The Pharisees said to him, look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? — the accusation is directed at Jesus rather than at the disciples, holding him responsible for his followers' behavior. The unlawful in their framing refers not to the Torah itself but to the scribal interpretation of the Torah: picking a few heads of grain had been categorized as a form of the thirty-nine prohibited labors on the Sabbath. The Pharisees' interpretation of Sabbath law is not arbitrary — it is the product of serious effort to define what work means. But Jesus' response will distinguish between the letter of scribal interpretation and the spirit of the Sabbath's original purpose.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

Publish a note on this verse