“And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?”
He answered, have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? — the appeal to the David precedent is rhetorically brilliant: it challenges the Pharisees' own authority (have you never read) while drawing on the example of the most revered figure in Israel's royal history. The David story of 1 Samuel 21:1–6 shows David eating the bread of the Presence from the tabernacle, bread that the law restricted to the priests — and no later tradition condemned him for it. The parallel with the disciples picking grain is the condition of hunger and need: necessity creates a different evaluative category than routine Sabbath observance.
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