Mark 2:23-28 – Keeping the Sabbath

In these verses Mark introduced the fourth of the five controversies Jesus encountered with the religious leaders. This time around, it had to do with the Law. It’s about keeping the Sabbath.

We read in verse 23 that Jesus and His disciples were going through the grain-fields when some of His disciples picked some ears of grains to eat. The Pharisees who saw what they did, asked the Lord Jesus, “Look, why are they doing what’s unlawful on the Sabbath.” The accusation they brought against the disciples was not that they stole grains from someone else’s field. The law concerning gleaning allowed them to do that. The issue was about doing work on Sabbath. The Pharisees saw the actions of the disciples and interpreted it as engaging in work on a Sabbath. To them the disciples had violated the Sabbath. 

The Lord then used an Old Testament account recorded in 1 Samuel 21:1-6 in response to the accusation. He asked a question in relation to that story, when David was running away from King Saul, who wanted to take his life. In that story, David came to Nob where Abimelech, the high priest, took the consecrated bread from the table of showbread in the Tabernacle and gave it to David and his men to eat. Those bread were meant only for the priests to eat.

Like what the disciples did, that incident also took place on a Sabbath. The implication for Jesus’ question is this: human need is more important than ritualistic requirement. Jesus’ intention was for His critics to look at David’s practice and evaluate their complaint against the actions of His disciples. To the Lord, human needs precede religious regulations. In His response, Jesus was not defending the breaking of the Sabbath. Jesus wanted them to see the more important and pressing issue at hand, i.e. the human need.

The problem in this passage, however, is in the mix up of the name of the high priest. In the Old Testament account, the high priest was Abimelech and not Abiathar as given by Mark. There are several propositions to explain this but none is conclusive. Since Abimelech was the son of Abiathar, he could have been referred to as Abimelech Abiathar or merely as Abiathar.    

In verse 27 and 28, we have the principle that will settle the question about keeping the Sabbath. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” God gave the Sabbath at the dawn of creation and He renewed it at Mount Sinai by instituting it. God gave this to all mankind and not only for the Jews. His purpose was that man may rest and worship Him and not made it into an issue and a burden. The institution of the Sabbath was never meant to be a burden but the Pharisees had made it into a burden.

As the Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus asserts His right to free the blessed Sabbath from the incorrect and irrational ideas that the Pharisees had attached to it. The Lord wants to restore the Sabbath to its original intention and purpose. He first gave it to man in paradise and instituted it at Mount Sinai. And He refused to let His intention for the Sabbath be mutilated by the Pharisees’ bigoted traditional ideas. The Sabbath is to be a day of blessing, a day of rest and a day to engage in worship. Let’s make it so!