Eric Rinehart
For the Son of Man is Lord of Shabbat. (TLV)
For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day. (KJV)
“For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (NKJV)
For the Son of man is lord of the sabbath. (ASV)
Strong’s references from Blue Letter Bible
“But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”
Generically, to include all human individuals
To distinguish man from beings of a different order; of from God and Christ
With the added notion of weakness, by which man is led into a mistake or prompted to sin
With reference to two fold nature of man, body and soul
Used by Christ Himself, doubtless in order that He might intimate His Messiahship and also that He might designate Himself as the head of the human family, the man, the one who both furnished the pattern of the perfect man and acted on behalf of all mankind.
Christ seems to have preferred this to the other Messianic titles, because by its lowliness it was least suited to foster the expectation of an earthly Messiah in royal splendour.
He to whom a person or thing belongs, about which he has power of deciding; master, lord;
The possessor and disposer of a thing
The seventh day of each week which was a sacred festival on which the Israelites were required to abstain from all work
…but the seventh day [is] the Sabbath of the LORD your God. [In it] you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who [is] within your gates.
And He said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.
So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read.
The KJV and NKJV add the word “even” to the verse:
For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day. (KJV)
The form of the verse is a “nominal sentence”, defining the Subject rather than describing an action the Subject takes.
The verse is itself an independent clause, connected to the previous verses. It would be an independent, complete sentence if it did not begin with the conjunction “For”.
Since this verse connects to the previous verses, how much of the previous verses is necessary to describe this verse?
[Matthew 12:1-8 NKJV] At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. And His disciples were hungry, and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, “Look, Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath!” But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. But if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
This verse is a “nominal sentence”, defining the Subject rather than describing the Subject’s action.
This verse is connected to the previous verse: Matthew 12:7
"But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”
For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
It is interesting that Mark 2:27-28 states that:
“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.”. (Emphasis mine)
So, Sabbath was made for man’s benefit, and Yeshua has ownership of it.
You work for a business. The business has a dress code. You abide by the dress code. The Boss shows up in jeans and a T-shirt.
Is that fair? No.
Is that good leadership? Possibly not.
But the Boss is the Boss. The business is his. He can do what he wants with it.
It seems that the application of Matthew 12:8 is to treat the Sabbath as though it belongs to Yeshua, because it does.