So you suggested that the prophecies of doom in 11:20-24 aren’t aimed at the Galilean towns as such, but at the religious authorities whose influence pervades them. Doesn’t that bring the conflict between Jesus and the authorities out into the open?
Close, but it’s not yet been framed in so many words. This will change in the first part of chapter 12, where Jesus has two disputes with the authorities about the keeping of the Sabbath and then a direct confrontation over exorcism. The Pharisees were already speculating that he was in league with the “ruler of the demons” back in 9:34. But, in chapter 12, the conflict breaks out into the public sphere. For this post, however, the dispute about how to keep the Sabbath will give us quite enough to deal with.
The Torah says “No work,” right?
Definitely. “You shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns” (Exodus 20:10) And the text goes on to explain that this is a way of joining in God’s own rest on the seventh day after completing the creation. Here, however, Jesus argues that this commandment does not stand alone and that human needs can justify breaking at times.
The controversy arises because the Pharisees noticed that, as he walked through the fields, his disciples were plucking heads of grain.
The Twelve?
Possibly, but we can’t tell for sure. Matthew has never mentioned whether they’ve returned from their mission. Perhaps he wants the matter to be a little unclear so as to discourage us from drawing too sharp a boundary around “the disciples.” In any case, it suggests the Jesus’ disciples included people who were not particularly strict about the Sabbath.
But was this really work that they did—plucking a few heads of wheat to chew on? Can you even eat raw grains of wheat?
I remember, from when I was younger, my Uncle Bill, a wheat farmer, handing me some newly threshed grains of wheat to chew on. He said it would be a bit like chewing gum, and it was. But I suppose that I absorbed a few nutrients out of it. In any case chewing it might help relieve hunger.
The issue here is the problem of distinguishing precisely between what is work and what is not. I notice that, in my own life, I distinguish work partly by how much energy it requires, but partly by how voluntary it is. Gardening that might be work if it were my job becomes recreation if I’m doing it purely because I enjoy getting dirty in the garden.
But if I define work purely in terms of physical exertion, then any gardening would certainly be work. My Methodist grandfather was not alone of his generation in forbidding family members to mow the lawn on the Sabbath (which, for him, meant Sunday rather than Saturday). Again, one could define work in terms of productive activity—activity intended to issue in a practical result. Lighting a fire, in an era when that meant using flint and steel, say, would qualify as work in terms of effort expended. But turning on the electric heat today, though much easier, would still qualify as work on the grounds of its being productive activity.
In other words, the definition of “work” is intrinsically slippery, which is probably the major reason why some orthodox Jewish Sabbath restrictions seem excessive to other people. (I don’t assume that they seem so for orthodox Jews. For them, it is simply the way they shape their lives in conformity with their faith.) You’ll notice, in any case, that Jesus doesn’t get into the questions of how to define “work” and whether the picking of grain was an example of “work.” He challenges his critics on quite different grounds.
He’s not even being attacked directly, is he? Matthew never says that he picked any grain himself.
Right! The Pharisees have noticed, though, that he doesn’t seem to disapprove; and they want him to discipline his disciples.
Instead of doing that, he argues with his critics about their singular concentration on the law of the Sabbath to the exclusion of other scriptural concerns. His first argument, isn’t even about the violation of the Sabbath itself; it’s about something much more extreme—a violation of the sacredness of the House of God. And here, too, he excuses the violation on the grounds of hunger.
The regulations in the Torah are very specific: The Bread of the Presence consisted of twelve loaves made from the finest wheat flour which were laid out week by week on a golden table inside the Holy Place—an inner chamber so holy that only priests were allowed to enter it. After the loaves had lain in God’s presence for a week they were removed; but because they were very holy, they could be disposed of only by having the priests consume them. And even this had to be done somewhere within the sanctuary. (Lev. 24:5-9)
In other words, the loaves could be eaten only in the holy precinct and only by holy people in a state of purity. Despite all these restriction in Torah, Jesus points out, David, who was no priest at all—(he wasn’t even from the right tribe)—was allowed to enter the sanctuary with his band of warriors and eat the loaves because they were hungry and in imminent danger. (1 Samuel 21:1-6)
But wait! Does it actually say in 1 Samuel that David entered the sanctuary?
No, but Jesus could deduce that, since the priest Ahimelech was stretching the rules to their limit and would surely not have tolerated having the holy loaves taken out of the sacred precincts.
The Pharisees might perhaps have countered by saying that a single action by David and the High Priest Ahimelech however shocking, could not serve as a precedent. But Jesus adds a second argument with specific reference to the Sabbath, which does establish an exception to the rule of “no work.” The priests in the House of God routinely did a great deal of heavy work on the Sabbath as they offered up the required sacrifices, but they’re never accused of Sabbath-breaking. Here is a case where one set of Torah instructions, the rules for sacrifice, conflict with another, the Sabbath law.
If anything, one might argue (though Jesus doesn’t), that the Sabbath law is weightier, since it comes from the Ten Commandments, while the sacrificial laws are from Leviticus. But the worship of the Temple was beyond chalenge at this point in time.
But Jesus doesn’t stick to arguing Torah against Torah. Instead, he makes the problem more difficult by his mysterious statement that “something greater than the temple is here.” Matthew probably expects us to recognize this as a reference to Jesus himself or, perhaps better, to the Good News of the Reign of Heaven embodied in his presence. (He speaks, after all, of “something greater” not “some one.”) From the Pharisees’ point of view. this is a deeply offensive suggestion, since there would no longer be any rules at all that couldn’t be called into question.
It sounds quite antinomian, doesn’t it? Does he mean that anything goes now?
Apparently not, for his third argument holds up a passage from the prophet Hosea (6:6)—a passage he also quoted earlier in 9:13. When Hosea said that God “desires mercy and not sacrifice,” that sounds in English like a complete abolition of sacrificial worship. In ancient Hebrew, it comes closer to just moving sacrifice down the hierarchy of values—below mercy. God values mercy above any purely religious regulation or observance.
Here, Jesus is placing scripture in opposition to scripture as a way of saying that it’s not enough just to argue about exactly what constitutes work on the Sabbath. It’s more important to understand how the Sabbath fits into the larger picture of how God deals with us. There are higher values in God’s eyes—higher than simple obedience to the laws. And, of these, mercy, an expression of God’s own love for us, ranks very high indeed.
But what does verse 8 have to do with this?
That’s not too clear, is it? Who is the “Son of Man” anyway? Since our translators have capitalized it, they must think it’s one of the titles of Jesus himself. And Jesus definitely does use it to refer to himself (see, for example, Matthew 8:20, 9:6, 10:23 to cite just a few examples). But it’s not clear where this phrase came from or what it meant to him or his hearers. There’s no clear instance elsewhere in scripture of it being used as a title for someone of particular importance. And it echoes a common phrase in Aramaic (probably the most widely spoken language in the area in Jesus’ time)—a phrase that means simply “human being.”
If Jesus is claiming authority here as “the Son of Man,” he’s claiming it not on the basis of his intimacy with God (the phrase for that would be “Son of God” as in Mt. 14:33), but simply as one human being among others. Humans are not the subjects, but the lords of the Sabbath. This doesn’t abolish the Sabbath, which after all is a mercy for hard-working humanity. But it calls us to observe it in ways that honor and express the divine mercy—even for hungry people walking through wheat fields. Anything less than that is wrong, no matter how precisely it may cleave to the rules.

Next up: OPEN CONFLICT: MORE ABOUT THE SABBATH (12:9-14)