CCC Cross Reference:
1 Sm 16:1 436; 1 Sm 16:12-13 436; 1 Sm 16:13 695
Ps 89 709
Mk 2:23-27 581; Mk 2:23-26 544; Mk 2:25-27 582; Mk 2:27-28 2167; Mk 2:27 2173; Mk 2:28 2173
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Back to Servant of the Word '10
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Reading 1
1 Sm 16:1-13
The Lord said to Samuel:
“How long will you grieve for Saul,
whom I have rejected as king of Israel?
Fill your horn with oil, and be on your way.
I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem,
for I have chosen my king from among his sons.”
But Samuel replied:
“How can I go?
Saul will hear of it and kill me.”
To this the Lord answered:
“Take a heifer along and say,
‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’
Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I myself will tell you what to do;
you are to anoint for me the one I point out to you.”
Samuel did as the Lord had commanded him.
When he entered Bethlehem,
the elders of the city came trembling to meet him and inquired,
“Is your visit peaceful, O seer?”
He replied:
“Yes! I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.
So cleanse yourselves and join me today for the banquet.”
He also had Jesse and his sons cleanse themselves
and invited them to the sacrifice.
As they came, he looked at Eliab and thought,
“Surely the Lord’s anointed is here before him.”
But the Lord said to Samuel:
“Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature,
because I have rejected him.
Not as man sees does God see,
because he sees the appearance
but the Lord looks into the heart.”
Then Jesse called Abinadab and presented him before Samuel,
who said, “The Lord has not chosen him.”
Next Jesse presented Shammah, but Samuel said,
“The Lord has not chosen this one either.”
In the same way Jesse presented seven sons before Samuel,
but Samuel said to Jesse,
“The Lord has not chosen any one of these.”
Then Samuel asked Jesse,
“Are these all the sons you have?”
Jesse replied,
“There is still the youngest, who is tending the sheep.”
Samuel said to Jesse,
“Send for him; we will not begin the sacrificial banquet until he arrives here.”
Jesse sent and had the young man brought to them.
He was ruddy, a youth handsome to behold
and making a splendid appearance.
The Lord said,
“There–anoint him, for this is he!”
Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand,
anointed him in the midst of his brothers;
and from that day on, the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David.
When Samuel took his leave, he went to Ramah.
Responsorial Psalm
89:20, 21-22, 27-28
R. (21a) I have found David, my servant.
Once you spoke in a vision,
and to your faithful ones you said:
“On a champion I have placed a crown;
over the people I have set a youth.”
R. I have found David, my servant.
“I have found David, my servant;
with my holy oil I have anointed him,
That my hand may be always with him,
and that my arm may make him strong.”
R. I have found David, my servant.
“He shall say of me, ‘You are my father,
my God, the Rock, my savior.’
And I will make him the first-born,
highest of the kings of the earth.”
R. I have found David, my servant.
Gospel
Mk 2:23-28
As Jesus was passing through a field of grain on the sabbath,
his disciples began to make a path while picking the heads of grain.
At this the Pharisees said to him,
“Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?”
He said to them,
“Have you never read what David did
when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry?
How he went into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest
and ate the bread of offering that only the priests could lawfully eat,
and shared it with his companions?”
Then he said to them,
“The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.
That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”
Readings from the Jerusalem Bible
First reading 1 Samuel 16:1 – 13
The Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will you go on mourning over Saul when I have rejected him as king of Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go. I am sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem, for I have chosen myself a king among his sons.’ Samuel replied, ‘How can I go? When Saul hears of it he will kill me.’ Then the Lord said, ‘Take a heifer with you and say, “I have come to sacrifice to the Lord”. Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and then I myself will tell you what you must do; you must anoint to me the one I point out to you.’
Samuel did what the Lord ordered and went to Bethlehem. The elders of the town came trembling to meet him and asked, ‘Seer, have you come with good intentions towards us?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Purify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.’ He purified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
When they arrived, he caught sight of Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed one stands there before him’, but the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Take no notice of his appearance or his height for I have rejected him; God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but the Lord looks at the heart’. Jesse then called Abinadab and presented him to Samuel, who said, ‘the Lord has not chosen this one either’. Jesse then presented Shammah, but Samuel said, ‘the Lord has not chosen this one either’. Jesse presented his seven sons to Samuel, but Samuel said to Jesse, ‘the Lord has not chosen these’. He then asked Jesse, ‘Are these all the sons you have?’ He answered, ‘There is still one left, the youngest; he is out looking after the sheep’. Then Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Send for him; we will not sit down to eat until he comes’. Jesse had him sent for, a boy of fresh complexion, with fine eyes and pleasant bearing. The Lord said, ‘Come, anoint him, for this is the one’. At this, Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him where he stood with his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord seized on David and stayed with him from that day on. As for Samuel, he rose and went to Ramah.
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 88(89):20-22,27-28
I have found David, my servant.
