With the torah introduced, Matthew now narrates two controversies between Jesus and the Pharisees about the law; both controversies are focused on Jesus’s practice of the Sabbath (12:1–8, 9–14). The Pharisees (12:2) were a Jewish sect considered to be experts in the law and were zealous in their obedience to it. An important part of their focus was adherence in everyday life to purity regulations intended to govern temple worship. Their desire was “to live out the rigor and piety of what was experienced at temple all year long” (Brown 2007, 209; cf. the description of the Pharisees on pp. 207–10). In the process, their prioritization of purity maintenance resulted in stricter boundaries between themselves and those people or activities that might make them ritually unclean for a period of…