David and the Holy Bread

21 ^[a]David came to Nob to the priest Ahimelech. Ahimelech came trembling to meet David and said to him, “Why are you alone and no one with you?”^{(A) 2} David said to the priest Ahimelech, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘No one must know anything of the matter about which I send you and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment^[b] with the young men for such and such a place. ³ Now then, what have you at hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here.” ⁴ The priest answered David, “I have no ordinary bread at hand, only holy bread—provided that the young men have kept themselves from women.”^{(B) 5} David answered the priest, “Indeed, women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition; the vessels of the young men are holy even when it is a common journey; how much more today will their vessels be holy?”^{(C) 6} So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.^(D)

¹³ And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God^[a] made you^[b] alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses,^{(A) 14} erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ He disarmed^[c] the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.^(B)

¹⁶ Therefore, do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food or^[d] drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths.^{(C) 17} These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the body belongs to Christ.

Plucking Grain on the Sabbath

12 At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.^{(A) 2} When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.”^{(B) 3} He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?^{(C) 4} How he entered the house of God, and they^[a] ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests?^{(D) 5} Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are guiltless?^{(E) 6} I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.^{(F) 7} But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.^{(G) 8} For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”