Resurrection is the warrant. The Jewish Sabbath stands in the same relation to the Lord’s Day as does Circumcision to Christian Baptism, as does the Paschal Lamb to the Holy Communion, as does the Law to the Gospel. It is a shadow of a good thing to come. It is only perpetuated by being transfigured, or rather it is so transfigured as to have parted with its identity. Christians stand no longer at the foot of Sinai, but by the empty tomb in the garden outside Jerusalem.
IV. The cessation of ordinary work is not enjoined upon Christians only that they may while away the time, or spend it in aimless self-pleasing, or in something worse. The Lord’s Day is the day upon which our Lord Jesus Christ has a first claim. On this great day every instructed Christian thinks of Him as completing the work of our redemption; as vindicating His character as a Teacher of absolute truth; as triumphing over His enemies; as conquering death in that nature which had hitherto always been subject to its empire; as designing, now that He has overcome the sharpness of death, to open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. It is unlike any other in the week; and the sense of this finds its natural expression in prayer and praise. A well-spent Lord’s Day should always begin with that supreme act of Christian worship in which we meet Jesus verily and indeed, the only public service known to the early and Apostolic Church—the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Redeemer. What the practice of our fathers in the faith was within a few years after the apostles had gone to their rest, we learn from the celebrated letter of Pliny to Trajan. “The Christians,” he says, “are accustomed to meet together on a stated day, before it is light, and to sing hymns to Christ as God, and to bind themselves by a Sacrament, not for any wicked purpose; but never to commit fraud, theft, or adultery—never to break their word, nor to refuse, when called upon, to deliver up any trust.” This was his impression as a heathen, looking at the sacred service from without, and gathering its nature from Christian language about it which he imperfectly understood. How Sunday was kept by Christians about the year 140 is very fully described by Justin Martyr. He says that on that day there was an assembly of all Christians who lived either in town or country; that the writings of the apostles and prophets were read; and that prayer was offered, and alms were collected, and the Holy Sacrament of our Lord’s Body and Blood was celebrated. As we descend the stream of time, illustrations become more numerous. But in the early Church of Christ it was taken for granted that a Christian would observe the Lord’s Day, first of all, by taking part in that solemn Sacrament and Service which the Lord had Himself ordained. Those who begin their Sundays with the Holy Communion know one of the deepest meanings of that promise, “They that seek Me early shall find Me.” Not that it is wise or reverent to suppose that all the religious duties of a Sunday can be properly discharged before breakfast, and that the rest of the day may be spent as we like. No Christian whose heart is in the right place will think this. Later opportunities of public prayer and of instruction in the faith and duty of a Christian will be made the most of, as may be possible for each. Especially should an effort be made on every Sunday in the year to learn some portion of the will of God more perfectly than before; some truth or aspect of His revelation of Himself in the Gospel; some Christian duty, as taught by the example or the words of Christ. Without a positive effort of this kind a Sunday is a lost Sunday: we shall think of it thus in eternity. Where there is the will to seek truth and wisdom there is no difficulty about the way: books, friends, sermons, are at hand. We have but to be in earnest, and all will follow. When the religious obligations of Sunday have been complied with, there are duties of human brotherhood which may well find a place in it: kind deeds and words to friends, visits to the sick, acts of consideration for the poor, are in keeping with the spirit of the day. Above all, it should be made a bright as well as a solemn day for children: first solemn, but then and always bright, so that in their after-life they may look back on the Sundays of childhood as its happiest days. And in itself there would be no harm if, for those who live in towns, museums and picture-galleries could be open on Sundays, just as the fields and the gardens are open to those who live in the country; for Art, like Nature, is to each one of us what we bring to it. The danger of such proposals is that, to realise them, Sunday labour must be employed, in some cases on a very considerable scale; and this would too easily lead the way to its employment for other and general purposes, and so to the abandonment of an essential characteristic of the Lord’s Day.—Canon Liddon.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mar_2:23. Lessons.—
1. Christ never bribes men to become His disciples. Although when occasion arose, He would work a miracle to feed a multitude, He here leaves His followers to stay their hunger as best they may.
2. It is not said that Christ Himself partook of this frugal meal. Probably He refrained from doing so, at the cost of personal discomfort, rather than give offence to His enemies.
3. But while thus declining to use His own right to the full, He will not hinder others from the enjoyment of theirs. On this principle St. Paul afterwards acted (1 Corinthians 10).
The disciples were poor; but they preferred to suffer hunger with Christ rather than enjoy affluence without Him.—Heubner.
Mar_2:24. Lessons.—He who has only the knowledge without the spirit of the law very often opposes when he thinks he is defending it.
2. Pharisaical pride makes men set themselves up for judges of everything, and require an account of everything to be given them.
3. When a man is once full of himself, he decides confidently, especially-when it is to condemn others.
4. Those who love to domineer are not content to exercise their authority upon their own disciples, but would fain bring those of others under their dominion.—P. Quesnel.
Why did not these Pharisees give them bread, and so prevent their doing that to which they objected? We might also fairly ask, How came they to see the disciples? Did they not break the Sabbath by setting a watch over them?
