Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless?
Or have ye not read in the Law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath (by doing "servile work,") and are blameless? The double offerings required on the sabbath day (Numbers 28:9) could not be presented, and the new-baked showbread (Leviticus 24:5; 1 Chronicles 9:32) could not be prepared and presented every sabbath morning, without a good deal of servile work on the part of the priests; not to speak of circumcision, which, when the child's eighth day happened to fall on a sabbath, had to be performed by the priests on that day. (See the notes at John 7:22-23.)