But he said unto
them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that
were with him; How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread,
which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but
only for the priests? (Matt 12:3-4)
Commenting on this passage, Phillip Sigal wrote
the following:
Jesus asks the
Pharisees whether they do not recall the action of David (1 Sam 21:2-7), when
he and his followers were hungry and they ate are the artous tēs protheseōs.
Matthew 12:4 refers to these as loaves meant only for priests. The priest in
the David episode does not indicate priests may eat the bread that he gives to
David. He merely pleads that the only bread available is “holy bread” (21:5).
Actually, this holy bread was to be offered upon the altar (Lev 6:16). At 1 Sam
21:7 the author informs us that the priest gave to David this holy bread, for
otherwise the only bread there was the leḥem happanim, which is changed
weekly but which cannot be removed until that time. If the episode occurred on
the Sabbath, the priest could have baked new gridle-cakes to offer upon the
altar (m. Men. 11:3), but he could not have baked new leḥem happanim. If
the episode did not occur on the Sabbath, the leḥem hapannim was not
even scheduled for change. In either case, he could not have given the leḥem
happanim to David. But in either case he was able to give him the holy food
that the priest was to burn on the altar and to bake substitute cakes.
Despite Schlatter,
the thrust of Jesus’ argument is not merely that moral factors like precedence
over the ceremonial. It is that David ate holy bread meant only to be offered
on the altar. He violated the sanctity of the altar itself. Jesus is thus
offering a heqqēsh, the hermeneutical rule of juxtaposition of two
persons and situations. David infringed what is qodesh, holy, the
priests’ bread that constitute the daily meal offering, and the disciples are
infringing upon what is qodesh, the Sabbath. As a matter of fact, the
case of David is more serious, for there it is clearly holy bread destined to
be a holocaust that he infringes. In the case of the disciples, it is not at
all clear that their activity is forbidden. Thus Matt 12:3-4 constitute a
combined heqqēsh and an implied qal waḥomer. After the heqqēsh
one must understand Jesus as arguing that, if David could do so in a case of
definite infringement, the disciples may certainly do so in a case of doubtful
infringement.