Mar_2:25. Superficial reading prejudicial.—An old preacher was once heard to say, “The Word has mighty free course among many nowadays, for it goes in at one of their ears and out at the other.” So it seems to be with some readers—they read a very great deal, and yet they do not read anything. Their eye glances, but their mind never rests. The soul does not light upon the truth and stay there. It flits over the landscape as a bird might do, but builds no nest. Such reading is worse than useless; it is positively prejudicial to the mind.
Mar_2:27. “The Sabbath was made for man.”—
1. For man as man—whether Jew or Gentile. It was set apart by Divine sanction from the beginning, not merely from the time of Moses, when God only reminded His people of that which had existed long before. The law of six days’ work and one day’s rest is wrought into the very constitution of humanity, and cannot be ignored with impunity.
2. For man as he is—not for man in a fancied state of perfection. To worship God every day in spirit and truth, to raise each day to the level of a Sabbath, is no doubt the goal to be aimed at; but if such a commandment had been given to the Jews, and no day specially separated from the others, they would have ended by reducing all to a dead level of worldliness. They needed the Sabbath as a help to their devotion, and we in this busy age need it too. From the consecration of one day to God, we learn by degrees to consecrate to Him every day, every hour.
Reasons for Sabbath observance.—The following are the reasons given in the Old Testament for the observance of the Sabbath:
1. In memory of the Creation, and of God’s rest from His work (Exo_20:11).
2. To protect those whose time is at the disposal of others (Deu_5:14).
3. In memory of the deliverance of God’s people (Deu_5:15).
4. As a sign between God and His people of their sanctification by Him (Eze_20:12). So now the weekly Lord’s Day, with its Eucharistic celebration, is the great testimony to the Church’s perpetual union with her once crucified but now reigning Head.
The consecration of one day in seven to uses other and more sacred than those of the rest, is ordained by a law which lies a long way behind either the religion of Christ or the religion of Moses. That law is embedded in the very constitution, physical, mental, and moral, of human nature; and as human nature has awakened to its consciousness and its significance, just in that proportion has it ennobled and advanced itself. The first nations in the family of nations to-day are those who, whether early and quickly, or slowly and late, have learned to hallow one day and keep it sacred; and the loftiest achievements in arms, in literature, in science, in philanthropy, in missionary enterprise, and in social advancement, belong to that Anglo-Saxon people whose observance of Sunday is to-day the wonder and the admiration of every intelligent traveller.—Bishop H. C. Potter.
The Continental Sunday a failure.—It is one of the most remarkable facts of our time that those older nations from which some of us propose to borrow our habit of disregard for the Lord’s Day are striving at this very moment with most impressive earnestness to restore the earlier sacredness of that day. In Germany, in Switzerland, and in France there are already organisations of serious and thoughtful men who are seeking to banish the Continental Sunday. They have seen, on the one hand, as any one may see in France to-day, that the removal of the sacred sanctions, which with us hold the first day of the week in a kind of chaste reserve, have eventuated not merely in degrading it to the level of a vulgar holiday, but also of degrading and enslaving him for whom its privileges were, most of all, designed—the wearied, over-worked, and poorly-paid labouring man. He is a person out of whom the most is to be got, and if he can work six days he may as well work the seventh also, so long as there is nothing to forbid it. Such a condition of things may not directly threaten those of us who are protected by wealth from the necessities of daily labour; but if ours is this more favoured condition, all the more do we owe it to our brother-man who is less favoured to see to it that he shall have every sanction with which the law can furnish him to guard his day of rest from being perverted and revolutionised into a day of toil. And if he himself does not see that the more we assimilate Sunday to other days by the amusements, the occupations, the teaching and reading and thinking with which we fill it, the greater is the danger that ultimately we shall lose it altogether, the more earnestly are we bound to strive to disseminate those sounder ideas which shall set this first day of the week and its devout observance before our fellow-men and women of the labouring classes in its true light, and so help and teach them how not to lose but to keep it. We may declaim as we please in behalf of a philosophy which makes all days holy to the universal worship of humanity by making no day holy to the worship of a personal God; but the decay of stated times and seasons for the offering of that worship presages a day when neither God nor man, neither life nor property, neither human weakness nor human needs, have any rights nor any scantiest respect. To learn that fact we need go back no further than the history of France in 1788.—Ibid.
Mar_2:28. Son of Man.—
1. Glorious name that, which Jesus Himself loved most—indeed, we may say to the exclusion of all others—“Son of MAN”; thus identified with the whole race in its joys and sorrows and manifold experiences: a sympathetic bond of union linking to Himself each member of the wide human family.
2. Christ—the Incarnate God—had not only assumed the form and designation of the “Son of Man,” but, as such, He belonged to no exclusive or distinctive nationality. He claimed and asserted a worldwide brotherhood. The sun in the material heavens is the illuminator of no one specific region or section, but of the entire earth: every nation, and kindred, and people, and tongue are served heirs-to his radiance—” nothing hid from the heat thereof.” So was Christ “the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” He took in all climes, all blood, all ages, all civilisations.—J. R. Macduff, D.D.
