In the first (6:1–5) of the Sabbath controversies, the Pharisees accuse Jesus of doing that which is not lawful “on the Sabbath” (6:2). The law permitted the plucking of grain while walking through a field (Deut. 23:25), but the Pharisees prohibited such on the Sabbath because harvesting constituted work. Jesus responds to this criticism by recalling how David and his companions ate the “bread of the Presence” (1 Sam. 21:6), even though only priests were permitted to eat this bread (Lev. 24:5–9). Jesus’s point is that David legitimately broke the technical requirements of the law when hum…