And *he* said to them, Have ye never read what David did when he had need and hungered, *he* and those with him,
The Pharisees have just accused the disciples of breaking the Sabbath by picking grain. Jesus answers not with a rule but with a story from their own Scriptures: why a hungry David?
Jesus does not argue about what counts as work. He points them to a page they claim to know, and His reply comes in two parts.
Mark records the reply of Jesus in two distinct parts. Each part opens with the words "And He said to them." (1) He appealed to written Scripture to support what the disciples had done: "Have you never read what David did?" and so on. (2) He defended their act on two grounds: the origin of the Sabbath, and His own authority as Lord of the Sabbath. The Pharisees, as far as we learn, gave no reply to this two-fold testimony.
The incident Jesus points to happened when David was on the run. He asked for bread that only priests could eat.
David, chosen by God and anointed by Samuel to be king over Israel, was fleeing from Saul, who wanted to kill him... The priests were at Nob, and David came there, a fugitive from the king's anger, starving with hunger. He arrived on the Sabbath day. That was the day when the priests had changed the twelve loaves of showbread ("the bread of the face," or "of the presence")... David asked the priest for some of the old loaves for himself and his companions. This was a bold thing to ask, for this holy bread... was eaten in the holy place by the priests only.
The link between the two scenes is not hunger alone. It is a king whom God chose and his people rejected.
Our Lord here points to the rejection of the man God had chosen for His purposes. Take David in his day. He was the anointed king even while he was the despised one, hunted for his life on the mountains of Israel. He and his company were a picture of Jesus. Jesus was now in the same kind of position as David — anointed, but not yet come to the crown... The Lord of glory was on earth. How was it that His disciples needed even ears of grain to satisfy their hunger?... How far out of order things must have been for the Lord and His disciples to lack the most ordinary necessities of life!
If the king God chose is starving outside, keeping the holy loaves untouched inside is not devotion. That was the situation at Nob, and something greater was standing in the cornfield.
In that day the letter of the ancient rules had to give way to the needs of the anointed king after God's heart... "True, the showbread was only for the priests. Yet for them to keep their consecrated bread and let the anointed king starve would be a strange way to honour God and the king. And now the Son of David, the Lord of David, was there, and more rejected, more despised, than David himself."
The accusers were not neutral observers. Their complaint exposed them.
In raising the question of the Sabbath, the Pharisees show great zeal for the outward keeping of a day. At the same time they do not care at all that the Lord of the Sabbath and His disciples were left to hunger. They claimed to be glorifying God at the very moment they were rejecting His witness. The Lord exposes their unreality by recalling the history of David and his companions, who in the day of their rejection were left to hunger.
Jesus points to one act of David, not to everything David did while running from Saul.
His act was clearly allowable in the circumstances. It showed the state of things in Israel... Men could not push the Lord's anointed and those with him into hardship by rejecting him. They could not then use God's institutions to stop those needs from being met... David clearly acted in this abnormal way in agreement with the mind of God. Even so, we must not justify the story he told Ahimelech, nor his flight to Achish, king of Gath.
- Rejection — Saul hunted David when he was already the anointed king; Jesus stood in the same position, anointed but not yet crowned.
- Hunger — the Lord of glory was on earth, and His disciples lacked bread; that shows how far out of order things had become.
- Precedent — Jesus answers first from written Scripture, then from His own authority; the Pharisees had no reply.
- Freedom — when God's anointed is refused, the letter of the old rules gives way; letting the king starve to guard the holy loaves would be a strange way to honour God.
- Limits — David's act was allowable in those circumstances, but the story he told Ahimelech and his flight to Gath are not approved with it.
how he entered into the house of God, in [the section of] Abiathar [the] high priest, and ate the shew-bread, which it is not lawful unless for the priests to eat, and gave even to those that were with him?
Challenged about His disciples on the Sabbath, Jesus points the Pharisees back to David: Israel's true king, hungry, on the run, and eating bread reserved for priests. That raises two questions: how could David be defended for breaking God's own law, and why does Jesus name Abiathar when the priest who helped him was Ahimelech?
Start with the bread itself, and the rule attached to it.
In Israel the showbread was the twelve loaves placed on the table in the holy place, new every Sabbath day. It was holy, and only the priests ate it (Lev. 24:5-9). The words mean "face" or "presence" bread (Ex. 25:30), and "bread of arrangement" or "ordering."
Commentators press the difficulty here instead of softening it.
This was not a doubtful point. It was not a question of human additions to the law, or of how men interpreted it. It was direct opposition to the statute in Leviticus. So how could the Lord justify it? Was it simply because they were hungry? ... and was every hungry man free, like David, to set the law aside?
The answer offered is not hunger in general, but who the hungry man was.
Since David was rejected, God's whole relationship with Israel had gone dark, and the holiness of the consecrated things had left them... For the moment everything in Israel was on hold, and that because the LORD's anointed had been rejected. How much more, then, when the true David stood among them, only to be rejected, was it the greatest folly to argue about a Sabbath! How could the Sabbath remain for those who were refusing the Lord of the Sabbath?
Writers set the two scenes side by side: David hunted and hungry, and Jesus hungry among men who claimed to be honouring God.
By raising the question of the Sabbath, the Pharisees show great zeal for keeping a day outwardly. Yet they care nothing that the Lord of the Sabbath and His disciples go hungry. They claimed to be glorifying God at the very moment when they were rejecting His witness... In this situation, with God's anointed rejected, hunted and hungry, the showbread loses its value in God's sight. So David and his companions committed no sin, even though eating it went against the letter of the law.
Another writer states the principle at work.
Men could not reject the Lord's anointed and those with him, leaving them in need, and then try to use God's institutions to stop those needs from being met. No command God had given was to stand in the way of God's care for His anointed and those with him.
Commentators differ on why Abiathar is named here. Some point to the Greek wording itself.
A difficulty arises here, because Abiathar was not the official high priest when this happened (see 1 Sam. 21:1; compare 1 Sam. 22:11)... But the Greek of Mark has no "the" before "high priest"; it reads "Abiathar, a high priest." Abiathar was no doubt acting for his father at the time, and he was, as Plumptre says, "of David's party, the chief agent in allowing him to take the showbread."
Others take the phrase as a way of citing Scripture, the way we would give a chapter reference.
Compare three expressions: epi Abiathar (Mark 2:26), epi tou batou (Mark 12:26), and the similar form en Elia (Rom. 11:2). We have reached the conclusion — clear at least to ourselves — that the first should not be translated "in the days of Abiathar." All three name a section or heading of a book, the section where the account of this event is found.
A third reading asks why Jesus chose this name and not the other.
When the Lord points to the kindness Ahimelech showed David, He points also to God's recognition and reward of it. He does this in a way familiar to students of God's word: He chooses the least obvious of Ahimelech's names. It is the name that marks his reward in Scripture — the mercy and honour given to his son Abiathar.
- Rejection. The whole scene turns on a rejected king. When God's anointed is refused, Israel's holy things lose their standing before God.
- Bread. The showbread was presence-bread: twelve loaves, new each Sabbath, food for priests alone. That makes David's act a real breach of the law.
- Precedence. The needs of the anointed king and his men came first. No command of God stood in the way of God's care for him.
- Abiathar. Commentators differ. Some read "a high priest" acting for his father. Others read the phrase as naming a section of Scripture. Others see Jesus using the less obvious name of the priest who helped David.
- Mercy. God remembered and rewarded the kindness shown to His anointed. That reward is marked in the very name Jesus chose.