Christ’s lordship over the Sabbath.—Nothing can show the Divine nature of our Lord more clearly than that He is above such a law of God, so that He should modify it, relax it, change it at His pleasure. He exercised but a small part of this authority when He freed His disciples from the yoke of its burdensome Pharisaic observance. He exercised His lordship over the day far more royally when He by His Spirit made the day of His resurrection the weekly religious festival of His Church. By this He gave it altogether a new character. Henceforth it is a day not of mere rest, but of renewed life—the life of His own resurrection; and so its characteristic ordinance is not the slaying of beasts, but the life-giving celebration of the Sacrament of His own Risen Body.—M. F. Sadler.
The freedom of Christ’s service.—The service of God, and the service of the Temple, by universal consent, superseded the Sabbath law. But Christ was greater than the Temple, and His service more truly that of God, and higher than that of the outward Temple—and the Sabbath was intended for man, to serve God: therefore Christ and His service were superior to the Sabbath law. Thus much would be intelligible to these Pharisees, although they would not receive it, because they believed not on Him as the Sent of God. But to us the words mean more than this. They preach not only that the service of Christ is that of God, but that, even more than in the Temple, all of work or of liberty is lawful which this service requires. We are free while we are doing anything for Christ: God loves mercy, and demands not sacrifice; His sacrifice is the service of Christ, in heart, and life, and work. We are not free to do anything we please; but we are free to do anything needful or helpful, while we are doing any service to Christ. He is the Lord of the Sabbath, whom we serve in and through the Sabbath. And even this is significant, that, when designating Himself Lord of the Sabbath, it is as “the Son of Man.” It shows that the narrow Judaistic form regarding the day and the manner of observance is enlarged into the wider Law, which applies to all humanity. Under the New Testament the Sabbath has, as the Church, become Catholic, and its Lord is Christ as the Son of Man, to whom the Body Catholic offers the acceptable service of heart and life.—A. Edersheim, D.D.
Christians are lords of the Sabbath.—We also are, in our measure, “lords of the Sabbath,” which was made for man; we have a Christian liberty, which, remember, implies a deep Christian responsibility, to regulate our method of observing the Sabbath, under God’s general laws, so as to make it to ourselves not a burden, but an exceeding spiritual blessing. This liberty indeed is ours, only in proportion as we are living as real members of Christ, having His mind, and in our deeds being like Him. So far as we are sinful we forfeit our privileges, even as a life of slavery makes men unfit for freedom; we may require the constraints of a law, and lose the full enjoyment, the perfect blessing, of the Lord’s Day. But still Christ’s words show us what we should aim at and desire; they teach, us how to look on our Sundays, as blessings for which we may thank God; and stir us up to use them, not by any formal rules, still less by any gloom or compulsion, but freely and thankfully, for our blessing and happiness both of body and soul. They were made for us; and we, by God’s grace, are lords over them, only under Him who is God and Lord of all.—Bishop Barry.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
Mar_2:27. Benefit of the rest-day.—Man! man! this is the great creator of wealth. The difference between the soil of Campania and Spitzbergen is insignificant compared with the difference presented by two countries—the one inhabited by men full of moral and physical vigour, the other by beings plunged in an intellectual decrepitude. Hence it is that we are not impoverished, but on the contrary enriched by this seventh day, which we have for so many years devoted to rest. This day is not lost. While the machinery is stopped, while the car rests on the road, while the treasury is silent, while the smoke ceases to rise from the chimney of the factory, the nation enriches itself none the less than during the working days of the week. Man, the machine of all machines, the one by the side of which all the inventions of the Watts and the Arkwrights are as nothing, is recuperating and gaining strength so well, that on Monday he returns to his work with his mind clearer, with more courage for his work, and with renewed vigour. I will never believe that that which renders a people stronger, wiser, and better can ever turn to its impoverishment.—In The Life of Frank Buckland, the eminent naturalist, who devoted himself so thoroughly to the scientific and practical study of the river and sea-fisheries of Great Britain, there is the following testimony to the value of Sabbath rest: “March 1866.—I am now working from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and then a bit in the evening—fourteen hours a day; but, thank God, it does not hurt me. I should, however, collapse if it were not for Sunday. The machinery has time to get cool, the mill-wheel ceases to patter the water, the mill-head is ponded up, and the superfluous water let off by an easy, quiet current, which leads to things above.”—In one of the most densely populated parts of the city a gentleman lately visited the house of a poor, hard-working, infidel cobbler. The man was busy at his last, and had scarce time to look up at his unwelcome visitor. “That is hard work.” “It is, sir.” “For how many hours a day have you to labour here—twelve?” “Yes, and more, sir. I am never off this seat under a fourteen or fifteen hours’ spell of it.” “That is sore toil for a bit of bread.” “Indeed it is, sir; and very thankful am I when the week’s end comes. What would become of me, and the likes of me, without that rest?” “And who, friend, think you, gave you that rest? Came it by accident, or arrangement, or how?” There came no answer to that: the cobbler hung his head; the man was honest; the sceptic was ashamed.—An agricultural labourer named Alègre, about sixty years of age, was arrested during the French Revolution, and put in prison for not having worked on a Sunday. A week after his release he presented himself, dressed in his Sunday clothes, before the Committee. On being asked what he wanted, he replied that he was getting old, and that when he had worked all the week he was tired out and wanted rest, so that if he went to labour on Sunday he should rob his employer, and that therefore he preferred to come and be put in prison. The Committee, who no doubt thought the man had come to make a denunciation, were nonplussed at the strange humour of this singular request, shrugged their shoulders, and bade their petitioner go about his business.