Matthew 12a

The Gospel according to Matthew

1-2.  The ancestry and birth of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.

3-4.  Jesus’ ministry begins; John’s baptism, Satan’s temptations, first disciples called.,

5-7.  A summary of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, crowds were astounded.

8-9.  An account of Jesus’ healings; the authority of Jesus is questioned and defended.

10-12. Jesus sends apostles on a short-term mission; then continues his own ministry.

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Jesus has completed a ministry tour of Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Chorazin, which did not seem to go well. He turned to the ever-present crowds and told them how sorry (which is what ‘Woe!’ means) the ones who rejected him would be. Then he warned the crowd that they themselves were also mercurial, following John, then Jesus, then refusing to be completely committed to either. 

After the early successes described in chapters 5 through 9, the ground seems to be shifting. There are some devoted followers, but also many who come to see what they can get from Jesus, but they are not committed. The Jewish leaders have been playing a waiting game, but now they sense that the crowds may be ready to question Jesus’ authority. Opposition escalates; Matthew describes next a series of encounters that Jesus had with the leaders who want to protect their own power over the crowds. 

12: 1-8.   At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? How he entered the house of God, and they ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

Are the Pharisees always nearby watching and waiting? So it seems. Considering that Jesus is schooling the Pharisees here, this is a dazzling display of Scripture references. Jesus asks them if they have read these passages. Of course they had read them, all their lives. The question is: Did they understand them? Do they know how Scripture applies to the current times?

The base complaint is not that the disciples are pulling heads of wheat off with their hands, shuffling them back and forth, blowing away the chaff, and eating the wheat kernels. The law permitted the poor or travelers to do that even if it wasn’t their field (Deuteronomy 23: 25; Leviticus 23: 22). For the Pharisees, the issue is the definition of work. No work is allowed on the Sabbath; so, should rubbing out a handful of grain for a snack be called work? This is how the Pharisees tied people up in knots. 

Jesus rejected their legalistic worldview. He looked for an Old Testament precedent as well, but one that considered the human aspects of the event. The disciples are on a mission with Jesus and they are hungry. The precedent that Jesus referenced involves none other than David, so it will be difficult for the Pharisees to say David was wrong. The story is that David and his men were moving steathily through the countryside because Jonathan had warned him that his father, King Saul, was still looking for him. David came to Nob and asked Ahimelech the priest for food. Ahimelech had only the ‘show bread’ which is reserved for the priests, but he gave it to David for his men to eat (I Samuel 21). This shows that the law is subject to considerations of human character and human need.

The second reference is more general. Throughout the Torah, priests are instructed to make sacrifices, including slaughtering animals, on the Sabbath. Down to Jesus’ day, the priests were still working in the Temple on the Sabbath. As it is for pastors today, the Lord’s day is not a time to rest, but a time to work.    

However, there is something more. The next layer has to do with the purpose of the Sabbath or any ritual. We observe the Sabbath because God rested on the seventh day, and thus we are invited to remember God’s great acts of Creation. We perform rituals because they are symbols that remind us of our need to pay proper attention to the blessings God has given us. 

There is something more. The top layer of meaning has to do with recognizing the presence of God among us. If the ritual is to remind us of God, then what do we do when God himself actually appears on earth? Certainly, God rules over the Sabbath and over the rituals. Who among us would let the phone keep ringing when the person we are calling surprises us by walking into the room? 

That is what Jesus means when he says that something greater than the Temple is here. Jesus gathers up the Law, the Sabbath observance, and the ritual sacrifices in one trope: The Temple. What is the need for the Temple and all that it represents when God himself appears in Israel? The real thing is better than the ritual.

So, what is the meaning of, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice”? This quote comes from the prophets. “For I desire steadfast love (hesed) and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6: 6).

Other prophets reflect the same idea: What God likes best is people showing mercy while they work for justice for the oppressed, not just offering not burnt animals to God.  

