The previous account of Mark ended with the Pharisees and Herodians taking counsel on how to kill Christ, which is how they sought to reward Him for the love He displayed to a withered kinsman on the Sabbath. The measure with which they measured was ultimately brought back to them, because in the end, the fruitless fig tree of Jerusalem was made withered with the Roman sword.
The accounts of the plucking of the grain and the man with the withered hand are both recorded as having occurred on Sabbath days, and for that reason they are deliberately paired together in all three synoptic gospels. This thematic pairing is more apparent in Matthew and Luke, because the later medieval chapter division in Mark splits the pairing between the end and beginning of its second and third chapters. We should always remember to discard these artificial chapter divisions in our minds, since no passage of Scripture exists in a vacuum apart from the larger context of its book.
In His engagements with the hypocritical scribes of the Pharisees, who were ostensibly of the portion Solomon would have described as pure in their own lofty eyes yet not washed from their filthiness (Proverbs 30:12-14), we saw Christ describe Himself as a physician healing the sick. These concepts appear often in the prophets as a picture of sin and repentance, and Christ elucidated on the familiar parable when He said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but wrongdoers!” (Mark 2:17)
Truthvids' 100 Proofs the Israelites Were White
