Lange Commentary - Mark 2:23

Lange Commentary - Mark 2:23 - 2:28

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

Lange Commentary - Mark 2:23 - 2:28

(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

Fourth, Conflict.—The Ears of Corn on the Sabbath; the Son of Man also Lord of the Sabbath. Mar_2:23-28

(Parallels: Mat_12:1-8; Luk_6:1-5.)

²³And it came to pass, that he went through the corn-fields [sowed-fields] on the Sabbath-day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn [began to make a way, by plucking off the ears: Meyer]. ²⁴And the Pharisees said unto him, Be hold, why do they on the Sabbath-day that which is not lawful? ²⁵And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungered, he, and they that were with him? ²⁶How he went into the house of God, in the days of Abiathar the high-priest, and did eat the shew-bread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him? ²⁷And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath: ²⁸Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. See on the parallels of Matthew and Luke.—In regard to the time, it is to be observed that this event belongs to a later section of the life of Jesus (after He had returned from the Feast of Purim in 782), when persecution took a decided form against Him. The same remark holds good of the healing of the man with a withered hand. But the motive of Mark in inserting the matter here was evidently to connect appropriate facts. The first offence and the first conflict referred to the forgiveness of sins, which Christ pronounced, and which was alleged against Him as a blasphemous invasion of the rights of God, meaning especially the rights of the priests; the second offence was the intercourse of Christ with publicans and sinners; the third, the opposition of His festal, social companionship to the ascetic and pharisaic fasts,—on which then follows in our narrative the account of the offence taken at the freer position which He and His disciples assumed towards the Sabbath.

Mar_2:23. Went through the corn-fields.—The ðáñáðïñåýåóèáé marks the circumstance that He opened His way right and left through the overhanging ears; whereas the disciples began to make their path by plucking and rubbing these ears. Thus does Meyer explain, and doubtless rightly, the ὁäὸí ðïéåῖí ôßëëïíôåò ôïὺò óôÜ÷õáò It is true that Mark says nothing directly about eating; but that is to be taken for granted in any rational rubbing of the ears, and is further manifest from the Lord’s justification of them, appealing to the fact of David having eaten the shew-bread. According to Meyer, the allusion to the history of David aimed only to vindicate the rubbing of the ears as an act of necessity; and he thinks that the unessential circumstance of the shew-bread having been eaten led to the insertion into the other Gospels of the tradition concerning eating the ears. This needs no refutation. It is impossible to make the rubbing corn in their hands, in order to clear the way, into an act of sheer necessity, such as eating the shew-bread was. In fact, Mark takes pleasure in presenting a vivid picture of everything. He here tells us how the disciples attained two objects by one and the same act. The less of the two, making a way, occupied his mind merely as the counterpart of Jesus’ ðïñåýåóèáé in another manner; and the suggestion of plucking the ears was quite enough to denote synecdochically the eating them also.

Mar_2:24. Why do they on the Sabbath-day that which is not lawful?—Meyer tries to establish this discrepancy between the other Evangelists and Mark, that he makes the Pharisees ask in this passage, Why do they on the Sabbath-day something that is forbidden in itself? But in that case Jesus would have replied only to the first and less important part of their accusation. But if we regard their words as a question of surprise, abruptly asked, and as it were answered by themselves, the harmony of the accounts is sufficiently established. For the Sabbath traditions of the Rabbins, consult Braune. “It was not a journey, being only a walk through a by-path; 2,800 ells’ distance from the town were permitted by the law.”—“To pluck and rub with the hand ears from the field of a neighbor, was allowed; Moses forbade only the sickle (Deu_23:25). But the matter belonged to the thirty-nine chief classes (fathers), each of which had its subdivisions (daughters), in which the works forbidden on the Sabbath were enumerated. This was their hypocritical way, to make of trifling things matters of sin and vexation to the conscience.

