THE TEXT IS 20 VERSES WHICH M
This is
the principle that Jesus continues to press home in his teaching of
the people. If religion is a matter of externals, it achieves
nothing. But if it is genuine, and from the heart, it pleases God.
The Pharisees are clearly offended by Jesus’ rebuke (v. 12), and
this concerns his own disciples. But Jesus does not mince his words.
The Pharisees are blind leaders of blind people. Their religion is
external. To them, washing hands is important. But to God, a clean
heart is important; this was what Jesus stated as one of the first
rules of his kingdom (5:8).
But ye
say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift,
by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;
And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be
free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your
tradition [Matt. 15:4–6].
Our Lord is saying that honoring father and mother
includes supporting them. The way they got around that responsibility
was to dedicate their money as a gift to God, and that would relieve
them of supporting their parents. This gave a pious way out for a man
to break the Mosaic Law.
I still believe the best way to test a Christian is by
his pocketbook. The barometer of the Christian today is how he
handles his own money and how he handles God’s money. The religious
rulers of Jesus’ day were helping men escape their responsibility.
I am of the opinion that God wants you to pay your
honest debts before you give to Him. God wants you to take care of
your personal responsibilities. He wants you to support your family
before you give to Him. I once knew a man with a wild idea. This man
came to me on payday and wanted to give me half his income while his
family went hungry. When I found out, we had quite a little talk, and
at first he was offended. Finally, he saw that he was neglecting his
own family, which is a tragic thing to do. It is amazing how people
try to escape a responsibility in a pious way.
The
Law and Jesus’ Compassion
15:1 Then the scribes and Pharisees who were from
Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying, 2 “Why do Your
disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not
wash their hands when they eat bread.”
3 He answered and said to them, “Why do you
also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? 4
For God commanded, saying, ‘Honor your father and your mother’;
and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’ 5
But you say, ‘Whoever says to his father or mother, “Whatever
profit you might have received from me is a gift to God”— 6
then he need not honor his father or mother.’ Thus you have made
the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. 7
Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying:
8 ‘These people draw near to Me with their
mouth,
And honor Me with their lips,
But their heart is far from Me.
9 And in vain they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”
10 When He had called the multitude to
Himself, He said to them, “Hear and understand: 11 Not
what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the
mouth, this defiles a man.”
12 Then His disciples came and said to Him,
“Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this
saying?”
13 But He answered and said, “Every plant
which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. 14
Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind
leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch.”
15 Then Peter answered and said to Him,
“Explain this parable to us.”
16 So Jesus said, “Are you also still
without understanding? 17 Do you not yet understand that
whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? 18
But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart,
and they defile a man. 19 For out of the heart proceed
evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false
witness, blasphemies. 20 These are the things which defile
a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.”
—Matthew 15:1–20
This
entire section is in the mode of a disputation, for there are
questions and counterquestions. The hierarchy at Jerusalem was acting
through their scribes and Pharisees, who had come to Galilee with the
express purpose of refuting Jesus. As they accused the disciples of
transgressing “the tradition of the elders,” Jesus in turn
accused them of transgressing the commandments of God! Luther said,
“He places one wedge against the other and therewith drives the
first back.” He exposed them for using the traditions of the elders
to circumvent the commandments of God (vv. 4–6). The leaders of the
Great Synagogue enjoined three things: “Be deliberate in judgment;
raise up many disciples; and make a fence for the Law.”
The Pharisees’ criticism had to do with ritual
uncleanness, but Jesus’ criticism had to do with moral uncleanness.
The commandments of God required honoring one’s father and mother,
meaning to look out for their well-being, and helping them
financially. But the Pharisees had developed a program to amass
economic wealth at the temple, and permitted a churlish son to evade
his duty to his parents by saying that his gift was dedicated, that
it belonged to the temple. In so doing they emptied God’s
commandment of meaning. This use of the term corban
meant that the person refused to help his parents,
claiming all was dedicated to God. But Plummer adds a second meaning
of corban: an oath
in which a person might swear at the parents’ request saying he
could not help them; later if he repented and wanted to help, he was
told by the scribes that what he swore, even in a fit of emotional
passion, was forever binding. This is probably the meaning of Jesus’
illustration.