—William Wilberforce said, “I can truly declare that to me the Sabbath has been invaluable.” When Sir Samuel Romilly, Solicitor-General during Fox’s administration, committed suicide, Mr. Wilberforce said, “If he had suffered his mind to enjoy such occasional remission, it is highly probable that the strings of life would never have snapped from over-tension.” The celebrated Castlereagh, who was Foreign Secretary in 1812, committed suicide in 1822. Wilberforce said, “Poor fellow! he was certainly deranged—the effect probably of continual wear of the mind and the non-observance of the Sabbath.”—After all, the question is not so much one of the safety and well-being of life and property as of the higher well-being of the personal soul. A great statesman is reported to have said to one who sought of him an interview concerning secular matters on the Lord’s Day: “I must keep one day in which to realise what I am and where I am going!”—A world without a Sabbath, says Mr. Beecher, would be like a man without a smile, like a summer without flowers, like a homestead without a garden. It is the joyous day of the whole week.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain Mat 12:1-18; Mar 2:23-28, and Luk 6:1-5. We find…
CHAPTER 14
JESUS RETURNS TO GALILEE
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Mat 12:1-18; Mar 2:23-28, and Luk 6:1-5. We find that our Lord spent but two weeks at Jerusalem during this tour, preaching and working miracles all the time, of which we have no record; but the fifth chapter of John giving us one notable miracle and one powerful sermon. Luke informs us that the incident, here recorded by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, took place on the Sabbath following the Passover, which began on the Sabbath, ran through the intervening week, and closed on the ensuing Sabbath; thus, according to Luke’s testimony, giving our Savior two-weeks’ evangelistic tour in Jerusalem. Inquiry naturally rises why He returns to Galilee so soon, when He had spent about ten months of the preceding year in that country. Our Lord gives the reason (Joh 4:44). Jerusalem and Judea were the regions of great population, while Galilee was the more thinly settled. Again, as He was a native Galilean, His ministry would not attract the amount of popular attention there as at Jerusalem, and especially on occasions of the great festivals, thus augmenting the probability of their cutting short His ministry by crowning Him King. Therefore He did most of His preaching and performed most of His mighty works in the comparatively thinly populated regions of Galilee.
Mark: “And it came to pass that He was journeying on the Sabbath, through the corn-fields, and His disciples began to pursue the journey, plucking the ears [i.e., the wheat-heads]. And the Pharisees continued to say to Him, Behold what they are doing on the Sabbath, which is not lawful. And He said to them, Have you not read what David did when he had need, and he and those who were with him were hungry? How he entered into the house of God, in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which it is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and he gave it to those who were with him? And He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.” Matthew: “Have you not read in the law that the priests on the Sabbath in the ’temple do profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? But I
say unto you, There is One here greater than the temple. If you had known what that is, I wish mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent.” Matthew, Mark, and Luke all relate this incident, which transpired on the Sabbath following the Passover, while our Lord and His disciples were prosecuting their pedestrian journey back to Galilee. Remember that we are now in the beginning of the second year of our Savior’s ministry, two more years and two Passovers yet to come. We see our Lord’s critics raise no objection to their plucking the wheat-heads, rubbing them out in their hands and eating them (it is more probable it was barley, as this occurred about the first of May, the beginning of the barley harvest, the wheat coming on about a month later), as this privilege was granted in the law of Moses (Deu 21:2); but they arraign Him for violating the Sabbath, as this happened to take place on that day, showing how very fanatical they were, that they wouldn’t allow them to get a little something to eat on the Sabbath. Excessive zeal on non- essentials has characterized the fallen Churches of every age. At this point they murdered the martyrs, too blind to see their holy lives, and actually massacring them because they did not conform to the non-essential human regulations of a fallen ecclesiasticism. Our Savior here gives them the case of the priests, who offer the sacrifices, and work hard in the temple on the Sabbath, and are blameless. He also corroborates it by the case of David (1Sa 21:1-7), who, in his flight from Saul, came to Nob, in the days of Abiathar, the priest, he and his men, in their extremity and destitution, eating the shewbread in the temple, which was lawful only for the priests to eat. “I wish mercy and not sacrifice” is the key to this entire problem. God wants a broken heart and a contrite spirit, a penitent soul, on whom He can have mercy, free and unlimited — i.e., save him for nothing, except the vicarious work of Christ — instead of a great sacrifice, offered in pomp and demonstration by some rich person, whose heart is far from Him, vainly flattering himself that he can pay his way to heaven. In this way millions of wealthy Church members make their bed in hell, depending on their offerings to the Lord, instead of falling, a miserable, bankrupt suppliant, at the feet of Jesus, and there crying for mercy till the heavens bow, and God comes down and answers the prayer of the broken-hearted penitent in the mighty uplift of His omnipotent hand.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain Mar 2:23 - Mar 2:28. - Mar 3:1 -…
Mark
WORKS WHICH HALLOW THE SABBATH
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Mar 2:23 - Mar 2:28. - Mar 3:1 - Mar 3:5.
