Mark 2:25 — Community Reflections

MARK 2:25 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“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.

Church Fathers on Mark 2:25

We read also in the following part, that they who came and went away were many, and that they had not time enough to take their food, wherefore, according to man’s nature, they were hungry.
Bede · 8th century · in Marc., 1, 13

For it was a precept in Israel, delivered by a written law, that no one should detain a thief found in his fields, unless he tried to take something away with him. For the man who had touched nothing else but what he had eaten they were commanded to allow to go away free and unpunished. Wherefore the Jews accused our Lord’s disciples, who were plucking the ears of corn, of breaking the sabbath, rather than of theft.
Augustine · 4th century · de Op. Monach., 23

For David, when flying from the face of Saul [1 Sam 21] went to the Chief Priest, and ate the shew-bread, and took away the sword of Goliath, which things had been offered to the Lord. But a question has been raised how the Evangelist called Abiathar at this time High Priest, when the Book of Kings calls him Abimelech.
Theophylact · 11th century

Read all 7 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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