These Pharisees provide a good example if one wants to extrapolate the letter of the law; what they miss is the law's intention. Moses explicitly forbade work on the sabbath (for example, Ex 31:13-14; 35:2; Ezek 20:20), and gleaning from another's field (normally permissible-Deut 23:25; Ruth 2:2) could certainly be regarded as work, as a form of "reaping" (prohibited in m. Sabbat 7:2). Essenes (probably the strictest Jewish sabbath keepers) forbade so much as scooping up drinking water in a vessel (CD 11.1-2).

Yet just as Pharisees could disagree among themselves on some details of sabbath law (t. Sabbat 16:21-22), a Jewish teacher who rejected Pharisaic tradition could have interpreted the law quite differently from the Pharisees, as Jesus did. Whereas the law forbade preparing food on the sabbath (Ex 16:22-30; 35:3; Jos. War 2.147; CD 10.9), it certainly did not forbid eating it, and Jewish tradition prohibited fasting on the sabbath (CD 11.4-5; Jub. 50:12-13). Here Jesus is not a lawbreaker. Rather, that his opponents wish to kill him by the end of the narrative indicates their own unfaithfulness to the law (see comment on 12:14)!