These two Sabbath scenes make a climax to the preceding paragraphs, in which Jesus has asserted His right to brush aside Rabbinical ordinances about eating with sinners and about fasting. Here He goes much further, in claiming power over the divine ordinance of the Sabbath. Formalists are moved to more holy horror by free handling of forms than by heterodoxy as to principles. So we can understand how the Pharisees’ suspicions were exacerbated to murderous hate by these two incidents. It is doubtful whether Mark puts them together because they occurred together, or because they bear on the same subject. They deal with the two classes of ‘works’ which later Christian theology has recognised as legitimate exceptions to the law of the Sabbath rest; namely, works of necessity and of mercy.
Whether we adopt the view that the disciples were clearing a path through standing corn, or the simpler one, that they gathered the ears of corn on the edge of a made path as they went, the point of the Pharisees’ objection was that they broke the Sabbath by plucking, which was a kind of reaping. According to Luke, their breach of the Rabbinical exposition of the law was an event more dreadful in the eyes of these narrow pedants; for there was not only reaping, but the analogue of winnowing and grinding, for the grains were rubbed in the disciples’ palms. What daring sin! What impious defiance of law! But of what law? Not that of the Fourth Commandment, which simply forbade ‘labour,’ but that of the doctors’ expositions of the commandment, which expended miraculous ingenuity and hair-splitting on deciding what was labour and what was not. The foundations of that astonishing structure now found in the Talmud were, no doubt, laid before Christ. This expansion of the prohibition, so as to take in such trifles as plucking and rubbing a handful of heads of corn, has many parallels there.
But it is noteworthy that our Lord does not avail Himself of the distinction between God’s commandment and men’s exposition of it. He does not embarrass himself with two controversies at once. At fit times He disputed Rabbinical authority, and branded their casuistry as binding grievous burdens on men; but here He allows their assumption of the equal authority of their commentary and of the text to pass unchallenged, and accepts the statement that His disciples had been doing what was unlawful on the Sabbath, and vindicates their breach of law.
Note that His answer deals first with an example of similar breach of ceremonial law, and then rises to lay down a broad principle which governed that precedent, vindicates the act of the disciples, and draws for all ages a broad line of demarcation between the obligations of ceremonial and of moral law. Clearly, His adducing David’s act in taking the shewbread implies that the disciples’ reason for plucking the ears of corn was not to clear a path but to satisfy hunger. Probably, too, it suggests that He also was hungry, and partook of the simple food.
Note, too, the tinge of irony in that ‘Did ye never read?’ In all your minute study of the letter of the Scripture, did you never take heed to that page? The principle on which the priest at Nob let the hungry fugitives devour the sacred bread, was the subordination of ceremonial law to men’s necessities. It was well to lay the loaves on the table in the Presence, but it was better to take them and feed the fainting servant of God and his followers with them. Out of the very heart of the law which the Pharisees appealed to, in order to spin restricting prohibitions, Jesus drew an example of freedom which ran on all-fours with His disciples’ case. The Pharisees had pored over the Old Testament all their lives, but it would have been long before they had found such a doctrine as this in it.
Jesus goes on to bring out the principle which shaped the instance he gave. He does not state it in its widest form, but confines it to the matter in hand-Sabbath obligations. Ceremonial law in all its parts is established as a means to an end-the highest good of men. Therefore, the end is more important than the means; and, in any case of apparent collision, the means must give way that the end may be secured. External observances are not of permanent, unalterable obligation. They stand on a different footing from primal moral duties, which remain equally imperative whether doing them leads to physical good or evil. David and his men were bound to keep these, whether they starved or not; but they were not bound to leave the shew bread lying in the shrine, and starve.
Man is made for the moral law. It is supreme, and he is under it, whether obedience leads to death or not. But all ceremonial regulations are merely established to help men to reach the true end of their being, and may be suspended or modified by his necessities. The Sabbath comes under the class of such ceremonial regulations, and may therefore be elastic when the pressure of necessity is brought to bear.
But note that our Lord, even while thus defining the limits of the obligation, asserts its universality. ‘The Sabbath was made for man’-not for a nation or an age, but for all time and for the whole race. Those who would sweep away the observance of the weekly day of rest are fond of quoting this text; but they give little heed to its first clause, and do not note that their favourite passage upsets their main contention, and establishes the law of the Sabbath as a possession for the world for ever. It is not a burden, but a privilege, made and meant for man’s highest good.
Christ’s conclusion that He is ‘Lord even of the Sabbath’ is based upon the consideration of the true design of the day. If it is once understood that it is appointed, not as an inflexible duty, like the obligation of truth or purity, but as a means to man’s good, physical and spiritual, then He who has in charge all man’s higher interests, and who is the perfect realisation of the ideal of manhood, has full authority to modify and suspend the ceremonial observance if in His unerring judgment the suspension is desirable.