Jesus is pointed and fearless in His response. He
doesn’t back off a bit: “Hypocrites!” With this He quotes
Isaiah’s words of God’s judgment on persons guilty of lip
worship, of words without deeds, and/or words which actually excuse
the deed. Religion, to perpetuate itself, has often developed
“commandments of men” and presented them as though they were
actually doctrines of God.
The next verses are an interpretation to the crowd of
the issue raised by the Pharisees and scribes. Jesus said that
defilement is of a moral nature; it is the perversions of the heart
that defile a person’s life. As the disciples informed Jesus that
the Pharisees were offended, Jesus added to His denunciation: (1)
they are not plantings in God’s vineyard but are a wild thicket;
(2) they are blind leaders of the blind; and (3) they face the
judgment of God.
The section concludes with Peter’s request for an
interpretation of the parable on defilement. Jesus taught that ritual
religion was never intended as an end in itself. Only acting contrary
to God’s will makes one unclean, and in so doing the issues of the
heart, or seat of selfishness, are moral perversions. As Jeremiah
said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked, who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9, kjv). Origen interpreted
Jesus to mean that eating with an unwashed heart defiles the man, and
he applied this especially to “worthless reading,” to
intellectual food.
The passage may be outlined: (1) the criticism by the
Pharisees (vv. 1–2); (2) the cryptic rejoinder of Christ (vv. 3–6);
(3) the condemnation of hypocrisy (vv. 7–9); (4) the interpretation
of the interchange (vv. 10–11); and (5) the warning against
pharisaical practice (vv. 12–20).
1. Blind Leaders of the Blind, 15:1–20
1 Then Pharisees and scribes from
Jerusalem come to Jesus, saying, 2 “Why do your
disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash
their hands when they eat bread.” 3 But he answered
them, saying, “And you, why do you break the commandment of God on
account of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor
your father and mother’ and ‘Let him who speaks evil of father or
mother be put to death.’ 5 But you say, ‘Whoever
says to his father or mother, “Anything of mine that might have
benefited you is a gift [to God],” ’ 6 is
not to honor his father. You have nullified the word of God because
of your tradition. 7 Hypocrites, well did Isaiah
prophesy about you, saying,
8 ‘This people honors me with their
lips, but their heart is far away from me. 9 In vain
do they worship me, teaching as doctrines men’s commandments.’ ”
10 And he called the crowd and said
to them, “Listen and understand: 11 not that which
goes into the mouth defiles a man, but that which goes out of the
mouth, this defiles a man.”
12 Then the disciples came and say to
him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard
this saying?” 13 But he answered, saying, “Every
plant that my heavenly Father did not plant will be rooted up.
14 Leave them alone. They are blind guides of blind
men. And if a blind man guides a blind man, they will both fall into
a ditch.”
15 But Peter answered him, saying,
“Explain this parable for us.” 16 And he said,
“Are you without understanding even now? 17 Do you
not perceive that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the
stomach and goes out into the latrine? 18 But the
things that go out of the mouth come from the heart, and these defile
the man. 19 For out of the heart go evil thoughts,
murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, perjuries, blasphemies.
20 These are the things that defile the man. But to
eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.”
“The tradition of the elders” arose because pious
Jews were very careful about keeping the law. They saw the law as
God’s greatest gift to the human race and regarded it as a
wonderful privilege that the Jews, the people of God, had received
it. They considered it important that they should treasure the law
and practice its every provision. So they studied it with diligence;
the Mishnah and the Talmud reveal the closeness of their study and
the detail into which they went. They were anxious not to break any
of its provisions, and this led to a mass of definition and
interpretation. Exactly what had to be done to keep a given law? When
two provisions of the law did not obviously agree, which had the
preeminence?
