God the potter

18 Jeremiah received the Lord’s word: ² Go down to the potter’s house, and I’ll give you instructions about what to do there. ³ So I went down to the potter’s house; he was working on the potter’s wheel. ⁴ But the piece he was making was flawed while still in his hands, so the potter started on another, as seemed best to him. ⁵ Then the Lord’s word came to me: ⁶ House of Israel, can’t I deal with you like this potter, declares the Lord? Like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in mine, house of Israel! ⁷ At any time I may announce that I will dig up, pull down, and destroy a nation or kingdom;

David helped at Nob

21 ^[a] David came to Nob where Ahimelech was priest. Ahimelech was shaking in fear when he met David. “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?” he asked.

² David answered Ahimelech the priest, “The king has given me orders, but he instructed me, ‘Don’t let anyone know anything about the mission I’m sending you on or about your orders.’ As for my troops, I told them to meet me at an undisclosed location. ³ Now what do you have here with you? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever you can find.”

⁴ “I don’t have any regular bread on hand,” the priest answered David, “just holy bread—but only if your troops have abstained from sexual activity.”

⁵ “Definitely,” David answered the priest. “Whenever I go out to war, women are off-limits; that’s our standard operating procedure. Even on regular missions, the men’s gear is^[b] kept holy. That’s even more true today, with the mission holy along with the gear.”^{[c] 6} So the priest gave David holy bread, because there was no other bread except the bread of the presence, which is removed from the Lord’s presence and replaced by warm bread as soon as it is taken away.

⁷ Now one of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained in the Lord’s presence. His name was Doeg. He was an Edomite and Saul’s head shepherd.

⁸ David asked Ahimelech, “Do you have a spear or sword on hand? I didn’t bring my sword or gear with me because the king’s mission was urgent.”

⁹ The priest said, “The sword of Goliath, the Philistine you killed in the Elah Valley, is here wrapped in a cloth behind a priestly vest.^[d] If you want it, take it, because there are no other swords here.”

David said, “No sword is as good as that one! Give it to me!”

Working on the Sabbath

12 At that time Jesus went through the wheat fields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry so they were picking heads of wheat and eating them. ² When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are breaking the Sabbath law.”

³ But he said to them, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and those with him were hungry? ⁴ He went into God’s house and broke the law by eating the bread of the presence, which only the priests were allowed to eat. ⁵ Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple treat the Sabbath as any other day and are still innocent? ⁶ But I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. ⁷ If you had known what this means, I want mercy and not sacrifice,^[a] you wouldn’t have condemned the innocent. ⁸ The Human One^[b] is Lord of the Sabbath.”

Healing on the Sabbath

⁹ Jesus left that place and went into their synagogue. ¹⁰ A man with a withered hand was there. Wanting to bring charges against Jesus, they asked, “Does the Law allow a person to heal on the Sabbath?”

¹¹ Jesus replied, “Who among you has a sheep that falls into a pit on the Sabbath and will not take hold of it and pull it out? ¹² How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! So the Law allows a person to do what is good on the Sabbath.” ¹³ Then Jesus said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he did and it was made healthy, just like the other one. ¹⁴ The Pharisees went out and met in order to find a way to destroy Jesus.