This is not an abrogation of the Sabbath, but, on the contrary, a confirmation of the universal and merciful appointment. It does not give permission to keep or neglect it, according to whim or for the sake of amusement, but it does draw, strong and clear, the distinction between a positive rite which may be modified, and an unchangeable precept of the moral law which it is better for a man to die than to neglect or transgress.
The second Sabbath scene deals with the same question from another point of view. Works of necessity warranted the supercession of Sabbath law; works of beneficence are no breaches of it. There are circumstances in which it is right to do what is not ‘lawful’ on the Sabbath, for such works as healing the man with a withered hand are always ‘lawful.’
We note the cruel indifference to the sufferer’s woe which so characteristically accompanies a religion which is mainly a matter of outside observances. What cared the Pharisees whether the poor cripple was healed or no? They wanted him cured only that they might have a charge against Jesus. Note, too, the strange condition of mind, which recognised Christ’s miraculous power, and yet considered Him an impious sinner.
Observe our Lord’s purpose to make the miracle most conspicuous. He bids the man stand out in the midst, before all the cold eyes of malicious Pharisees and gaping spectators. A secret espionage was going on in the synagogue. He sees it all, and drags it into full light by setting the man forth and by His sudden, sharp thrust of a question. He takes the first word this time, and puts the stealthy spies on the defensive. His interrogation may possibly be regarded as having a bearing on their conduct, for there was murder in their hearts {Mar 2:6}. There they sat with solemn faces, posing as sticklers for law and religion, and all the while they were seeking grounds for killing Him. Was that Sabbath work? Whether would He, if He cured the shrunken arm, or they, if they gathered accusations with the intention of compassing His death, be the Sabbath-breakers?
It was a sharp, swift cut through their cloak of sanctity; but it has a wider scope than that. The question rests on the principle that good omitted is equivalent to evil committed. If we can save, and do not, the responsibility of loss lies on us. If we can rescue, and let die, our brother’s blood reddens our hands. Good undone is not merely negative. It is positive evil done. If from regard to the Sabbath we refrained from doing some kindly deed alleviating a brother’s sorrow, we should not be inactive, but should have done something by our very not doing, and what we should do would be evil. It is a pregnant saying which has many solemn applications.
No wonder that they ‘held their peace.’ Unless they had been prepared to abandon their position, there was nothing to be said. That silence indicated conviction and obstinate pride and rooted hatred which would not be convinced, conciliated, or softened. Therefore Jesus looked on them with that penetrating, yearning gaze, which left ineffaceable remembrances on the beholders, as the frequent mention of it indicates.
The emotions in Christ’s heart as He looked on the dogged, lowering faces are expressed in a remarkable phrase, which is probably best taken as meaning that grief mingled with His anger. A wondrous glimpse into that tender heart, which in all its tenderness is capable of righteous indignation, and in all its indignation does not set aside its tenderness! Mark that not even the most rigid prohibitions were broken by the process of cure. It was no breach of the fantastic restrictions which had been engrafted on the commandment, that Jesus should bid the man put out his hand. Nobody could find fault with a man for doing that. These two things, a word and a movement of muscles, were all. So He did ‘heal on the Sabbath,’ and yet did nothing that could be laid hold of.
But let us not miss the parable of the restoration of the maimed and shrunken powers of the soul, which the manner of the miracle gives. Whatever we try to do because Jesus bids us, He will give us strength to do, however impossible to our unaided powers it is. In the act of stretching out the hand, ability to stretch it forth is bestowed, power returns to atrophied muscles, stiffened joints are suppled, the blood runs in full measure through the veins. So it is ever. Power to obey attends on the desire and effort to obey.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [XXXVIII. Jesus Defends…
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [XXXVIII. Jesus Defends Disciples].
XXXVIII. JESUS DEFENDS DISCIPLES WHO PLUCK GRAIN ON THE SABBATH. (Probably while on the way from Jerusalem to Galilee.) aMATT. XII. 1-8; bMARK II. 23-28; cLUKE VI. 1-5.
