Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David trembling and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?” And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.” And David answered the priest, “Truly 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 an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?” So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but 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. – 1 Samuel 21:1-6

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” – Matthew 12:1-8

John Calvin’s commentary:

Matthew Henry’s commentary:

When reading Jesus cite a Old Testament Scripture passage, it is so clear that He saw His message and all  thye OT as one in the same message, one of grace and judgment, just as the New Testament Scriptures written later do. Jesus saw the OT passages not merely as a bunch of wise, moral stories for how to live a godly life (as we too often do), but as speaking specifically of Him and His fulfillment of all of it. Anytime he cites a passage, He almost always relates it back to Himself somehow. Maybe we should too in our reading, teaching, preaching and witnessing. It’s interesting to think that when the Apostles went to proclaim the Gospel, they only had the Old Testament and always related it to Christ and His Gospel to save lost sinners who are unable to lift a finger toward their salvation. What a glorious Word from the Lord that is unified in its content and message, that is perfect, God-breathed, without error, without fault!