Charles Spurgeon Commentary Mark 2:24

"And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?" — Mark 2:24 (ASV)

According to some Rabbis, you might pick an ear of wheat on the Sabbath day, but if you rubbed it between your hands, they said that was a sort of thieving—a kind of labor that must not be performed on the Sabbath. They made all sorts of ingenious restrictions, too ridiculous for us to quote. These disciples were therefore, according to them, chargeable with sin because they had plucked ears of corn and had performed the operation of threshing them on the Sabbath day.

And we have some of that sort of people living now who take the smallest matter—which is altogether insignificant and in which there is neither good nor harm—magnify and distort it, and then make a man a grave offender all for next to nothing. We have learned not to be very much troubled by anything that they choose to say.