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The objection of the Pharisees:
v. 2. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto Him, Behold, Thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day.
The malicious faultfinders deliberately made a mountain out of a mole-hill and construed the action with their usual intolerance. The plucking to them became reaping, and the rubbing with the hands to remove the hulls in their eyes became threshing. There was no wrong done even from the standpoint of the strictest interpretation of the Jewish Law. But the Pharisees so construed it and took offense, incidentally accusing Christ as an accomplice for permitting the sacrilege. Christ's answer:
v. 3. But He said unto them, Have ye not read what David did when he was an hungered, and they that were with him,
v. 4. how he entered into the house of God, and did eat the show-bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?
v. 5. Or have ye not read in the Law how on the Sabbath days the priests in the Temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless?
Jesus had a most disconcerting way of quoting Scripture to His enemies, which usually resulted in their chagrin and shameful rout. He has two examples for them: David, in fleeing before the wrath of Saul, came to the sanctuary of the Lord at Nob, 1Sa_21:1-6, where Ahimelech, the priest, gave him the show-bread, the bread of the countenance of God, from the table in the Holy Place. These consecrated bread-cakes were to be eaten by the priests only, Lev_24:8-9, and yet David, the great model of Jewish piety, ate of this hallowed bread with his men. And again: The priests, in the regular discharge of their duties, in sacrificing the burnt offerings in the morning and evening services of the Sabbath day, were technically transgressing the Sabbath law, with its absolute prohibition of work, thus, if one would argue from the standpoint of the Pharisees, actually profaning the Sabbath.