Ver. 1. Jesus went on the Sabbath day] St Luke calleth it “the second Sabbath after the first,” Matthew 6:1, that is, the second anniversary or solemn feast from the first (δευτεροπρωτον), to wit, from the passover Sabbath, and this was Pentecost. And his disciples were an hungred] Hereby he hardened and inured them to further and future trials: teaching them also to depend upon God’s good providence for their necessary maintenance. The martyrs had their bread made of meal half mixed with sawdust. To pluck the ears of corn and to eat] This was their best Sabbath day’s dinner: may not we be glad of mean fare on any day, when our betters fared no better on so high a day? See my Common Place of Abstinence.
Ver. 2. Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful] This was as the proverb is, Sus Minervam, a pig is Minerva, when blind Pharisees will be teaching Christ how the Sabbath is to be sanctified. Not Hebrews only, but also Greeks and barbarians rested from work on the seventh day: witness Josephus, Clement Alexander, and Eusebius. Howbeit, to the Hebrews at Mount Sinai, God, for a special favour, made known his holy Sabbath, Nehemiah 9:14, commanding them to do no servile work therein, Leviticus 23:7,8. This excludes not works of piety, charity, and necessity, such as was this of the disciples in the text. The Jews in their superstition would not fight on the Sabbath, and therefore lost their chief city to the Romans, under the command of Pompey, who took the advantage of the day to do his utmost then against them. In later times they grew more rigid in this point: for on the Sabbath they would not spit, ease nature, get out of an outhouse, if by mishap they had fallen into it, as that Jew of Tewkesbury. This ever was and is the guise of hypocrites, to strain at gnats and swallow camels. Witness our modern Pharisees, the monks and Jesuits, who stumble at straws and leap over mountains. Their schoolmen determined that it was a less crime to kill a thousand men than for a poor man to mend his shoe on the Sabbath day. Romani quoties dies huiusmodi rediissent fortissime percutiebant. Levius esse crimen mille homines iugulare, quam semel die Dominico pauperi calceum consuere. Pareus in loc.
Ver. 3. But he said unto them] They had not proved a breach of the Sabbath, neither could they. A breach it had been, had not the disciples been hungry, and he denies it not, but confutes their present cavils by clear syllogisms, one in the neck of another, such as they could not answer, nor abide, and therefore sought to destroy him, Matthew 12:14. See here the lawful use of logic in divinity, and mistake not St Jerome, Qui syllogizandi artem, applicatam Theologiae, comparat plagis Aegypti: understand him of that false sophistry, which the apostle calleth vain philosophy, Col. ii. David did when he was an hungred] Note here, that our Saviour excuseth David from his necessity, not from his dignity, which in point of sin God regards not; Potentes potenter torquebuntur. And yet how many are there who think, that when they have gotten an office, they may oppress at pleasure, swear by authority, drink and swill without control? But height of place ever adds two wings to sin, example and scandal. And ill accidents ever attend such great ones, as, being absolute in power, will be too resolute in will and dissolute in life. Queen Elizabeth said that princes owe a double duty to God: 1. As men. 2. As princes. Sedes prima et vita ima, is as unsuitable as for those that are clothed in scarlet to embrace the dunghill, Lamentations 4:5. Manifestis syllogismis adversarios redarguit. Gualt.
Ver. 4. And did eat the shewbread] The bread of proposition, as the Greek text hath it; the face bread, as the Septuagint call it; or that which was daily set before the Lord, to remind him, as it were, of the twelve tribes by those twelve loaves; and to teach us to labour every day in the week (and not on the Sabbath only) for the bread that endureth to everlasting life; which the Son of man will give to every hungry David, John 6:27. αρτους προθεσεως, ενωπιους προκειμενους.
Ver. 5. Profane the Sabbath] As ye count profaning of it: or they profane it by divine dispensation, while they do servile works in slaying sacrifices, and other things tending to the service of God, such as is now the ringing of the sermon bell among us, as among the Protestants in France the letting off of a harquebus or pistol, whereby they congregate. The early type of portable gun, varying in size from a small cannon to a musket, which on account of its weight was, when used in the field, supported upon a tripod, trestle, or other ‘carriage’, and afterwards upon a forked ‘rest’. The name in German and Flemish meant literally ‘hook-gun’, from the hook cast along with the piece, by which it was fastened to the ‘carriage’; but the name became generic for portable fire-arms generally in the 16th century, so that the type with the hook was subsequently distinguished as arquebuse à croc. ŒD