Mk 2:25a ... And he said to them ... "Not yet did you read what David did when he had need and he was hungry, ..."

Verse 25 has three phrases containing 18 words. The first two phrases have these 3 narrator and 10 dialog words ... Kai legei autois, oudepote anegnote ti epoiēsen Dauid hote chreian esxen kai epeinasen (And he says to them, ... "Not yet did you read what did David when need he had and he was hungry, ...").

The 13 words are top down. In verse 25-26, Jesus gives the pharisees a 46 word answer. The biblical reference is erroneous. David had no companions with him, David does not enter the house of God (see next verse), the priest is Ahimelech, not Abiathar, and neither David nor his companions ate the bread of presence (Gundry 1993, p141). However, within the passage cited, 1Sam 21:3, David demands: "Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find." http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark02.htm

Unfortunately, that passage must be in a book that no longer exists. Jesus continues ... kai epeinasen (and he was hungry). Jesus will later transform 5 loaves of bread in one of the feeding miracles. Since Jesus references an event which occurs later in the Gospel and which is an invention of Mark, both the errors and the foreshadowing indicate v. 25-26 is a literary construction of Mark. John Meier (2004) observes: "But the way the counterquestion begins in v. 25 signals the problems to come: 'Did you never read what David did?' Let's remember what the supposed historical situation in Mk 2:23-26 is. Challenged by some Pharisees, noted for their exacting study of Scripture, Jesus counter-challenges them: exact knowledge of the written Scriptures ('Did you never read?'). Jesus, is not appealing to some oral tradition or his own version of the David story. He challenges the experts to recall and then properly understand 1Sam 21:2-10. The problem is, Jesus proceeds in the presence of these scriptural experts to distort the text of the story, whether in its masoretic Hebrew form, the alternate form in Qumran fragment 4QSamb, the Septuagintal Greek (which often agrees with 4QSamb against the MT), or in the targumic Aramaic form" (p574). http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark02.html#2.p.23.28