Of old you spoke in a vision.
To your friends the prophets you said:
‘I have set the crown on a warrior,
I have exalted one chosen from the people.
I have found David, my servant.
‘I have found David my servant
and with my holy oil anointed him.
My hand shall always be with him
and my arm shall make him strong.
I have found David, my servant.
‘He will say to me: “You are my father,
my God, the rock who saves me.”
And I will make him my first-born,
the highest of the kings of the earth.’
I have found David, my servant.
Gospel Mark 2:23 - 28
One sabbath day Jesus happened to be taking a walk through the cornfields, and his disciples began to pick ears of corn as they went along. And the Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing something on the sabbath day that is forbidden?’ And he replied, ‘Did you never read what David did in his time of need when he and his followers were hungry – how he went into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the loaves of offering which only the priests are allowed to eat, and how he also gave some to the men with him?’
And he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; the Son of Man is master even of the sabbath’.
Readings and Commentary from the Navarre Bible
Tuesday of the 2nd Week in Ordinary Time
From: 1 Samuel 16:1-13
David is Anointed
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[1b] The Lord said to Samuel, "How long will you grieve over Saul, seeing I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons." [2] And Samuel said, "How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me.” And the LORD said, "Take a heifer with you, and say, 'I have come to sacrifice to the LORD.' [3] And invite Jesse to the sacrifice and I will show you what you shall do and you shall anoint for me him whom I name to you” [4] Samuel did what the LORD commanded and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, 'Do you come peaceably?” [5] And he said, 'Peaceably, I have come to sacrifice to the LORD, consecrate yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he consecrated Jesse and his sons, and invited them to the sacrifice.
[6] When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, "Surely the Lord's anointed is before him." [7] But the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature because I have rejected him; for the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." [8] Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, "Neither has the LORD chosen this one." [9] Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, "Neither has the LORD chosen this one.” [10] And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, "The Lord has not chosen these." [11] And Samuel said to Jesse, "Are all your sons here?" And he said, "There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep."And Samuel said to Jesse, "Send and fetch him; for we will not sit down till he comes here." [12] And he sent, and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. And the Lord said, "Arise, anoint him; for this is he." [13] Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. And Samuel rose up and went to Ramah.
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Commentary:
16:1-31:13. This, the last section of 1 Samuel, begins with an account of the gradual decline of Saul until his eventual death in the battle of Gilboa against the Philistines (chap. 31); it also deals with the tortuous and sometimes slow rise to power of the new king, David. Strictly speaking, this section should also take in the final chapter of 2 Samuel. From a literary point of view we can see that the text is very much in the style of a court chronicle focusing only on episodes in which the kings play the leading role. Many of the events covered here are repeated twice--for example, David's entry into Saul's service (16:14-23; 18:1-2), Saul's attempt on David's life (18:10-11; 19:9-10), Saul's promise to give David his daughter's hand in marriage (18:17-19; 18:20-27), Jonathan's pleading on David's behalf (19:1-7; 20:25-34), David's flight (19:10-18; 20:1-21) and the opportunity he gets to take Saul's life (24:7-8; 26:11-12). All this goes to show that the editor has used material from a variety of sources and not made any great effort to merge them properly.
In the episodes recounted here there are few religious references, whereas the tensions between Saul and David are exposed in all their starkness; in fact, even though these chapters deal with the most famous of kings, David, and stress God's special love for him, no effort is made to gloss over his failings and transgressions (contrary to what happens in 1 and 2 Chronicles). David comes across as a shrewd politician, capable of allying himself with the eternal enemies of his people, the Philistines, in order to save himself (chap. 27); as a usurper of Saul's throne (chaps. 19 and 21); as a man of strong passions capable of slaughter on a grand scale (21:12; 22:17) and other human weaknesses (18:17-27; 25:32-44), yet capable, too, of great loyalty to the Lord's anointed king (chaps. 24-26) and to his own friends (chap. 20).
So, these accounts expose the most human side of the personalities involved, but they also allow us to see that the Lord God of Israel is the main protagonist even though he is in the background -- mainly because it is he who chooses David and stays with him, from the first moment that he enters the picture (16:1) and through all the crises of his career: witness the constant refrain "the Lord is with him" (16:18; 18:14, 28). Saul, David and the rest of the players in this history are not guided by a blind destiny: they are all playing their part in God's plan of salvation. The great lesson contained in these accounts is that the Lord does not normally intervene by way of miracles or amazing actions; he guides the course of history through lights and shadows until he attains his key objective -- to make himself known to all mankind and lead it to salvation. The other great lesson is that this salvific history steadily advances, amidst ups and downs -- acts of heroism, human weaknesses--until it reaches its fully developed stage in Jesus Christ.
