The Sabbath
Mark 2:23-28 The Sabbath
23 And it came to pass on the Sabbath he is going through the grainfields; and his disciples began to make a way (ὁδὸν ποιεῖν) plucking the heads of grain. 24And the Pharisees were saying to him, 'Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?' 25And he said to them, 'Have you never read what David did when he was hungry and in need of food— he and those with him? 26How he entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he also gave some to his companions.'1 27Then he said to them, 'The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; 28so ho huios tou anthropou is lord even of the sabbath.'
23Καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς σάββασιν παραπορεύεσθαι διὰ τῶν σπορίμων, καὶ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ἤρξαντο ὁδὸν ποιεῖν τίλλοντες τοὺς στάχυας. 24καὶ οἱ Φαρισαῖοι ἔλεγον αὐτῷ· ἴδε τί ποιοῦσιν τοῖς σάββασιν ὃ οὐκ ἔξεστιν; 25καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς· οὐδέποτε ἀνέγνωτε τί ἐποίησεν Δαυὶδ ὅτε χρείαν ἔσχεν καὶ ἐπείνασεν αὐτὸς καὶ οἱ μετ' αὐτοῦ, 26πῶς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ θεοῦ ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως καὶ τοὺς ἄρτους τῆς προθέσεως ἔφαγεν, οὓς οὐκ ἔξεστιν φαγεῖν εἰ μὴ τοὺς ἱερεῖς, καὶ ἔδωκεν καὶ τοῖς σὺν αὐτῷ οὖσιν; 27Καὶ ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς· τὸ σάββατον διὰ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐγένετο καὶ οὐχ ὁ ἄνθρωπος διὰ τὸ σάββατον· 28ὥστε κύριός ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ τοῦ σαββάτου.
Translation Notes
to make a way (ὁδὸν ποιεῖν) (vv23) The translation here is important because it alludes to Mark 1:3 and the quotation from Isaiah: τὴν ὁδὸν κυρίου, εὐθείας ποιεῖτε τὰς τρίβους αὐτοῦ. Hodon poiein can mean to make a journey or be "walking along,"2 but more often means to make a road or way. The possessive pronoun their in the NRSV translation (making their way) is supplied by context, but is not mandated by the Greek.
The Gift of the Sabbath
For any society to develop, let alone persist, there need to be conventions which control violence and enable cohesion. All communities of Homo sapiens achieve this control and cohesion, each with a greater or lesser aspiration to transcend both violence and the universal fear of death which drives that violence. At our best, we develop spiritual disciplines which humanise us; that is, which bring us closer to living in the joy which God desires for us. In this pericope, Jesus (and Mark) seek to refine which spiritual disciplines give life.
I begin our exploration of Mark 2:23-28 in this way because our casual antisemitism3 primes us to misread spiritual disciplines gifted to Israel by God as trivial and even obsessive rules of inferior spiritual worth, or of no value at all. If we do not understand that both the keeping of Sabbath and observing food rules are a gift from God, then we will do with Jesus' liberating and humanising Good News (euangelion) what Jesus understood some Pharisees to be doing with God's liberating and humanising gift of the Sabbath and other identifiers of Jewishness. Which means we will then pervert the disciplines of the Way (hodon) into abuses of power.
To put this another way, we Christians also have identifiers for cohesion, and disciplines for the control of violence for the humanisation of our selves. If we do not understand this, we will be blind to our disciplines, good, bad, or trivial, conscious or unwitting, and regress to managing identity by the creation and exclusion of others; ie by the continual creation of scapegoats. Our use of Jesus' words to dismiss God's gifts to Israel will be the sign of this, followed by our own disputes which make discipleship a battle zone with winners and losers. In short, we will become the Pharisees of our time.
This pericope follows those of Mark 2:13-17 and 2:18-22, both also dealing with food. (For more on how significant food can be in societal and spiritual discipline, see Mark 2:13-17 - A Meal and a Healing.) This present pericope flows seamlessly into Mark 3:1-6, where Jesus goes into the synagogue on that same Sabbath, and "they" (the Pharisees) are waiting to see what he does given the words he has just spoken about Sabbath observance.
In all this, for Mark's more reflective listeners, the reference to making a way (See the Translation Notes above) reminds them again of the prophecy of Isaiah referenced in Mark 1:3, saying it is happening now!
Jesus' Challenge
The initial challenge in this pericope comes not from the Pharisees, but from Jesus. He allows his disciples to break the strict interpretation of these Pharisees about what constitutes work on the Sabbath. This is clear from the common understanding that "he who forbids not sin when in control, commands it."4
There was no problem with the disciples eating the grain from someone else's crop. (See Deuteronomy 23:25)5 But there was controversy about what constituted work on the Sabbath. While plucking the heads of grain is not forbidden in the Torah,6 later traditions such as Philo's Life of Moses7 were clear that the plucking of the heads of grain was work. One suspects Jesus was deliberately challenging his Pharisee observers.