To take an example of the kind of reasoning that went
on, there is a command, “let no man go out of his place on the
sabbath day” (Exod. 16:29). The words were an instruction to the
people in the wilderness as they went out to gather the manna that
fell from heaven. On the day before the Sabbath a double portion was
provided, but there was none on the Sabbath, and the people were told
that they must not go out on that day. But in later generations pious
souls felt that there was something permanent about this command, as
there was about every provision in the law. They interpreted this
passage to mean that one must not go out of a house on the Sabbath
carrying a burden of any sort.
But what if one wished to do a good deed on the Sabbath,
such as making a gift to the poor? The Mishnaic tractate Shabbath
begins with a situation where a householder wants to give something
to a poor person on the Sabbath. If the householder stood inside his
house and put his gift outside or if the poor person, standing
outside, reached inside and took up the gift, in either case there
was a transgression: a person had carried something out of a house on
the Sabbath. The pundits decided that the way to do the good deed was
this: neither person should cross the boundary carrying the gift. But
if the poor man stood outside and reached his hand inside and if the
householder then placed his gift into the poor man’s hand, the poor
man could withdraw his hand and neither had transgressed (the
forbidden act had not been completed by either one). The same result
was, of course, obtained if the householder stood inside and held his
hand containing the gift outside so that the poor man, standing
outside, could simply receive the gift (Shab. 1:1). In this
case there is no transgression: neither man has carried the burden
across the line. Apply such casuistry to the whole of the Pentateuch
and there is a marvelous field for “the tradition of the elders.”
Since the solutions offered to the problems that were discerned were
often far from obvious, the experts had a magnificent field over
which to roam. Some of their traditional interpretations were
undoubtedly beneficial, but some produced extraordinary results.
Jesus draws attention to some of them.
Matthew proceeds to a controversy that arose between
Jesus and some Pharisees who had evidently come to provoke an
argument. The discussion turned on the failure of Jesus’ disciples
to keep the tradition of the elders in that they ate food without
first engaging in a ceremonial washing of their hands. Jesus began by
making it clear that the tradition that meant so much to the
Pharisees was not to be accorded uncritical acceptance, for it could
and sometimes did lead people to disobey the commandments of God.
Having made this point, he turned to the question of unwashed hands
and pointed out that defilement comes not from overlooking some
physical regulation about ceremonial cleanliness but from the evils
that people conjure up in their innermost being. In this passage
Jesus addresses three distinct groups: the legal visitors (vv. 1–9),
the people (vv. 10–11), and the disciples (vv. 12–20). Mark’s
account is much fuller and deals with several Pharisaic practices,
whereas Matthew concentrates on the one issue of eating with unwashed
hands.
1. With a characteristic Then (see on 2:7)
Matthew moves on to the next stage of his story. This brings us to a
group of Pharisees and scribes (the only place in Matthew with
this order; his habit is to speak of “scribes and Pharisees”).
They were from Jerusalem, which is not quite what we expect in
Galilee. Matthew’s word order, moreover, puts some emphasis on
Jerusalem: there came to Jesus “from Jerusalem Pharisees and
scribes.” Coming from the capital, the holy city, into this rural
area, they would have been regarded as especially authoritative. It
was not to be expected that people from the great city would make
their appearance in such a remote area. Matthew also makes it clear
that they came to Jesus. It was not that they were paying a
pastoral visit to Galilee and happened to come across Jesus; it seems
that they had come expressly to confront him. That they would come
from so far in order to oppose him tells us something of the
reputation that Jesus had built up and something also of the measure
of the hostility of the Pharisees (for these religious teachers see
on 3:7). They were accompanied by scribes (see on 5:20; most
scribes were Pharisees, but there were many Pharisees who were not
scribes), or legal experts. They would feel that they were well
equipped to cope with whatever they would encounter in the northern
area.
