Mark2chapter 2

The roof they dug through was made to be dug through. A Galilean house had beams laid across the walls, brushwood and branches packed between them, and a thick layer of mud rolled flat on top. It shed rain, it grew weeds in spring, and a man with a will could open a hole in it and patch it afterwards. An outside staircase gave access.

Levi's toll booth stood where goods crossed a boundary. Capernaum lay near the edge of Herod Antipas's territory, so freight moving through paid a duty there. Rome and its client rulers sold these collection rights, and the man who held one profited from whatever he could extract above his contract — which is why his neighbours regarded him as a thief with a licence.

The fasting question has a calendar behind it. Devout Pharisees fasted twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, over and above the one fast the Law required. Jesus answers with a wedding: nobody fasts at a wedding while the groom is there.

Picking grain by hand while walking through a field was permitted by the Law; the objection was that it fell on the Sabbath, where teachers counted reaping among the forbidden kinds of work. Jesus replies with David eating the consecrated bread. Mark's text names Abiathar as high priest at the time, while the account in 1 Samuel names his father Ahimelech — a difficulty commentators have long noted and explained in various ways.