The Pharisees Reply
And the Pharisees were saying to him, 'Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?' How can you claim to be Godly if you do not follow the Sabbath disciplines!? The controversy about what it means to be a faithful follower of God continues. (See also: Mark 2:18-22 - The Time… The Time)
Moloney8 notes that this is the first time the Pharisees and Jesus meet directly. Until now there have been "scribes of the Pharisees" and "disciples of the Pharisees," both somewhat ambiguous descriptors, building up to this perhaps artificial scene with Pharisees just happening to be out in the grainfields on the Sabbath. Our reflective listener or reader will see how the stage is set for the next pericope in Mark 3:1-6, where "they"9 (3:2) are waiting and watching.
Jesus Refutes the Pharisees
Casuistry seeks to resolve moral questions by extending known and accepted baseline rules or precedents to other situations; in this case, the clear prohibition of harvesting with a sickle on the Sabbath10 is extended to provide an answer to whether one might nonetheless on the Sabbath be allowed to harvest (tillontes - pluck) just a small amount of grain to eat. What Jesus does not do at this point is suggest the Pharisees are being casuistic and trivial11 in their criticism. That is the reading of an era where casuistry is seen as an inferior way of reasoning because of past abuses. Instead, Jesus takes the Pharisees completely seriously, and makes no charge of triviality. His answer is about need.
He points to the revered biblical figure of David who, in 1 Sam 21:1-6, over-rode what was clearly laid down in the Law because of his hunger. What Jesus is implying is that keeping Sabbath recognises that if there is a need for the disciples to eat then this over-rides the prohibition. He is arguing from a precedent.
This is an extraordinarily important point for those of us who follow him. Humans are inescapably casuistic; we work from precedent12 and what it might imply for our situation. The question is how we decide which precedents have priority. Jesus says urgent human need takes precedence over other spiritual disciplines. This was not a new thought, but on its own it merely shifts the argument to what constitutes sufficiently urgent need. In Luke 13:10-17 this very argument occurs; there, the leader of the synagogue is very clear that the healing of the bent over woman is not urgent enough to justify healing on the sabbath, for there are six other days when it could be done. Jesus will address the issue of who has authority to define sufficient need in the next verses, (Mark 2:27-3:5) but there is more for us in the first part of his answer.
The meeting of human need is an issue of justice which means, since we are talking about spiritual disciplines, that Jesus is saying that justice is a spiritual discipline. This is deeply embedded in Scripture:
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 23:22)
When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings. (Deuteronomy 24:19)
Jesus says that in his need, David ate the loaves of the Presence. His argument is that we know this was justified because of God's subsequent blessing of David. It was not an abstract argument, but addressed a live issue for Jesus' followers. Bread was a dietary staple, especially for poor people. The Pharisees themselves had sought for there to be local distribution of tithes so that priests away from Jerusalem received their share. But there was argument between the Pharisees and Galilean peasants about "what was and was not suitable for consumption according to strict purity rules,"13 not to mention the prohibition of the sowing of a crop in Sabbath years which, if observed, would cause considerable hardship for subsistence farmers. So this is an argument not about trivially burdensome observance of legal rules, but about justice and need. When do life-giving spiritual disciplines become burdensome for people, especially those who are poor, and even result in their exclusion from society? Or, to sharpen the point, what is our response when spiritual disciplines become measures of a faux holiness which is used to benefit and reinforce the security and social position of those who are rich? Jesus' audience would recognise the criticism of the Pharisees implicit in his answer.14
Likewise, the reference to the high priest Abiathar, which has often appeared quite obtuse to Mark's interpreters is not as obscure as we find it. People knew the story well enough that both Luke 6:1-5 and Matthew 12:3-8 leave Abiathar out of their telling of the story because the priest concerned was not Abiathar but his father Ahimelech, one of the priests of Nob.
Rather than a mistake on Mark's part, might his expansion of initial story of David eating the Bread of the Presence,15 to include Abiathar be a nod to the survivors of the destruction of Jerusalem?
Abiathar was the sole survivor when Saul massacred the priests at Nob for assisting David. He fled to David, (1 Samuel 22:6-23) taking an ephod16 (1 Samuel 23:6) which was a symbol of spiritual legitimacy being transferred from Saul to David.17 Much later, when David was fleeing the uprising of Absalom, Abiathar sought to go with him from Jerusalem, taking the Ark with them. The Ark is sometimes called the Ark of the Presence; it symbolises the active presence of God, just as the show bread did. When David saw Abiathar and Zadok with the Ark, he said, "Carry the ark of God back into the city. If I find favour in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me back and let me see both it and the place where it remains" (2 Samuel 15:25 NRSV).