2. They come right to the point with a question
about the tradition of the elders, though interestingly they
do not complain about Jesus’ attitude to the tradition but about
the practice of his disciples (cf. 9:14). This does, of course, imply
an accusation against Jesus, for it was he who taught his followers
to do these things. Indeed, the scribes would probably have regarded
teaching people to disregard the tradition as much more serious than
an occasional breach oneself. Teaching people to act contrary to the
tradition meant a systematic and thought-out practice. It meant
breaking the tradition as a matter of principle, not as a thoughtless
aberration in a moment of weakness. Therefore to speak of the
practice of the disciples implied a serious accusation against their
Master. The disciples, the accusers affirm, break the
tradition2 of the elders. This was a body of
teaching handed down from the religious leaders of the past. (Indeed,
REB emphasizes the time element and ignores the people
involved by rendering it as “the ancient tradition.”) Some of it
was concerned with the way those leaders had understood passages in
Scripture, especially passages whose meaning was not obvious or was
ambiguous. It also gave guidance as to how passages that might be
construed in more than one way were to be understood. In origin the
tradition was praiseworthy and useful, but through the years, with
the contributions of many teachers, some with less insight than
others, it had come to amount to a very burdensome body of doctrine.
Its huge volume meant that by New Testament times even to know what
it comprised was a difficult chore, while to obey all its
multitudinous regulations was too big a task for most people. The
Pharisees and their adherents were distinctive in their regard for
and their attempt to put into practice this vast body of tradition,
and for them it was unthinkable that a religious teacher should take
the traditions lightly. They could not understand why Jesus should
allow his disciples to break any of the traditions. That amounted to
being irreligious, and for a religious teacher that was a
contradiction in terms.
The particular tradition that they took up with Jesus
was that concerned with the washing of hands before eating. This was
not a matter of personal hygiene but of the removal of ceremonial
defilement. In the law it was prescribed that the priests must wash
their hands (and feet) when they were ministering (Exod. 30:17–21),
but the tradition extended this to all people and was concerned with
removing ceremonial defilement incurred in daily life. The Pharisees
discerned a great number of “unclean” things that one might
encounter in the ordinary course of life and that might easily be
touched with the hands. The contact made the hands unclean, and if
unclean hands touched food, that, too, became unclean. When it was
eaten the whole person was made unclean. To avoid such a dreadful
happening the strict upholders of the traditions had evolved a ritual
washing that removed defilement, and they practiced it scrupulously
before eating. So important was this that a whole tractate of the
Mishnah is devoted to it (called Yadaim, “Hands”). Water
must be poured over the hands up to the wrist (Yad. 2:3; a
different opinion prescribes only parts of the fingers, Ḥul.
106b; Scriptural justification for the practice was somehow derived
from Lev. 15:13). Defilement could be removed only by running water
(hence the pouring). But Jesus’ followers did no such thing, and
the Pharisees ask the reason for their practice. Eating bread, of
course, refers to eating food in general; the Pharisees are speaking
about the ordinary meals people ate day by day, whatever the food
might be.
3. Matthew uses an adversative conjunction to set
Jesus over against his interrogators and goes on to his normal
formula for “having answered, said.” Jesus made no attempt to
defend the practice of his disciples. That might well have invited
the kind of argument that the Pharisees loved and in which they
excelled. In any case he probably thought that failure to observe a
ridiculous scribal regulation needed no defense. Instead he went to
the root of the matter by drawing their attention to the fact that
sometimes their tradition, which was intended to help people keep the
law of God, could lead them to break that law. Their concentration on
the tradition could lead them to neglect the law of God, and not only
to neglect it, but to engage in practices that involved breaking it.
His reply emphasizes you: they have been complaining about his
disciples, but what about themselves? And his break is the
same verb as that used in the previous verse by the Pharisees when
they complain of the disciples breaking the traditions. But then he
introduces a contrast: where they speak of “the tradition of the
elders” he speaks of the commandment of God, a much
more serious matter. And they break God’s commandment on account
of their tradition. Jesus is not saying, “Despite your
tradition you break the law of God.” He is saying, “Because
of your tradition you break the law of God.” He does not speak of
“the tradition of the elders” as the Pharisees had just done, but
of “your tradition,” the tradition they had accepted and made
their own. They could not evade responsibility by saying that others
had compelled them.
