Mark 2:23 Commentary and Bible Study

The disciples of the Lord were hungry and they were going through the cornfields on the sabbath day plucking the grain, perhaps barley if it was early in the year, perhaps wheat if it was a bit later – the harvests in the holy land are at different times. According to the Gospel of Luke they rubbed the grain between their hands, and then they ate. They were immediately accused, scorned, by the Pharisees who found fault with them and complained to the Lord: ‘Why are they doing this, which is forbidden on the sabbath day?’ Actually it wasn't true that it was forbidden on the sabbath day. The trouble was that the rules for the sabbath given by God had been made much more complicated, and added to by the rabbis over time, and a long list of most absurd and ridiculous rules were added to the sabbath commandment by the Pharisees. Their rules specifically spelled out that to pluck the ears of corn was the same as reaping it with a scythe. They said that what you did with your fingers was equivalent to reaping it with a scythe, whereas in Deuteronomy the distinction is drawn between these two things, and it is expressly said, you may go through a person's field and pluck the corn by hand to eat there and then, but you must not reap it because it is not yours; you were allowed this small plucking. But the Pharisees were ignorant of this, and they had these rules, which were of human invention and had been added to the law of God. So they were in fact wrong in their accusation. It was the same with the rubbing of the grain between the hands that Luke particularly mentions. That rubbing was held by their rules to be equivalent to thrashing the grain, but it was no infringement of the Old Testament sabbath commandment.