“When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile…. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1: 12-13, 16-17).

“With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings? … He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6: 6, 8). 

So clear, so clear. Yet, it is worth noting that we live in an age where the Pharisees might feel right at home as we pass more and more laws to restrict behavior, thus making life more difficult for marginalized people, but easier for the rich and powerful. Our politicians spend more time on culture wars, and not enough time showing  mercy and seeking justice. 

12: 9-14.  He left that place and entered their synagogue; a man was there with withered hand, and they asked him, “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?” so that they might accuse him. He said to them, “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out?  How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

The Pharisees have challenged Jesus, and Jesus takes up the challenge … to a point. Jesus left the place on the road where he clashed with the Pharisees and went on to a town where there was a synagogue. Matthew makes it seem to be on the same Sabbath day, and it may well be. Certainly, Sabbath observance was on Jesus’ opponents’ minds. 

The presence of a man with a withered hand in the synagogue is unusual since anyone with a blemish was kept out of the Temple and the local synagogue. Perhaps he was allowed in because Jesus was there; or perhaps he was bait for a trap. Notice that “they asked him … so that they might accuse him.”

It was the argument style (the rhetorical method) of the day to respond to a question by asking another question, so Jesus has adapted himself well to the local culture and time period in which he was incarnated. Once again, Jesus references Scripture, the Law in fact, which is another adaptation since that is exactly what a Pharisee would do: cite one law to challenge another one.

 “If someone leaves a pit open or digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it, the owner of the pit shall make restitution, giving money to its owner but keeping the dead animal” (Exodus 21: 33-34). 

While there is no mention of the Sabbath here, we have stated before that the learned scribes and Pharisees had parsed the meaning of every law. So, many agreed, but not all, that it was proper on the Sabbath to water animals or rescue them from danger, such as falling into a pit that was meant to capture predators. Yet a distinction was made between an emergency rescue and some problem that could be solved just as well by waiting until after the Sabbath. 

That is why Jesus adds the idea of how much more valuable is the life of a human than an animal (though not all people today would agree to this valuation). 

The higher level value is whether or not it is proper and legal to ‘do good’ on the Sabbath. We have, in my previous church, done mission projects, such as making kits of emergency food rations for people in crisis, right after church services. Priests and pastors may visit the sick and shut-ins on a Sunday afternoon. 

However, the Pharisees thought they saw an opening to remove this threat to their authority, and they began the process of spreading disinformation about Jesus. 

12: 15-21.  When Jesus became aware of this, he departed. Many followed him, and he cured all of them, and he ordered them not to make him known. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the gentiles. He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the gentiles will hope.”

Jesus quotes from Isaiah 42: 1-4. In this section of Isaiah (40-55), the servant is Israel (see especially 44: 1, 21; 49: 3). But, Isaiah says that when this servant fails, God will raise up someone within Israel to carry out the mission, to suffer for Israel, and to bring hope to the Gentiles (49-53; see esp. 52: 13–53: 12). 

As is fitting with Isaiah’s vision, Jesus withdraws rather than continue to dispute with the Pharisees. Yet, Jesus continues to heal people. Jesus does not covet a reputation as a healer, a mere conjurer. Healings are not an end in themselves, they are signs.

Remember that the baptism of Jesus was a sign where people witnessed “the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” These are some of the same words as in Isaiah. (Note: the Greek word pais can mean ‘son’ or ‘servant’.)

Finally, Isaiah says, and Matthew is keen to include, that while this servant/son will suffer for Israel, he also brings hope to ta ethne ‘the nations’ or ‘the Gentiles’. While Jesus insisted that he had been sent to the Jews, it is clear that the mission that God has in mind began with Abraham to reach his people in order to reach the nations, and that is what the larger plan looks like. There is our hope, and there is our mission.

Page ahead to Matthew 28: 18: “And Jesus came and said to (the disciples), ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’.”