4. Jesus proceeds to draw attention to one of the
ways they broke the commandment and precedes it with, “For God
said.” Since the divine origin of the commandment is important,
he does not allow it to drop out of sight. What God has said is not
to be put on a level with what even godly scribes laid down and
handed on from one to another. The commandment he selects for
attention is that which commands the Israelites to honor their
parents. The Jews commonly respected their parents, but Jesus points
out that this attitude was due not to a scribal requirement, but to a
divine command. God, no less, has prescribed that proper respect be
paid one’s parents (Exod. 20:12; Deut. 5:16). With this he links a
further prescription that anyone who speaks evil of parents
shall be put to death (Exod. 21:17; Lev. 20:9). Scripture leaves no
doubt that parents are to be honored, and that extends even to the
way people speak of their parents.
5. But is adversative and you is
emphatic; Jesus is setting the Pharisees in contrast to God, whose
words he has just quoted. “God said … but you say” means that
the words of God stand in opposition to the words of the Pharisees.
Whoever is general, “anyone at all.” This “anyone” is
pictured as addressing either father or mother and announcing that he
has made a gift to God of anything that the parent might be expected
to get from him. Gift comes first in this expression, which
gives it emphasis, and while it may be used of gifts in general, in
the New Testament it is used mostly for gifts made to God. In his
version of the incident Mark at this point has korban, a
transliteration of a Hebrew word meaning “offering” and always
used in the Old Testament of offerings to God. What the child is
telling the parent in this saying is that he has decided to give as
an offering to God what the parent might have expected would be given
to him or her in old age. Anything of mine is comprehensive.
The son is vowing away all that he might have used to support his
parents.
6. This verse begins with the emphatic double
negative with the future, which is here used in the sense of an
imperative. Honor is the word used in the commandment. Since
what should have been used for parental support has been irrevocably
vowed to God, there is nothing left for the parents (the better MSS
omit “and his mother,” but the words are surely implied), and
thus they are not honored. The tradition about the rash vow is
honored, but the commandment of God is not kept. Jesus puts the
responsibility on his hearers (and those who like them are tied to
the tradition): “You have nullified the word of God,”16
no less, by your scrupulous observance of your tradition.
7. Hypocrites (see on 6:2; AB has
“Shysters!”) is very much a Matthean word and one that was used a
number of times of the Pharisees (22:18; 23:13, 15). Its
appropriateness here arises from the fact that these opponents of
Jesus professed a deep concern for the service of God and took issue
with him over the way his disciples took lightly the traditions that
seemed to the Pharisees essential to that service, but they used
those very traditions to nullify the express commandment of God. They
allowed the use of Korban to override one of the Ten Commandments.
This leads to the application to the hypocrites of some words of
Isaiah; indeed, Jesus says that Isaiah prophesied about them. This
striking way of putting it does not, of course, mean that Isaiah did
not mean to sting the people of his own day when he spoke these words
or that he had primarily in mind people who would live centuries
later. Rather, Jesus is saying that the prophet’s words fit the
people who are opposing him so mindlessly, whatever other
applications the prophet may have intended.
8.“This people honors me with their
lips,” God says, referring to people who say the right things
though without really meaning them. Matthew uses the word for lips
only here; it can, of course, refer simply to that part of the human
body, but here it signifies the organ of speech. The people in
question honor God in that they say all the proper things. But this
is all a matter of outward profession. Their heart is not in
it. The heart (for this term see on 5:8; the singular is the Semitic
use for something that belongs to each person in a group, a
construction “Contrary to normal Greek and Latin practice,” M,
III, p. 23) points to the inward part, the center of one’s being.
Deep down, where it counts, the people gave no honor. On the
contrary, their heart, God says, is far away from me. Despite
their good words they were lacking in good works. They were far away
from God where it counts, in the heart.
