6:1, 2 Jewish legal tradition had 39 categories of activities forbidden on the Sabbath, and harvesting was one of them. The teachers of religious law even went so far as to describe different methods of harvesting. One method was to rub the heads of grain between the hands, as the disciples were doing here. God’s law said farmers were to leave the edges of their fields unplowed so travelers and the poor could eat from this bounty (Deuteronomy 23:25); thus, the disciples were not guilty