Deuteronomy 23:21

"When thou shalt vow a vow unto Jehovah thy God, thou shalt not be slack to pay it: for Jehovah thy God will surely require it of thee; and it would be sin in thee. But if thou shalt forbear to vow it shall be no sin in thee. That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt observe and do; according as thou hast vowed unto Jehovah thy God, a freewill-offering, which thou hast promised with thy mouth.

"When thou comest into thy neighbor's vineyard, then thou mayest eat of grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure; but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel. When thou comest into thy neighbor's standing grain, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thy hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbor's standing grain."

The thrust of Deuteronomy 23:21,22 is directed toward the dependability of what a man "says" with his mouth. Truthfulness, candor, honesty, and dependability result when this legislation is heeded.

The last two verses here are of great interest because, when our Lord Jesus Christ and his disciples walked through the standing grainfields and plucked a few heads to eat, the Pharisees accused them of "breaking" the sabbath! The type of legalistic "doodling" so dear to the Pharisaical mind is clearly discernible in such a charge. Were the disciples actually "threshing wheat"? Of course not. It would have been as reasonable to charge them with irrigating land in case they knocked off a little dew early in the morning! (See our comments on the N.T. incident related to this under Matthew 12:1ff, and Luke 6:1ff.)

We are fortunate enough to have the explanation of just how the Pharisees managed to nullify this law by their specious reasoning:

Jewish commentators limited the application of the role in Deuteronomy 23:24,25 to "harvest laborers," making it analogous to Deuteronomy 25:4, where it is forbidden to muzzle the ox that treadeth out the grain! But there is no reason to limit the natural interpretation of this precept. Like the law of the gleaner (Deuteronomy 24:10-22), it is prompted by a spirit of generosity toward wayfarers and poor persons.[21]