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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The Lord of the Sabbath.
The hungry disciples:
v. 1. At that time, Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the corn, and His disciples were an hungered, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat.
While Jesus was engaged in the work of His ministry in Galilee, He came into conflict with the Sabbath observance of the Pharisees. His disciples, who accompanied Him on His walk, became hungry. Now they were on a path leading through a field of grain, which was ready for harvest. "These paths are often exceedingly rough. They were never surveyed and never repaired. They were simply devoted to public use by immemorial custom. If a landowner wished to raise grain in a field through which one of these paths ran, he plowed up to the very edge of the narrow path and put in his seed. There were neither fences nor ditches to separate the road from the field. Fields traversed by such roads are still very common in Palestine. It was along such a road that Jesus and the disciples were traveling when they plucked the ears of wheat on the Sabbath. " Note: The Law permitted a hungry man to pluck ears from the field of another, in order to still the pangs of his hunger, Deu_23:25. But this was on a Sabbath, or, as Luke says, on the second Sabbath after the first, Luk_6:1, that is, the first Sabbath after the second day of the Passover, when the sheaf of first-fruits was offered, Lev_23:10-11; for in this way, and from this day, did the Jews reckon the time until the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost. Hardly, however, had the disciples begun to pluck ears when fault was found.