What is happening here in this series of connections which seem to us so convoluted and arcane that we wonder if they are imaginary? Marcus suggests that for the readers of Mark, well aware of the story of the church fleeing Jerusalem as its end drew near—we could wonder if some of his intended readers were among the refugees— perhaps in all this there is an identification of David and Jesus, and a promise of vindication for those who had fled Jerusalem like David. A promise that God would bring those who were the spiritually legitimate heirs home.
Inserting the Bread of the Presence into the pericope with the story of Abiathar and his father Ahimelech, Jesus completes his argument by making clear just who has the authority to define need and justice:
The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so ho huios tou anthropou is lord even of the sabbath. (Mark 2:27-28)
The first phrase of this saying by Jesus is uncontroversial. In Mekhilta d'Rabbi Ishmael 31:13, dated to around 135-200 it says,
And you shall keep the Sabbath, for it is holy to you" — Sabbath is given to you and you are not given (i.e., "surrendered") to the Sabbath. 18
It is fair to wonder if the words of Jesus have influenced this later document, but the surrounding argument in that document reflects the same principles, as do other sources such as b. Yoma 85b.19 What would have been startling and offensive to the Pharisees, is Jesus' closing phrase: "so ho huios tou anthropou is lord even of the sabbath." The context, following Mark 2:10 makes it clear that Jesus is not using ho huios tou anthropou in any generic sense. He is elevating himself. He is the authority over what constitues the need and justice which elevates some actions above keeping of the Sabbath. He enters the synagogue and demonstrates that authority in 3:1-5 by healing the man with the withered hand. So the Pharisees and the Herodians conspire to kill him, which means that he has effectively ended the argument by giving his life. And we celebrate this in communion, where he is the bread of the Presence.
Andrea Prior (January 2025)
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1. See 1 Samuel 21:1-6
2. This the translation used in the Scholars Bible at Mark 2:23. It is also the meaning of Judges 17:8 LXX τοῦ ποιῆσαι ὁδὸν αὐτοῦ, but Marcus, pp239 asserts that making a road or way is the more common meaning.
3. By casual antisemitism I mean that underlying religious, racial, and cultural, superiority which affects a great proportion of us who are not Jewish. Not out of any conscious dislike or ill will, but simply because this is the history in which we have been formed.
4. These are the words of Seneca, who lived at the same time as Jesus. (Marcus pp240) See also for example "for he who sin Forbids not when he can, commits the sin." https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tragedies_of_Seneca_(1907)_Miller/Troades (Retrieved 25/1/2025)
5. "If you go into your neighbour’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbour’s standing grain." NRSV
6. So Moloney at "Jesus is questioned over Sabbath law (2:23-28)"
7. Life of Moses 2.22 "for the holiday extends even to every description of animal, and to every beast whatever which performs service to man, like slaves obeying their natural master, and it affects even every species of plant and tree; for there is no shoot, and no branch, and no leaf even which it is allowed to cut or to pluck on that day, nor any fruit which it is lawful to gather; but everything is at liberty and in safety on that day, and enjoys, as it were, perfect freedom, no one ever touching them, in obedience to a universal proclamation. " See https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book25.html Retrieved (25/1/2025)
8. Moloney, see "Jesus is questioned over Sabbath law (2:23-28")
9. Our present day break between Chapters 2 and 3 misses that there is no significant break in the story here.
10. Exodus 34:21 "For six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in ploughing time and in harvest time you shall rest." (NRSV)
11. Black, see "Who Is Lord over the Sabbath? (2:23-28)" draws our attention to Pirkei Avot 2.1 "And be careful with a light commandment as with a grave one…" (See also https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.2.9?lang=bi Retrieved 25/1/2025) which, dated later than Jesus. c.190 – c.230 CE, nonetheless distils the principle at work in the Pharisees understanding here.
12. It is a form of imitation. Cf "What we bring to the Gospel of Mark - Imitation" above.
13. Myers, see "Sabbath: Civil Disobedience in a Grain Field"
14. The fact that some of these same Pharisees were out in a field on the Sabbath may be intended to hint at hypocrisy on their part.
15. Also known as the "show bread."
16. An ephod is a garment worn by the priests.
17. So Marcus, pp 239
18. See Intertextual Bible, "Mark 2.27" (https://intertextual.bible/text/mark-2.27-mekhilta-de-rabbi-ishmael-31.13 Retrieved 27/1/2025), also Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shabbata 1, see https://www.sefaria.org/Mekhilta_DeRabbi_Yishmael%2C_Tractate_Shabbata.1.4?lang=en&with=About&lang2=en (Retrieved 27/1/2025)
19. See https://www.sefaria.org/Yoma.85b?lang=bi (Retrieved 27/2/2025)
Good people.