Mar_2:26. In the days of Abiathar the high-priest.—According to 1Sa_21:1, Ahimelech was the high-priest who gave David the shew-bread (Joseph. Antiq. vi. 12, 6). His son Abiathar succeeded him, who was David’s friend (1Sa_22:20; 1Ki_1:7). Moreover, in 2Sa_8:17, Ahimelech is inversely called the son of Abiathar. So also in 1Ch_24:6; 1Ch_24:31. Hence it was early supposed that the father and son had both names (Euth. Zig.), or that the son was the vicarius of his father (Grotius); while some have proposed to modify the meaning of the ἐðß (under Abiathar). Later expositors, on the other hand, have assumed that the names have been mistakenly interchanged; but to insist, with Meyer, upon this view, appears to us hypercritical and arbitrary, when we remember that in Exo_2:18 the same father-in-law of Moses is once called Raguel and then Jethro, and especially that Jewish tradition was possessed of many supplements of the sacred narrative, as appears from the discourse of Stephen (Acts 7), and the allusion to the Egyptian magicians, 2Ti_3:8. Here the Old Testament itself gave occasion to supplementary tradition, and the scriptural knowledge of the time incorporated and used it. Moreover, it is to be assumed that the priest’s son Abiathar stood in a nearer relation to David, which made the unusual proceeding more explicable. The tabernacle was then at Nob.

Mar_2:28. Therefore the Son of Man is Lord. —The Son of Man, and not merely as man (Grotius); not, however, the Messiah in the official sense, but the Son of Man in His inviolable holiness, and in His mysterious dignity (intimated in Daniel) as the Holy Child and Head of humanity appearing in the name of God.—Lord over the Sabbath; that is, administrating and ruling over it in its New Testament fulfilment and freedom (comp. Meyer).

A clause is found appended to Luk_6:5 in some Codd.: “The same day Jesus saw one working on the Sabbath, and said unto him, ‘Man, if thou knowest what thou doest, thou art happy; if thou knowest not, thou art accursed.’ ” This historically questionable saying has been placed by some in the same traditional category with the words, “To give is more blessed than to receive,” Act_20:35. See Meyer on Luke, and Braune, Evangelium.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. See on the parallels.—For the Jewish Sabbath and the Sabbath ordinances, consult the article in Winer. First, the opponents of Jesus thought that He sinned against sound doctrine; then they went further, and urged objections against His free treatment of discipline and pious usages; but now, finally, they would allege that He, in the person of His disciples, sinned against the decalogue, and against one of its most sacred commandments, that concerning the Sabbath. And if, at first, their exasperation against Him was only an internal matter, they now directly attack Him in the persons of His disciples, as appears without any disguise in the history that follows in the text.

2. Christ, even in the silent corn-field, is not safe from the plots of His enemies.—The different manner in which Jesus and His disciples made their respective ways through the field.

3. Abiathar=Ahimelech; or, the freer relation of the New Testament believers to the Old Testament. For the shew-bread, consult the article in Winer, as well as the various writings on Old Testament Symbolism of BÆhr, Kurtz, Hengstenberg, Sartorius, etc.

4. The Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath.—The spirit of traditionalism and fanaticism perfectly inverts the ordinances of the kingdom of God; making the means the end, and the end the means.

5. The Son of Man the Lord; or the roots of the supremacy and dignity of Christ which are found in the relation of His sacred human nature to mankind. The Son of Many the Lord in all aspects and on all sides; therefore Lord of the Sabbath.—But the Lord is a ruler, administrator, and fulfiller of His ordinances; not the abolisher of them.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The Lord’s patience in making His way, and in abstaining, as contrasted with the conduct of His disciples.—Christ in the field among the ears of corn, a noble figure.—The blessing of nature and the blessing of grace in their unity.—The first tokens of the coming freedom of the disciples in its significance; or, Christian freedom a child of need and justification felt in the spirit of Christ.—The peculiar need of the moment pointing to the means of help for ever: 1. The failing way; the lacking bread; the idea that one need might be removed by the other. 2. The significance of this fact for the spiritual relations of the kingdom of God.—To make a way for the Lord the best means of nourishment for His disciples.—The Pharisees everywhere like a shadow of the free Gospel.—Man himself the oldest Divine institution, and what follows from it: 1. Nothing in favor of the arbitrary treatment of Divine institutions; 2. but much in favor of free dealing with human traditions.—The kingdom of heaven is preëminently a kingdom of personal life or of love.—The Sabbath for man; that Isaiah , 1. its law is for the life of the soul, 2. its rest is for devotion, 3. the ordinance for salvation.—The Sabbath for man, and therefore for his eternal Sabbath; and this also was made for man, as man for it.

