At that time is the same temporal marker used in 11.25; Good News Translation translates “Not long afterward.” Evidently Matthew intends that it be understood very loosely; a literal translation may in fact result in nonsense (“At that time Jesus took a walk one sabbath day through the cornfields” [Jerusalem Bible]). New American Bible resolves the oddity by combining the two temporal markers in this verse: “Once on a sabbath.” This latter rendering is often followed by translators. They use expressions such as “One time on a sabbath” or “At one time, on a sabbath.” Others follow Good News Translation, using phrases such as “A little later” or “A short time after that.” A third option is actually quite close to the text: “About that time.”

Jesus went through: since the journey was on foot, Good News Translation renders “Jesus was walking though.” In many languages it will be necessary to translate “Jesus and his disciples….” Otherwise the reader will be shaken by the sudden appearance of the disciples in the last half of this verse. The text has went through, but in many languages it will be better to say “was (or, were) going through,” as Good News Bible has done. They were not going through the field and crops as such, but were probably following a path. “Were walking past” or “were going on a path through” are good ways to avoid misunderstanding.

Grainfields is translated “standing grain” by New American Bible. New English Bible, Moffatt, and New Jerusalem Bible render “cornfields,” which is the British English equivalent of the American English “wheat fields” (Good News Translation). The Greek term means grain in general, but in Palestine the grain was either wheat or barley. Wheat was the more highly valued of the two grains, and if a choice must be made, it is more likely that the fields were wheat fields.

There are languages which have no word for grain and in which it is usual to name each type of crop, such as rice or wheat. As we said above, “wheat” will probably be acceptable. But a large number of cultures do not know wheat, and translators have wanted to substitute “rice” or “millet.” This is not too bad, really, in this context, especially if that one grain can also be used generically for all grains or crops; but it does remove the translation from the context of the biblical culture. A very general expression such as “fields of crops” or “fields of food” is one way to handle this problem. Another is “fields with the seeds they make bread from.” The translation can have “the fields” or “some fields,” whichever is more natural.

The sabbath is mentioned seven times in this one chapter (verses 1, 2, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12), each mention having to do with the problem of what a person was permitted to do on this holy day of the Jews. According the Jewish calculation, their days began at sunset. This was the seventh day of the week, and it extended from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. The day was set apart as a time of worship and rest, and much discussion went on among the Jews regarding the specifics of what could or could not be done on this particular day. The first fourteen verses of this chapter teach that the needs of humans have priority over the legalistic regulations connected with the Sabbath.

There have been translators who have wanted to render sabbath as “Sunday,” the day Christians now observe as Sabbath, but others have preferred “Saturday,” the day the Jews observed. Both are rather poor translations, since they put the emphasis on which day is observed, but not on the function or purpose of the Sabbath. A better translation is “day of rest.” Some cultures have a day of rest of their own—often it is the weekly market day—and in those cases translators say “day of rest of the Jews,” particularly if their own day of rest is neither Saturday nor Sunday. Other possibilities are “Jews’ holy day” or “Jewish day of honoring (or, worshiping) God.”

Translators should order this sentence in a natural way. In some cases, for example, the natural word order will be “About that time, on a day of rest, Jesus and his disciples were walking through some wheat fields.”

To pluck heads of grain is the basis for the accusation made by the Pharisees against the disciples of Jesus in the following verse. The Jewish teachers of religion had designated thirty-nine “main classes of work” which could not be performed on the Sabbath. The first three are listed as “sowing, plowing, reaping,” and according to the Pharisaic interpretation of the Law, Jesus’ disciples would have been guilty of reaping on the Sabbath. There was no law against eating on the Sabbath, and if a person’s life were in immediate danger from starvation, he would have been permitted to reap and eat on the Sabbath. But since Jesus’ disciples were not in danger of death by starvation, they were guilty of breaking one of the Sabbath regulations.

The meaning of the verb to pluck is seen in Good News Translation “to pick.” This is better than “harvest” or “reap,” which would distort what the disciples were actually doing (just as the Pharisaic interpretation did).

Heads of grain translates one word in Greek. The translation of the term will be related to grainfields. If translators have said “wheat fields,” for example, then they can say here “grains (or, seeds) of wheat” or “some of the wheat.” If they have used “grain,” then here they can say “some of the grain” or “some of the seeds of grain.” In other words, whatever the translation says the fields contained, it is some of that which the disciples are now said to be picking and eating.

Heads of grain is also the understood object of the verb to eat. Revised Standard Version follows the form of the Greek and does not insert an object. Good News Translation has “pick heads of wheat,” followed here by “eat the grain” to avoid repetition. Both New Jerusalem Bible and New English Bible supply the pronoun “them.” In many languages eat will require an object such as “it” or “them.” “They began to pick some of the grain and eat it” or “They began picking and eating some of the grain” are possible renderings.

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on the Gospel of Matthew. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1988. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .