The same result is reached by another process of reasoning. After the first Passover [3544] our Lord, with such of His disciples as had then gathered to Him, tarried for some time - no doubt for several weeks - in Judæa. [3545] The wheat was ripe for harvesting, when he passed through Samaria. [3546] And, on His return to Galilee, His disciples seem to have gone back to their homes and occupations, since it was some time afterwards when even His most intimate disciples - Peter, Andrew, James, and John - were called a second time. [3547] Chronologically, therefore, there is no room for this event between the first Passover and Pentecost. [3548] Lastly, we have here to bear in mind, that, on His first appearance in Galilee, the Pharisees had not yet taken up this position of determined hostility to Him. On the other hand, all agrees with the circumstance, that the active hostility of the Pharisees and Christ's separation from the ordinances of the Synagogue commenced with His visit to Jerusalem in the early autumn of that year. [3549] If, therefore, we have to place the plucking of the ears of corn after the Feast recorded in St. John v., as can scarcely be doubted, it must have taken place, not between the first, but between the Second Passover and Pentecost of Christ's Public Ministry.
Another point deserves notice. The different setting' (chronologically speaking) in which the three Gospels present the event about to be related, illustrates that the object of the Evangelists was to present the events in the History of the Christ in their succession, not of time, but of bearing upon final results. This, because they do not attempt a Biography of Jesus, which, from their point of view, would have been almost blasphemy, but a History of the Kingdom which He brought; and because they write it, so to speak, not by adjectives (expressive of qualities), nor adverbially, [3550] but by substantives. Lastly, it will be noted that the three Evangelists relate the event about to be considered (as so many others), not, indeed, with variations, [3551] but with differences of detail, showing the independence of their narratives, which, as we shall see, really supplement each other.
We are now in a position to examine the narrative itself. It was on the Sabbath after the Second Paschal Day that Christ and His disciples passed [3552] - probably by a field-path - through cornfields, when His disciples, being hungry, [3553] as they went, [3554] plucked ears of corn and ate them, having rubbed off the husks in their hands. [3555] On any ordinary day this would have been lawful, [3556] but on the Sabbath it involved, according to Rabbinic statutes, at least two sins. For, according to the Talmud, what was really one labour, would, if made up of several acts, each of them forbidden, amount to several acts of labour, each involving sin, punishment, and a sin-offering. [3557] [3558] This so-called division' of labour applied only to infringement of the Sabbath-rest - not of that of feast-days. [3559] Now in this case there were at least two such acts involved: that of plucking the ears of corn, ranged under the sin of reaping, and that of rubbing them, which might be ranged under sifting in a sieve, threshing, sifting out fruit, grinding, or fanning. The following Talmudic passage bears on this: In case a woman rolls wheat to remove the husks, it is considered as sifting; if she rubs the heads of wheat, it is regarded as threshing; if she cleans off the side-adherences, it is sifting out fruit; if she bruises the ears, it is grinding; if she throws them up in her hand, it is winnowing.' [3560] One instance will suffice to show the externalism of all these ordinances. If a man wished to move a sheaf on his field, which of course implied labour, he had only to lay upon it a spoon that was in his common use, when, in order to remove the spoon, he might also remove the sheaf on which it lay! [3561] And yet it was forbidden to stop with a little wax the hole in a cask by which the fluid was running out, [3562] or to wipe a wound!