Starke:—Quesnel:—Christ never performed miracles to feed Himself and His disciples in their hunger; in order to teach them that they should never without necessity seek extraordinary ways, and that their neighbors’ need should press on their hearts more than their own.—Jesus hungers, while His disciples eat; and thereby shows that a teacher, ruler, and leader should be more perfect than his disciples.—Osiander:—“We should learn to suffer want with Christ, and to abound with Christ.—Quesnel:—The pride of the Pharisaic nature drives a man to make himself a judge of others, and to demand of them an account of all they do.—Canstein:—God’s will is, that we should diligently read the books of the Old Testament, and set them before the people; that we may derive thence teaching and example.—Majus: —All errors must be refuted out of Holy Writ.—Quesnel:—The usages and ordinances of religion should have for their object the glory of God and the profit of men.—The true Sabbath festival.—Believers are with Christ and through Christ lords of the Sabbath, that they may use it for their own and their neighbors’ necessities.

Lisco:—The highest end is man himself. The whole law was only the means for the education of men, whom God keeps thus under external discipline until the law is inwardly and spiritually apprehended and obeyed. But believers adapt themselves, in the spirit of love, to all outward ordinances (although, of course, in the spirit of the Lord),—Gerlach rightly adds: To all outward ordinances that assist the need of the Christian Church.—Every arbitrary violation of legal discipline, without the justification of the spirit of grace and love in Christ, is a heavy sin.—Only the spirit of adoption makes free from the yoke of the law.—Braune:—As David was pitilessly persecuted by Saul, so were the disciples by the Pharisees.—Men are to find rest and refreshment in holy days, but not to suffer hunger and distress.—There is no law given to the righteous; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.—Schleiermacher:—The Redeemer might have more easily vindicated Himself had He referred to the words of the law, Deu_23:24, etc.; but He aimed at something higher, to show that all such laws were subjected to a higher spiritual law (the example of David).—The Son of Man Lord of the Sabbath; the Redeemer is the measure of all; the question must be, whether a thing is according to His mind and of advantage to His kingdom.—Bauer:—The Lord of the Sabbath has given to every believing mind a Sabbath-law, for its direction and not for its trouble: Thou shalt worship God in spirit and in truth.

Footnotes:

Mar_2:26.—“Under Abiathar the high-priest” is wanting in D.; omitted on account of the historical difficulty.

A festival introduced by Mordecai, to commemorate the deliverance of the Jews from the designs of Haman. It was celebrated on the 14th or 15th day of Adar, or March, and was called Purim, from a Persian word which signifies lot; because Haman ascertained by lot the day on which the Jews were to be destroyed. Est_3:7; Est_9:26.—Ed.

Meyer would find a discrepancy between Mark and Matthew with Luke, in the fact that the former says nothing about eating the grain, but only speaks of “making a path” through it. According to him, the Pharisees objected merely to the travelling on the Sabbath and the labor therein involved, and the story of the eating is an interpolation. But aside from the fact that ὁäὸí ðïéåῖí may be rendered as in the English version “to go,” it seems improbable that the disciples should have taken pains merely to “make a path” through the yielding grain by pulling it up or plucking it off, when the simple stride would tread it down.—Ed.

Wetstein and Scholz suggest that it stands for coram. —Ed.