MPV Commentary

The season of this event can be determined by its circumstances. Ripe corn ears are typically found in fields just before harvest time, which would have been around the close of March and beginning of April. This coincided with the Passover season, as the wheat harvest did with Pentecost.

In Luke's account (Luke 6:1), we find a more specific note of time, although the meaning of the term used is uncertain. The phrase "the first-second" Sabbath has been translated in various ways, but one interpretation suggests it refers to the first Sabbath after the second day of the Passover, which was itself a Sabbath. This would be one of seven Sabbaths between Passover and Pentecost (Leviticus 23:15-16; Deuteronomy 16:9-10). If this is correct, Jesus' actions took place on the first of these Sabbaths.

If we consider John 5:1 to be a reference to another Passover during Jesus' ministry (see commentary on John 5:1), then this event occurred immediately after the scene and discourse recorded in John 5:19-47. This would have prompted Jesus to leave Jerusalem for Galilee, likely passing through fields where He encountered hungry disciples.

1. At that time, Jesus went through a cornfield on the Sabbath day with his disciples, who were hungry from running low on provisions.

2. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to Him, "Look, your disciples are doing something not lawful to do on the Sabbath."

3. But He replied, "Have you never read what David did when he was hungry and those with him?"

4. How he entered the house of God and ate the showbread, which was only permitted for the priests? (1 Samuel 21:1-6)

5. Or have you not read in the law that on Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath by doing "servile work"? They are blameless.

The double offerings required on the Sabbath day (Numbers 28:9) and the new-baked showbread (Leviticus 24:5; 1 Chronicles 9:32) could not be prepared without significant labor. Circumcision, which had to be performed by priests when a child's eighth day fell on a Sabbath, is another example.

6. But I say to you that in this place there is one greater than the temple. The rules for observing the Sabbath give way before the requirements of the temple; but here are rights that even the temple must yield to.

7. If you had understood what "I will have mercy and not sacrifice" means (Hosea 6:6; Micah 6:6-8, etc.), you would not have condemned the guiltless. This principle recognizes that ceremonial observances must give way before moral duties, particularly the necessities of nature.

Jesus added a specific application to the law of the Sabbath in Mark's account: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27). This maxim establishes the true freedom of the Sabbath's observance.

8. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day. In what sense? Not to abolish it, but to own it, interpret it, and ennoble it by merging it with the "Lord's Day" (Revelation 1:10), breathing into it an air of liberty and love unknown before.