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b23 And c1 Now it came to pass a1 At that season bthat he aJesus went bwas going on the ca bsabbath day through the grainfields; aand his disciples were hungry and began bas they went, to pluck the ears. aand to eat, cand his disciples plucked the ears, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands. [This lesson fits in chronological order with the last, if the Bethesda events took place at Passover. The paschal lamb was eaten on the fourteenth Nisan, or about the first of April. Clark fixes the exact date as the 29th of March, in A. D. 28, which is the beginning of the harvest season. Barley ripens in the Jordan valley about the 1st of April, but on the uplands it is reaped as late as May. Wheat ripens from one to three weeks later than barley, and upland wheat (and Palestine has many [209] mountain plateaus) is often harvested in June. If Scaliger is right, as most critics think he is, in fixing this sabbath as the first after the Passover, it is probable that it was barley which the disciples ate. Barley bread was and is a common food, and it is common to chew the grains of both it and wheat.] c2 But b24 And ccertain of the Pharisees awhen they saw it, said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath. bwhy do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful? cWhy do ye that which it is not lawful to do on the sabbath day? [The Pharisees did not object to the act of taking the grain. Such plucking of the grain was allowed by the law ( Deu_23:25) and is still practiced by hungry travelers in Palestine, which is, and has always been, an unfenced land, the roads, or rather narrow paths, of which lead through the grainfields, so that the grain is in easy reach of the passer-by. The Pharisees objected to the plucking of grain because they considered it a kind of reaping, and therefore working on the sabbath day. The scene shows the sinlessness of Jesus in strong light. Every slightest act of his was submitted to a microscopic scrutiny.] a3 But b25 And cJesus answering them asaid unto them, Have ye not read bDid ye never read ceven this [There is a touch of irony here. The Pharisees prided themselves upon their knowledge of Scriptures, but they had not read (so as to understand them) even its most common incidents], what David did, bwhen he had need, and was hungry, he, and they that were with him? 26 How he entered into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest, cand took and ate the showbread, and gave also to them that were with him; which it is not lawful to eat awhich it was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them that were with him, but only csave for the priests alone? [Jesus here refers to the incident recorded at 1Sa_21:1-6. Ahimelech and Abiathar have been confused by transcribers. It should read Ahimelech. However, we are not referred to the actions of Abiathar, but to those of [210] David. He went with his followers to the tabernacle at Nob near Jerusalem, and being hungry, asked bread of the priests. There was no bread at hand save the showbread. This bread was called showbread because it was "set out" or "exhibited" before Jehovah. It consisted of twelve loaves, which were baked upon the sabbath, and were placed, hot, in two rows upon the showbread table every sabbath day. The twelve old loaves which were then removed were to be eaten by the priests and no one else ( Lev_24:5-9). It was these twelve old loaves which were given to David ( 1Sa_21:6). Since the showbread was baked on the sabbath, the law itself ordered work on that day. The vast majority of commentators look upon this passage as teaching that necessity abrogates what they are pleased to call the ceremonial laws of God. Disregarding the so-called ceremonial laws of God is a very dangerous business, as is witnessed by the case of Uzzah ( 2Sa_6:6, 2Sa_6:7), and Uzziah ( 2Ch_26:16-23). Christ never did it, and strenuously warned those who followed the example of the scribes and Pharisees in teaching such a doctrine ( Mat_5:17-20). The law of necessity was not urged by him as a justifiable excuse for making bread during the forty days' fast of the temptation. Life is not higher than law. "All that a man hath will he give for his life," is Satan's doctrine, not Christ's ( Job_2:4). The real meaning, as we understand it, will be developed below in our treatment of Num_28:9), and two lambs were killed on the sabbath in addition to the daily [211] sacrifice. This involved the killing, skinning, and cleaning of the animals, and the building of the fire to consume the sacrifice. They also trimmed the gold lamps, burned incense, and performed various other duties. The profanation of the Sabbath, however, was not real, but merely apparent. Jesus cites this priestly work to prove that the Sabbath prohibition was not universal, and hence might not include what the disciples had done. The fourth commandment did not forbid work absolutely, but labor for worldly gain. Activity in the work of God was both allowed and commanded.] 6 But I say [asserting his own authority] unto you, that one greater than the temple is here. [The word "greater" is in the neuter gender, and the literal meaning is therefore "a greater thing than the temple." The contrast may be between the service of the temple and the service of Christ, or it may be a contrast between the divinity, sacredness, or divine atmosphere which hallowed the temple, and the divinity or Godhead of Christ. But, however we take it, the meaning is ultimately a contrast between Christ and the temple, similar to the contrast between himself and Solomon, etc. ( Mat_12:41, Mat_12:42). It was a startling saying as it fell on Jewish ears, for to them the temple at Jerusalem was the place honored by the very Shekinah of the unseen God, and the only place of effective worship and atonement. If the temple service justified the priests in working upon the Sabbath day, much more did the service of Jesus, who was not only the God of the temple, but was himself the true temple, of which the other was merely the symbol, justify these disciples in doing that which was not legally, but merely traditionally, unlawful. Jesus here indirectly anticipates the priesthood of his disciples-- 1Pe_2:5.] 7 But if ye had known what this meaneth, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless. [This passage is quoted from Hos_6:6, and is reiterated at Mat_9:13. It is an assertion of the superiority of inward life over outward form, for the form is nothing if the heart is wrong. The saying is first suggested by David himself ( Psa_51:16, Psa_51:17), [212] after which it is stated by Hosea and amplified by Paul ( 1Co_13:3). The quotation has a double reference both to David and the disciples as above indicated. Having given the incident in the life of David, Jesus passes on from it without comment, that he may lay down by another example the principle which justified it. This principle we have just treated, and we may state it thus: A higher law, where it conflicts with a lower one, suspends or limits the lower one at the point of conflict. Thus the higher laws of worship in the temple suspended the lower law of sabbath observance, and thus also the higher law of mercy suspended the lower law as to the showbread when David took it and mercifully gave it to his hungry followers, and when God in mercy permitted this to be done. And thus, had they done what was otherwise unlawful, the disciples would have been justified in eating by the higher law of Christ's service. And thus also would Christ have been justified in permitting them to eat by the law of mercy, which was superior to that which rendered the seventh day to God as a sacrifice.] 8 For the Son of man is Lord of the sabbath. b27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: 28 so that the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath. [The expression "Son of man" is used eighty-eight times in the New Testament, and always means the Messiah, and not man generally. The Sabbath was made for man's convenience and blessing, and so Jesus, who was complete and perfect manhood, was Lord of it. But men who were incomplete and imperfect in their manhood, can not trust their fallible judgment to tamper with it. Though the day was made for man, this fact would not entitle man to use it contrary to the laws under which it was granted. As Lord of the day Jesus had a right to interpret it and to apply it, and to substitute the Lord's day for it. In asserting his Lordship over it, Jesus takes the question outside the range of argument and brings it within the range of authority.] [213]
[FFG 209-213]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Lord of the Sabbath. Mar 2:23-28
The Lord of the Sabbath. Mar 2:23-28
v. 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.
