The remaining two instances of opposition from the religious leaders arose over and concerned Sabbath observance. In the first case, the Pharisees opposed Jesus for permitting His disciples to do something they considered sinful. In the second, they opposed Him for doing something Himself that they objected to.
2:23-24 Jesus' disciples did something that the Mosaic Law permitted when they plucked the ears of wheat or barley (Deut. 23:25). However by doing it on a Sabbath day they violated a traditional Pharisaic interpretation of the law. The Pharisees taught that to do what the disciples did constituted reaping, threshing, and winnowing on the Sabbath, and that was forbidden work (Exod. 20:10).80
2:25-26 The incident Jesus referred to is in 1 Samuel 21:1-6. Mark was the only evangelist to mention that Abiathar was the high priest then. This seemingly contradicts the Old Testament since Ahimelech, the father or Abiathar, was the high priest then according to the writer of 1 Samuel. The best solution to this problem seems to be that Jesus referred to Abiathar because he was the better known priest during David's reign. The phrase "in the time of"or "in the days of"probably means "during the lifetime of"rather than "during the high priesthood of."81
Jesus' point was this. David technically broke the law by eating bread that only the priests were to eat. Nevertheless he could do so because David was the Lord's anointed servant. As such, he could do things other Israelites could not do. Furthermore the offense was a matter of religious ritual, not a moral violation of the law, as the Pharisees were implying. Another example of violating the letter of the law to observe its spirit is King Hezekiah's granting the Israelites who were unclean permission to eat the Passover (2 Chron. 30:18-20). God did not object to that either. Another explanation of David's action is that God permitted it because of the urgency of his situation and that Jesus was claiming that His mission was equally urgent.82
The Pharisees failed in two respects. First, they did not distinguish which laws were more important.
"Human need is a higher law than religious ritual."83
Second, they did not recognize Jesus as the anointed Servant of the Lord that the Old Testament predicted would come, the Son of David. Mark did not mention, as Matthew did, that Jesus pointed out that one greater than the temple had come (Matt. 12:6). Mark's emphasis was not on Jesus as the King as much as it was on Jesus as the Lord's anointed Servant. As God's anointed Servant, Jesus had the right to provide for His disciples' physical needs even though that meant violating a tradition governing ritual worship.
2:27-28 The Pharisees made the Sabbath a straight jacket that inhibited the Jews. Jesus pointed out that God gave the Sabbath as a good gift. He designed it to free His people from ceaseless labor and to give them rest. Sabbath observance had to contain enough elasticity to assure the promotion of human welfare. Jesus' point was the following.
"Since the Sabbath was made for man, He who is man's Lord . . . has authority to determine its law and use."84
Only Mark recorded, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath"(v. 27). One of his concerns in this Gospel was the welfare of mankind.
Since in the Old Testament the Sabbath was the Lord's day in a special sense, Jesus' claim in verse 28 constituted a claim to being God.85He had the right to determine how people should use the Sabbath.
". . . the exousia[authority] of Jesus manifests itself vis-a-visthe rabbinic tradition, the religious hierarchy, and the temple tradition. Foremost here is Jesus' reinterpretation of the Sabbath . . ."86
The following incident demonstrated Jesus' sovereign authority over the Sabbath. This is the last in this series of conflict accounts. It provides the climax in this section of Mark's narrative.
3:1-2 This event happened on a different Sabbath than the one just described in 2:23-28 (cf. Luke 6:6). The location of the synagogue is unimportant. The Pharisees continued to watch Jesus to accuse Him (2:23; 3:6). Rather than honestly evaluating His claims, most of them looked for an opportunity to discredit Him. Here they found an opportunity to charge Him with a capital offense in Israel, namely Sabbath violation (Exod. 31:14-17).
3:3-4 Rather than avoiding a conflict, Jesus provoked one. He did so to teach His critics a lesson. His question raised the issue of Sabbath observance from the level of what was legal to the level of what was moral. For Jesus not to heal the man would have been a violation of God's purpose for the Sabbath, namely to bring blessing to people. Moreover by healing the man Jesus was doing good whereas the Pharisees were doing evil on the Sabbath by trying to trap Him. Mark alone wrote that the critics kept quiet, probably to clarify their guilt.
3:5 Vainly Jesus "looked around"for someone who would respond to His question (cf. v. 34; 5:32; 10:23; 11:11). This expression is unique to the second Gospel. Evidently Peter remembered Jesus' looks around and communicated these to Mark as significant indications of His looking for the proper response from people.
This is the only place in the New Testament where a writer explicitly stated that Jesus was angry. This was a case of righteous indignation in the presence of unrepentant evil. This is also the only account of this miracle that records Jesus' compassion for the objects of His anger. The tenses of the Greek verbs indicate that Jesus was angry momentarily (aorist tense), but His attitude of compassion was persistent (present tense). References to Jesus' emotions are peculiar to Mark's Gospel. They show His humanity.
"Jesus' action was perfectly consistent with His love and mercy. As a true man, Jesus experienced normal human emotions, among them anger as well as grief at obstinate sin. In His reaction to the sullen refusal of the Pharisees to respond to the truth, the incarnate Christ revealed the character of our holy God."87
"Their opposition rested on a fundamental misunderstanding--an inability, or refusal, to see that Jesus was God's eschatological agent and that his sovereign freedom with regard to law and custom sprang from that fact."88
Since Jesus did not use anything but His word to heal the man, His enemies could not charge Him with performing work on the Sabbath. Jesus' beneficent creative work on this occasion recalls His work in creating the cosmos (Gen. 1). The Pharisees should have made the connection and worshipped Jesus as God.
"Thus when Jesus as Son of Man declares himself to be master of the Sabbath--and even violates its ordinances by plucking grain (Mark 2:23-26) and healing on the Sabbath (1:21-28; 3:1-6)--he presumes the very authority by which the Sabbath was instituted by the Creator.
"This sovereign disposition toward the Sabbath is typical of Jesus' challenges to the rabbinic tradition as a whole. Such challenges are found primarily at the outset and conclusion of Mark, as if to signify that from beginning to end the antidote to the leaven of the Pharisees' (8:15) is the exousia[authority] of Jesus. He violates laws of purity by touching and cleansing a leper (1:40-45) and by association with sinners and tax collectors (2:13-17). He places in question the issue of purification by violating food prohibitions in fasting (2:18-22) and by eating with unwashed hands (7:1-23). He contravenes marriage laws in his teaching on divorce (10:1-12), and he openly denounces the scribes (12:38-40). In the question on the son of David he tacitly assumes supremacy over Israel's greatest king who, according to 2 Sam 7:14, would be the progenitor of the Messiah (12:35-37)."89
3:6 This verse is the climax of this whole confrontation section (2:1-3:6). Faced with the most convincing arguments and actions about Jesus' deity, the Pharisees chose to reject them. Furthermore instead of simply leaving Jesus alone they took steps to kill Him. As the gospel story unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that Jesus' enemies opposed Him because He constituted a threat to their authority. That motivation is evident here too because the Herodians were supporters of Roman authority over Palestine. Together the Pharisees and the Herodians "feared he might be an unsettling political influence in Palestine."90These two groups had little in common except their common enemy, Jesus.
This is Mark's first explicit reference to Jesus' death. Notice that Jesus' enemies had decided to destroy Him. They only needed to plan how. In spite of their objections to Jesus working on the Sabbath, they did not mind plotting His death on that day.
This decision of Jesus' enemies to kill Him constitutes a turning point in Mark's narrative. It is a benchmark that affected Jesus' ministry from then on.
