David Miller wrote:
Izzy wrote:
They were just picking grains off as they walked through, much like you would Pick up something off a plate of food. They weren't out "gathering". It was legalistic nit-picking.
Pulling grain from the ear is not the same as picking from a plate of food. It is indeed gathering food, perhaps considered harvesting in one sense of the word. It seems to me that this situation is more gray or borderline than you perhaps have acknowledged here.
One might argue that if they did not put the grain into a basket, or use a sickle to harvest the grain, then it was not really "work." One problem with this understanding is that such would mean that the Israelites could have eaten the manna on the sabbath right off the ground as long as they did not put it into baskets. It does not appear that even this was allowed, but perhaps this gray area was never really addressed. Do you think any Israelites on the morning of sabbath took manna right off the ground and ate it, or do you think they refrained from touching it at all in light of the commandment to gather the manna on the day before and not to gather any on the sabbath?
I think it interesting that Jesus addressed exceptions to the sabbath law rather than trying to argue that what his disciples were doing was not work. For example, he argued that David and his men ate the shewbread which was by Torah allowed only to the priests. He also argued that priests "break the Sabbath" all the time and are innocent. In other words, Jesus was arguing why his disciples were allowed to break sabbath rather than arguing that they were not breaking sabbath. At the same time, he declares them to be innocent and not guilty of breaking the Torah. I think the only way to understand this is to understand that the sabbath command is tempered here by other considerations of the Torah. In other words, we might say that they broke the sabbath but not the Torah teaching overall.
By way of modern analogy, suppose a man had an injury and traveled faster than the speed limit in order to get to the hospital. Would he be considered innocent based upon the argument that he did not speed, or would he be innocent based upon the argument that he had a legitimate right to speed? Of course, if we define speeding as illegitimately traveling faster than the speed limit, then the man did not speed even though he traveled faster than the speed limit. Maybe we are having the same semantic problem in regards to whether or not Jesus broke the sabbath.
Peace be with you. David Miller.
A moot point. No reason to argue. We Christians are not bound to keep the Sabbath, and it does not matter whether anyone else does or not. If they are not sold out followers of Christ, they are lost no matter what they do.
Terry
---------- "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man." (Colossians 4:6) http://www.InnGlory.org
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