Mark 2.23-24, 27-28; Deuteronomy 23.25.
| 2.23 Καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς σάββασιν παραπορεύεσθαι διὰ τῶν σπορίμων, | One Shabbat,α He happened to walk past a farm, |
|---|---|
| καὶ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ἤρξαντο ὁδὸν ποιεῖν τίλλοντες τοὺς στάχυας. | and His students started to pluck stalks.β |
| 2.24 καὶ οἱ Φαρισαῖοι ἔλεγον αὐτῷ· ἴδε | The Pharisees told Him, “Look! |
| τί ποιοῦσιν τοῖς σάββασιν ὃ οὐκ ἔξεστιν; | What they’re doing on Shabbatγ isn’t right.” |
| … | |
| 2.27 καὶ ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς· | Heδ told them, |
| τὸ σάββατον διὰ τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐγένετο | “Shabbat comes for the sake of humans, |
| καὶ οὐχ ὁ ἄνθρωπος διὰ τὸ σάββατον· | not humans for Shabbat, |
| 2.28 ὥστε κύριός ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου | which is why the Son of Man is Master |
| καὶ τοῦ σαββάτου. | of Shabbat as well.” |
Typically this passage is interpreted to mean that Jesus is in charge of Shabbat, which is not exactly what He says. But I’ll get to that.
Let’s first deal with what the Pharisees were pointing out. (To remind you, “Pharisee” means “religious, God-fearing person,” not “holier-than-thou hypocrite.” Just because Jesus elsewhere accuses Pharisees of hypocrisy doesn’t mean they were all that way.) Jesus’s students were walking past a farm and picking grain off the stalks on the side of the road, presumably to eat, although some of them might have been idly plucking heads off out of the pure wanton destructiveness that’s just part of human nature.
This in itself wasn’t a sin. This was gleaning. In Deuteronomy 23.25 (verse 26 in the Hebrew bible), God invented gleaning for the sake of the poor and needy in a community:
| 23.25 כי תבא בקמת רעך | If you go into your neighbor's standing grain, |
|---|---|
| וקטפת מלילת בידך | you may pluck the heads with your hands, |
| וחרמש לא תניף על קמת רעך׃ | but no taking a sickle to the standing grain. |
The students weren’t stealing food; it was perfectly okay for anyone—poor, rich, whomever—to pass by a field and pluck a little. The idea is that every farm belonged to God, not the farmer; the yield from the field was the result of God’s action, not the farmer’s; the farm was for the sake of everyone in the community, not just the farmer. Sometimes the poor simply had no other way to get food. Other cultures, including ours, make it illegal for people to glean, and leave the needy to starve, or depend on the government for generosity. God’s intention was to provide for the needy directly, and let them glean His fields, and not starve.
Regardless, the Pharisees’ objection wasn’t to the gleaning. It was to the command the students were violating: “No work on Shabbat,” which we find in the Ten Commandments. (Ex 20.10) The Pharisees classified 39 different forms of work that were prohibited on Shabbat, and one of them was reaping. (Shabbat 7.2) Plucking heads of grain could be legitimately considered a form of reaping. Luke 6.1 states that the students were also rubbing the heads with their hands, which would count as threshing—another prohibited form of work. Since historically you could get the death penalty for working on Shabbat, (Ex 35.2) this was no small issue.
If the students had been older, they would have been responsible for their own actions, but since they were teenagers, and under the instruction of a rabbi, the rabbi was considered responsible for the students’ actions. In this case, Jesus was their rabbi, and if His students were violating Shabbat, He obviously hadn’t taught His students properly. Thus the Pharisees properly complained to Jesus. Unlike before, when they went around Him to the students to complain, they were properly dealing with the issue by going straight to the rabbi, and allowing Him to explain Himself—or correct them.
Jesus did correct them by referring to a story about King David, which I’ll get to later. His conclusion, however, dodges the whole issue of reaping and threshing, and gets to the issue of whether it’s appropriate to deny people basic human sustenance for the sake of holiness: Is tradition, or even God’s commands, more important than eating?
And Jesus’s conclusion is no. The commands never deny people food. They may deny certain that certain animals are food animals; and of course Yom Kippur is set aside for fasting. (Lv 16.29, 31) Otherwise, food is necessary, and God doesn’t want His people to starve. That is why He invented gleaning in the first place. And God never meant for Shabbat’s rules to deprive His people of food.
In Matthew’s version of the story, (Mt 12.1-8) Jesus also points out how the priests technically violate Shabbat whenever they offer Shabbat offerings. (Mt 12.5) Offerings are work, but some commands simply take precedent over others. And since that’s the case, humans take precedent over Shabbat. “Shabbat comes for humans,” not vice-versa.
We actually find this sentiment in subsequent Jewish tradition. In the Talmud, it’s stated, “Shabbat is for you, but not you for Shabbat.” (Yomah, p. 131) Some Pharisees did recognize that the purpose of the commands are to free, not restrict. The purpose of Shabbat is to have a day off, not to spend the day anxiously worried about what violated it and what didn’t—and not to go hungry for fear of violating it. We are meant to be masters of Shabbat, not slaves to it. And that’s the point that Jesus makes here.
The point behind Shabbat is to keep us from working ourselves to death by giving us a regular day off. Some people really have to be forced to sit down and stop working; our Puritan work ethic makes it so some of us simply can’t sit still and relax. And the trouble comes when we take the rules we put on ourselves to force us to relax, and start applying them to everyone. In our culture, we have a lot of sabbatarians who are very particular about what you can and can’t do on Shabbat—whether you observe it on Saturday or Sunday, how you dress, what sorts of entertainment are appropriate for the day, whether it’s okay to drink or smoke or play cards or go to the theater or picnic or go on dates or anything. And every rule that‘s made about what you can or can’t do on Shabbat—every rule that goes beyond God’s very simple rule to not work—violates Jesus’s clear teaching that Shabbat comes for our sake, and not vice-versa.
Basically put, if you have to suffer for Shabbat’s sake, you’re doing it wrong.
Now the common misinterpretation is when people drop the word for “as well,” καί, in verse 28, and teach that Jesus alone is master of Shabbat. Individual words sometimes make a big difference in an interpretation. Dropping the καί disregards what Jesus is actually saying: He is also master of Shabbat. Read this passage again. Jesus isn’t saying that He is Master of all (even though He is) and that because of this, He’s likewise Master of Shabbat. This is not a passage where He is defining His lordship and what it looks like. This is a passage where He is defining human freedom. He’s saying that Shabbat comes for our sake—making us masters of Shabbat. And since He is one of us, He is also a master of Shabbat. He, like us, gets to determine what form “rest” might take on our day of rest. And if He determines that it’s okay for His students to eat on Shabbat, then it’s okay to eat on Shabbat—we don’t have to starve ourselves for fear that we might not be resting properly. But we are free to come to that conclusion. We don’t have to worry about what the Pharisees, or sabbatarians, or other religious folks, have determined is work or isn’t. We don’t have to follow anyone but Jesus.
And Jesus isn’t picky.
α. Lit. “on Shabbat.”
β. Lit. “His students, pluckers, started to work the stalks.”
γ. Or “to Shabbat.”
δ. Jesus.
