From: Mark 2:23-28
The Law of the Sabbath
[23] One Sabbath He (Jesus) was going through the grainfields; and as
they made their way His disciples began to pluck ears of grain.
[24] And the Pharisees said to Him, "Look, why are they doing what is
not lawful on the Sabbath?" [25] And He said to them, "Have you never
read what David did, when he was in need and hungry, he and those who
were with him: [26] how he entered the house of God, when Abiathar was
high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful
for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with
him?" [27] And He said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man
for the Sabbath; [28] so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."
Commentary:
24. Cf. note on Matthew 12:2. [Note on Matthew 12:2 states: "The
Sabbath": this was the day the Jews set aside for worshipping God. God
Himself, the originator of the Sabbath (Genesis 2:3), ordered the
Jewish people to avoid certain kinds of work on this day (Exodus
20:8-11; 21:13; Deuteronomy 5:14) to leave them free to give more time
to God. As time went by, the rabbis complicated this Divine precept:
by Jesus' time they had extended to 39 the list of kinds of forbidden
work.
The Pharisees accuse Jesus' disciples of breaking the Sabbath. In the
casuistry of the scribes and the Pharisees, plucking ears of corn was
the same as harvesting, and crushing them was the same as
milling--types of agricultural work forbidden on the Sabbath.]
26-27. The bread of the Presence consisted of twelve loaves or cakes
placed each morning on the table in the sanctuary, as homage to the
Lord from the twelve tribes of Israel (cf. Leviticus 24:5-9). The
loaves withdrawn to make room for the fresh ones were reserved to the
priests.
Abiathar's action anticipates what Christ teaches here. Already in the
Old Testament God had established a hierarchy in the precepts of the
Law so that the lesser ones yielded to the main ones.
This explains why a ceremonial precept (such as the one we are
discussing) should yield before a precept of the natural law.
Similarly, the commandment to keep the Sabbath does not come before the
duty to seek basic subsistence. Vatican II uses this passage of the
Gospel to underline the value of the human person over and above
economic and social development: "The social order and its development
must constantly yield to the good of the person, since the order of
things must be subordinate to the order of persons and not the other
way around, as the Lord suggested when He said that the Sabbath was
made for man and not man for the Sabbath. The social order requires
constant improvement: it must be founded on truth, built on justice,
and enlivened by love" ("Gaudium Et Spes", 26).
Finally in this passage Christ teaches God's purpose in instituting the
Sabbath: God established it for man's good, to help him rest and devote
himself to Divine worship in joy and peace. The Pharisees, through
their interpretation of the Law, had turned this day into a source of
anguish and scruple due to all the various prescriptions and
prohibitions they introduced.
By proclaiming Himself `Lord of the Sabbath', Jesus affirms His
divinity and His universal authority. Because He is Lord He has the
power to establish other laws, as Yahweh had in the Old Testament.
28. The Sabbath had been established not only for man's rest but also
to give glory to God: that is the correct meaning of the expression
"the Sabbath was made for man." Jesus has every right to say He is
Lord of the Sabbath, because He is God. Christ restores to the weekly
day of rest its full, religious meaning: it is not just a matter of
fulfilling a number of legal precepts or of concern for physical
well-being: the Sabbath belongs to God; it is one way, suited to human
nature, of rendering glory and honor to the Almighty. The Church, from
the time of the Apostles onwards, transferred the observance of this
precept to the following day, Sunday--the Lord's Day--in celebration of
the resurrection of Christ.
"Son of Man": the origin of the messianic meaning of this expression is
to be found particularly in the prophecy of Daniel 7:13ff, where
Daniel, in a prophetic vision, contemplates `one like the Son of Man'
coming down on the clouds of Heaven, who even goes right up to God's
throne and is given dominion and glory and royal power over all peoples
and nations. This expression appears 69 times in the Synoptic Gospels;
Jesus prefers it to other ways of describing the Messiah--such as Son
of David, Messiah, etc.--thereby avoiding the nationalistic overtones
those expressions had in Jewish minds at the time (cf. "Introduction to
the Gospel according to St. Mark", p. 62 above).
Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text
taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries
made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of
Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock,
Co. Dublin, Ireland.