The passage comes from Mark 2:23-28 and its parallel passages: Matthew 12:1-14 and Luke 6:1-5. You can download the parallel passage worksheet. The Pharisees confront Jesus about his disciples' apparent violation of sabbath law in scripture. Though the passage does not explicitly reference the scripture they had in mind, there are ample passages in the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible) such as one of the ten commandments, from Exodus 20:9-10, that they could have used to justify their concern. Other examples come from Exodus 23:12 or Deuteronomy 5:14.
Jesus responds to their reproof by citing a scripture passage (apparently to justify this break with traditional interpretation of the Sabbath prohibitions against engaging in any kind of work). Note that Jesus does not dispute that the disciples are working on the Sabbath. He gives an example (and in Matthew, several examples) of scriptural precedent that allows for certain kinds of work on the sabbath, in what might be called a discourse on the spirit of the law.
Jesus reminds them of 1 Samuel 21:1-9 a story from scripture Jesus sarcastically suggests that the Pharisees might not have read about how King David and his men were allowed to eat sacred bread of presence that scripture mandated was reserved only for the priests, in Leviticus 24:5-9. Exodus 25:30 also mentions this Bread of the Presence. One significant aspect of this story from 1 Samuel involves the ease with which the priest Ahimelek works out a scriptural solution that will allow him to give bread reserved only for priests to David and his men (who were fugitive warriors, not priests). He asks only whether David and his men have abstained from sexual intercourse, which David assures him that they have. Perhaps Ahimelek was thinking of Exodus 19:15 or Leviticus 15:18, both of which stipulated abstaining from sexual intercourse in order to maintain ritual purity.
The priest makes this stipulation in order to justify feeding David and his hungry men with bread that had been consecrated for the priests (Jesus' disciples were also hungry for grain that was prohibited by Sabbath law).
In the Matthew parallel, Jesus next cites Numbers 28:9-10, another example where the Law allows priests (again) to break the Sabbath law prohibiting work (assuming the act of sacrifice involved work for the priests conducting the sacrifice). You can find a similar passage in John 7:22-24, in which Jesus refers to a Mosaic Law of circumcision in Leviticus 12:3 (and corrects himself by referring to the earlier patriarchal circumcision covenant commandment in Genesis 17:10-14). This law, Jesus tells the crowd who accuses him of being possessed by a demon, takes precedence over the law against work on the Sabbath - in Jewish practice if not in explicit Jewish theology.
In this Matthean second citation (and the similar passage in John's Gospel), Jesus employs the logic of a more important command trumping a less important one, implying that his disciples' act of breaking the Sabbath prohibitions against any kind of work to feed their hunger is more lawful than going hungry in order to obey the Sabbath law. This is the kind of argument on which the concluding teaching in Mark is based: "The Sabbath was made for [humanity], and not [humanity] for the Sabbath (Mar 2:27 NLT). Significantly, Matthew and Luke omit this general rule and repeat only the one about Jesus: "the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."
Matthew also includes a reference to the prophet Hosea (from Hosea 6:6) that further buttresses his argument that mercy makes flexible the boundaries of the Sabbath Law.
Below is a table comparing the three synoptic (Greek word meaning "seen together" and referring to Matthew, Mark, and Luke) versions of this passage (the words in green are common to all three; the words in blue are common to Matthew and Mark; and the words in blue are common to Mark and Luke). Click on the graphic for a larger view.
Thanks, Bo, for the great example of Jesus himself using head and heart to wrestle with Scripture. It's a reminder that, even though he brought some seemingly radical interpretations of Scripture to the Jewish community, he was a Jew, and felt compelled to make his case from the Jewish perspective. I think the result is and was more credible than if he had merely thrown out the Jewish law.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting case, isn't it, Doug? I agree with you that he would have cut his own feet out from under himself if he had thrown out the Law entirely - plus this kind of "haggling" over proper interpretation must have been a tradition he inherited (particularly if he was - as some scholars suggest - illiterate). What's amazing to me is how they all (illiterate or not) seem to carry around these texts in their heads, ready to duke it out at a moment's notice.
ReplyDeleteThere's another great example of this kind of interpretive discourse in Mark 10:1-12 and it's parallel in Matthew 19:3-12.
If you've still got the Armstrong book, you need to read the story on pages 87-88 (beginning with the last paragraph: "There could be no definitive interpretation of scripture." It's a mind-boggling story.