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2. τινὲς δὲ τῶν Φαρισαίων. On the Jewish sects see Excursus VI. As the chronological sequence of the incident is uncertain, these may be some of the spy-Pharisees who as Christ’s ministry advanced dogged His steps (Mat 15:1; Mar 3:22; Mar 7:1), in the base and demoralising desire to convict Him of heresy or violation of the Law. Perhaps they wished to see whether He would exceed the regulated Sabbath day’s journey of 2000 cubits (Exo 16:29). We have already met with some of the carping criticisms dictated by their secret hate, Luk 5:14; Luk 5:21; Luk 5:30.
τί ποιεῖτε; In St Mark the question is scornfully addressed to Jesus. “See why do they (pointing at the Apostles) do on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?”
ὃ οὐκ ἔξεστιν ποιεῖν. The point was this. Since the Law had said that the Jews were “to do no manner of work” on the Sabbath, the Oral Law had laid down thirty-nine principal prohibitions which were assigned to the authority of the Great Synagogue and which were called abhôth ‘fathers’ or chief rules. From these were deduced a vast multitude of toldôth ‘descendants’ or derivative rules. Now ‘reaping’ and ‘threshing’ on the Sabbath day were forbidden by the abhôth; and by the toldôth it was asserted that plucking corn-ears was a kind of reaping, and rubbing them a kind of threshing. But while they paid servile attention to these trivialities the Pharisees “omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith” (Mat 22:23). The vitality of these artificial notions among the Jews is extraordinary. Abarbanel relates that when in 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain, and were forbidden to enter the city of Fez lest they should cause a famine, they lived on grass; yet even in this state ‘religiously avoided the violation of their Sabbath by plucking the grass with their hands.’ To avoid this they took the much more laborious method of grovelling on their knees, and cropping it with their teeth!