16:1-13. Samuel's anointing of David, in a private, familial setting, is reminiscent of Saul's anointing, which was also done in secret (cf. 10:1-16). The narrative emphasizes that David does not in any way merit his election: he is a nobody, from a family of no importance: no genealogy is provided, apart from the name of Jesse, his father (v. 5); he is the youngest of his brothers (vv. 11-12) and, like the rest of his family, he works as a shepherd: he doesn't come from a noble or military or priestly family. He could have no claim to be anointed king.
God's gratuitous choice of this shepherd boy gives deep, religious meaning to his reception by Saul (16:14-23) and by the people, when he later kills Goliath (17:55-18:5). David's qualities and feats would not have been enough to advance him, had not God first singled him out. David is a type of those who in the Christian dispensation are called to offices in the Church: what matters is not background, personal qualities or material resources but the realization that one is called by God. Also, one needs to bear in mind that "man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart" (v. 7); from this derives the requirement to live and act in keeping with the call one is given. "For by his power to know himself in the depths of his being he rises above the whole universe of mere objects. When he is drawn to think about his real self, he turns to those deep recesses of his being where God who probes the heart awaits him, and where he himself decides his own destiny in the sight of God" (Vatican II, "Gaudium Et Spes", 14).
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From: Mark 2:23-28
The Law of the Sabbath
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[23] One Sabbath He (Jesus) was going through the grainfields; and as they made their way His disciples began to pluck ears of grain. [24] And the Pharisees said to Him, "Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?" [25] And He said to them, "Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and hungry, he and those who were with him: [26] how he entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?" [27] And He said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath; [28] so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."
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Commentary:
24. Cf. note on Matthew 12:2. [Note on Matthew 12:2 states: "The Sabbath": this was the day the Jews set aside for worshipping God. God Himself, the originator of the Sabbath (Genesis 2:3), ordered the Jewish people to avoid certain kinds of work on this day (Exodus 20:8-11; 21:13; Deuteronomy 5:14) to leave them free to give more time to God. As time went by, the rabbis complicated this Divine precept: by Jesus' time they had extended to 39 the list of kinds of forbidden work.
The Pharisees accuse Jesus' disciples of breaking the Sabbath. In the casuistry of the scribes and the Pharisees, plucking ears of corn was the same as harvesting, and crushing them was the same as milling--types of agricultural work forbidden on the Sabbath.]
26-27. The bread of the Presence consisted of twelve loaves or cakes placed each morning on the table in the sanctuary, as homage to the Lord from the twelve tribes of Israel (cf. Leviticus 24:5-9). The loaves withdrawn to make room for the fresh ones were reserved to the priests.
Abiathar's action anticipates what Christ teaches here. Already in the Old Testament God had established a hierarchy in the precepts of the Law so that the lesser ones yielded to the main ones.
This explains why a ceremonial precept (such as the one we are discussing) should yield before a precept of the natural law. Similarly, the commandment to keep the Sabbath does not come before the duty to seek basic subsistence. Vatican II uses this passage of the Gospel to underline the value of the human person over and above economic and social development: "The social order and its development must constantly yield to the good of the person, since the order of things must be subordinate to the order of persons and not the other way around, as the Lord suggested when He said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. The social order requires constant improvement: it must be founded on truth, built on justice, and enlivened by love" ("Gaudium Et Spes", 26).
Finally in this passage Christ teaches God's purpose in instituting the Sabbath: God established it for man's good, to help him rest and devote himself to Divine worship in joy and peace. The Pharisees, through their interpretation of the Law, had turned this day into a source of anguish and scruple due to all the various prescriptions and prohibitions they introduced.
By proclaiming Himself 'Lord of the Sabbath', Jesus affirms His divinity and His universal authority. Because He is Lord He has the power to establish other laws, as Yahweh had in the Old Testament.
28. The Sabbath had been established not only for man's rest but also to give glory to God: that is the correct meaning of the expression "the Sabbath was made for man." Jesus has every right to say He is Lord of the Sabbath, because He is God. Christ restores to the weekly day of rest its full, religious meaning: it is not just a matter of fulfilling a number of legal precepts or of concern for physical wellbeing: the Sabbath belongs to God; it is one way, suited to human nature, of rendering glory and honor to the Almighty. The Church, from the time of the Apostles onwards, transferred the observance of this precept to the following day, Sunday -- the Lord's Day -- in celebration of the resurrection of Christ.
"Son of Man": the origin of the messianic meaning of this expression is to be found particularly in the prophecy of Daniel 7:13ff, where Daniel, in a prophetic vision, contemplates 'one like the Son of Man' coming down on the clouds of Heaven, who even goes right up to God's throne and is given dominion and glory and royal power over all peoples and nations. This expression appears 69 times in the Synoptic Gospels; Jesus prefers it to other ways of describing the Messiah -- such as Son of David, Messiah, etc. -- thereby avoiding the nationalistic overtones those expressions had in Jewish minds at the time (cf. "Introduction to the Gospel according to St. Mark", p. 62 above).
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.
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