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v. 24. And the Pharisees said unto Him, Behold, why do they on the Sabbath-day that which is not lawful?
v. 25. And He said unto them, Have ye never read what David did when he had need, and was an hungered, he, and they that were with him,
v. 26. how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar, the high priest, and did eat the showbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
v. 27. And He said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath;
v. 28. therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath
The Pharisees did not abate their jealous, hawk-like watch over Jesus and His disciples for one minute. And the Lord, on His part, in no way attempted to escape from them. The lessons which He wished to convey to them would be brought out all the sooner with their vigilant presence ever near. Jesus and His disciples, on a Sabbath, were taking a walk through the fields of grain, which were just about ready for harvest. There were in those days simple, rough footpaths that have existed in Palestine since time immemorial. "If a landowner wished to raise grain in a field through which one of these paths ran, he plowed up to the very edge of the narrow path and put in his seed. " It was along one of these paths that the little company of Jesus was strolling, they were making their way slowly. And where the grain had encroached upon the path, the disciples, being hungry, pulled up the stalks. This they continued, as they went, and then rubbed the ears between the hands to extract the kernels, which they ate. Here the Pharisees complained to the Lord about the disciples, although their accusation implied a criticism of the Master for permitting the pulling of the stalks, which they identified with reaping, and the rubbing of the ears, which they identified with threshing. But Jesus defended His disciples by referring the Pharisees to the example of David, who, in a similar situation, when he and his men were in need, did not hesitate to take the showbread out of the hands of Abiathar, the high priest, and to distribute the cakes among his men, 1Sa 21:6. Ordinarily, only the priests were permitted to eat this bread, Lev 24:8-9, but in a case of necessity, above all, love is the fulfillment of the Law, and no one ever thought of censuring David for his action. Note: Either Ahimelech bore the additional name Abiathar, or father and son officiated together at Nobe, in this manner that David received the showbread from Ahimelech with the distinct sanction of Abiathar. The conclusion which Jesus draws from this story is brief and to the point: The Sabbath is given to man, and not man to the Sabbath. The Sabbath, as God intended it for the Jews, was to serve them as a day of rest, but His intention never had been to make them slaves of its observance and to bind them with fetters that would render life unpleasant for them. The Sabbath is thus only a means to an end. And so far as the whole question is concerned, this truth stands for all times. Jesus, as the Son of Man, as the divine-human Lord of all, has the right to abrogate the Old Testament Sabbath if He so chooses. The old injunctions concerning sacrifices, new moons, Sabbaths, etc. , were in force till He came. But the body itself is of Christ, Col 2:16-17. The Third Commandment enjoins only so much upon the Christians that they gladly hear and learn the Word of God. He that does this much keeps the Third Commandment in the sense of the New Testament and need not be worried by the Sabbath fanatics of these latter days.
Summary.Jesus heals a paralytic, calls the publican Levi to be His disciple, gives a short discourse concerning tasting and the difference between the old and the new dispensation, and declares Himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Jesus gives the Pharisees an example from scripture to show why the disciples were not wrong to pick grain on the Sabbath.
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pick heads of grain ... doing something that is not lawful on the Sabbath day
Plucking grain in others' fields and eating it was not considered stealing. The question was whether it was lawful to do this on the Sabbath.
pick heads of grain
The disciples picked the heads of grain to eat the kernels, or seeds, in them. This can be worded to show the full meaning. AT: "pick heads of grain and eat the seeds" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
heads of grain
The "heads" are the topmost part of the wheat plant, which is a kind of tall grass. The heads hold the mature grain or seeds of the plant.
Look, why are they doing something that is not lawful on the Sabbath day?
The Pharisees ask Jesus a question to condemn him. This can be translated as a statement. AT: "Look! They are breaking the Jewish law concerning the Sabbath." (See: Rhetorical Question)
Look
"Look at this" or "Listen." This is a word used to get the attention of someone to show them something. If there is a word in your language that is used to draw a person's attention to something, you could use that here.
translationWords
Sabbath
Jesus
grain
disciple
Pharisee
law
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 2:23-28 In this controversy, Jesus and his disciples are…
2:23-28 In this controversy, Jesus and his disciples are accused of breaking the Sabbath (Exod 20:8-11). Picking grain by hand in another person’s field was lawful (Deut 23:25). The charge was that by rubbing the chaff from the kernels, the disciples were working on the Sabbath, which was forbidden (Exod 34:21).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.