1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.
2 And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!”
3 But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him:
4 how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?
5 Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless?
6 Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple.
7 But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.
8 For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
verse 5 -- the priests are not guilty
verse 7 -- the disciples are not guilty
Jesus gives the example of David & Co. and the example of the temple priests in reply.
by doing so, Jesus is saying both David & Co. and the priests working in the temple on sabbath are identical to the disciples.
you condemn David, and the priest Ahimelek who gave him the shewbread and the sword of Goliath.
this puts you in Saul's camp rather than Christ's.
Saul's chief shepherd ((a type of antichrist, an evil shepherd in contrast to David the shepherd king type of Christ)), Doeg the Edomite, was at Nob and reported to Saul what Ahimelek had done. 1 Samuel 22. Saul orders his guards to kill all the priests of the LORD. his guards will not lay a finger on them. Doeg, the Edomite shepherd, kills them.
you would say this is just, and that David should also have been killed.
your interpretation here is that Jesus's immediate reply is an example condemning the disciples as worthy of death.
my dude, this does not seem right to me. go and read 1 Samuel 22-24 and see if you find God condemning David or Ahimelek. see if you find the account proving that Saul was doing the LORD's will?
this is no simple matter. Matthew 12:1-8 is amazing in what Jesus said to them.
the law itself commands the priests to break the letter of the sabbath commandments. God's own law concerning God's own temple requires God's own priests to violate the sabbath by doing work.
WOW
what is God teaching by this?
WOW
absolutely to the contrary. i have not said anywhere or even hinted that Matthew 12 is license to sin or evidence of situational ethics being taught. you need to revisit how our conversation began:
maybe you're a bit leftist in your false accusations, lack of reading comprehension, and false speech? ((poke-poke))
your 'perfectly acceptable alternative' is not at all acceptable while it calls David & Ahimelek guilty of sin unto death and calls them an unrelated spurious example; it sets the scripture against itself and makes Jesus a liar:
- Jesus by implication says that the disciples picking grain on sabbath is identical to David eating shewbread
- you say David and Ahimelek are worthy of death for this, guilty
- Jesus explicitly refers to the disciples as "guiltless"
- your interpretation calls Him a liar. that's not a good interpretation.
you need to go read 1 Samuel.
look: in 1 Samuel 22:9-14 we learn that Ahimelek inquired of the LORD for David. now go back to 1 Samuel 21:1-9. where did Ahimelek inquire of the LORD for him? there's nothing recorded about that. but in 1 Samuel 22, being condemned by Saul, Ahimelek concedes that yes he did inquire of the LORD for him. what then did the LORD say to Ahimelek?
well. the LORD God Almighty, who is manifest in the flesh as the man Christ Jesus, certainly did not say 'don't do this wicked thing by giving David food lawful only for the priests' -- yet Ahimelek was in contact with the LORD when this happened. in fact why did Ahimelek do this thing? he certainly knew the law. he's the one who said to David it isn't lawful. 1 Samuel 21:4 -- Ahimelek tells him that if the men have not been with women, they may eat it. where did Ahimelek get this from? that's not in the law. but we know that Ahimelek had inquired of the LORD in this matter.
here's where we are: God didn't say "don't give them shewbread" and Ahimelek inquires of the LORD and Ahimelek tells David a strange requirement that does not come from the law. what did GOD say to Ahimelek? what did he inquire about??
hmm.
an antichrist-type is there and reports to Saul, also an antichrist type, whose response is to murder all the priests as he seeks out David the Christ-type to kill him.
hmm.
and Christ says this situation is identical to the phraisees condemning Christ's disciples for picking and eating grain on sabbath.
hmm.
this is not simple.
don't pass it off like it is.
God is a God of intelligence. He expects us to think. the Bible is written in such a way to force us to think.
first words out of Christ's mouth in Matthew 12 "have you not read??" - this is Jesus' reply, pointing to 1 Samuel 21-23.
the pharisees were supposed to have read this, and thought about it, and reached a conclusion from it.
they were supposed to have learned from this something that would have prevented them from accusing the disciples.
Christ is greater than the temple yet these two examples alone teach something about the temple and about guiltlessness despite apparent breaking of the letter. the law itself was supposed to teach them something - not situational ethics - something that makes David innocent, Ahimelek innocent, the priests innocent in their temple service, and the disciples innocent.
Jesus says all this is connected. congruent.
think man!
the temple is greater than the sabbath
God's anointed one is greater than the temple
this isn't about "oh God overlooks their sin" -- if it were, it would be tacitly accusing the disciples of sin, agreeing with the pharisees! that's a superficial gloss of what's going on in this passage. it is far deeper!