9. In vain is their worship. The people of
whom the prophet speaks went through the motions of worship,
evidently performing the outward ritual as they should, but quite
oblivious of the fact that punctilious performance of rites and
ceremonies is no substitute for genuine, inward devotion. We might
have expected that this would be followed with some reference to the
importance of the inward or to that of godly living, the fruit of
true worship. But the interest of Isaiah (and of Jesus as he quoted
the prophet) was in what their instruction brought about in other
people; the emptiness of their worship is seen in what they teach
others to do. Doctrines is from the same root as teaching;
the expression means literally “teaching teachings”). The prophet
points out that the people of whom he complains inculcate men’s
commandments as their doctrines. People who genuinely worship God
will proceed to teach what God has commanded; the fact that these
people teach what is of human origin demonstrates that their worship
is a sham. Jesus’ charge against the Jewish scholars was that in
the last resort they were substituting manmade regulations for the
divine commands. Their motives may possibly have been excellent, but
the results were deplorable.
10. Jesus then called the crowd. It would
seem that the people had stood back while the Pharisees confronted
Jesus, possibly as a mark of respect for these teachers from
Jerusalem, possibly because they felt that questions like that of
ceremonial uncleanness were not for the likes of them. Let the
experts look to such matters! But there was something in the question
being discussed that was important for the lowliest worshiper, and
Jesus intended the people who were there to understand the
significant thing about uncleanness. It was important for the people
(and, for that matter, for the Pharisees themselves) to understand
that in their concern for ceremonial purity the Pharisees were
missing what was important about uncleanness. Breaking their
pettifogging rules did not make people unclean in the sight of God,
but they should not think that therefore it was impossible to become
unclean before God. It was all too possible, and the people should
understand what caused it. So Jesus calls them to “Listen and
understand.” He wants them to hear what he has to say and to
think hard about it, an injunction that is certainly justified by the
novelty of the truth he is about to enunciate.
11. Not comes first with a certain
emphasis: “it is not this that the Pharisees have emphasized
so much that brings defilement.” That would have been a
revolutionary statement for pious Jews of the time; for them careful
ritual washing as a preliminary to eating was part of life. How else
could one avoid eating something that had been defiled by contact
with unclean hands? To say that nothing that goes into the mouth
defiles a man cut across all the rules of defilement to
which they had been accustomed all their lives; it challenged the
accepted religious way of looking at a wide range of practices.
Jesus looked at those practices from a different
perspective, which he proceeds to contrast with the accepted Jewish
way. His but is a strong adversative, “but, on the
contrary”; he is not introducing a comparatively minor modification
of the Jewish practice but advocating something radically new. It is
that which goes out of the mouth that defiles a man.
Jesus is warning that defilement is not something that may be
casually acquired by physical contact (and which may easily be
removed by appropriate ritual practices). It is something that
affects the person at the root of his or her being. When one is evil
there, then the words that come out of the mouth reveal the inner
corruption. People should take more notice of the significance of
their words than of the possibility that their hands may have made
contact with a source of ritual defilement. Words that go out of the
mouth are more likely to indicate defilement than food that goes in.
12. Matthew alone records the reaction of the
Pharisees to Jesus’ saying. Not surprisingly the Pharisees took
umbrage at a statement that so radically rejected a practice that had
been dear to them all their lives. And it is not surprising either
that they seem to have made their protest to the disciples rather
than to Jesus himself. At any rate it is the disciples who
came to Jesus and say (the present gives greater vividness)
that the Pharisees took offense at what Jesus had said. These
religious experts found Jesus’ dictum a hard saying, something they
could not accept and to which they took strong exception.
13. Jesus’ reply proceeds from scathing
contempt for the position of the Pharisees. But is an
adversative conjunction and sets Jesus over against the Pharisees. He
proceeds to a horticultural metaphor to bring out his total rejection
of their position, and speaks of the fate of plants that the heavenly
Father did not plant. Whether the plant refers to the teacher
or the teaching, Jesus is saying that the heavenly Father (see on
5:16) has revealed truths; his word may denote the truths themselves
or the people to whom the truths have been revealed. Either way the
point is that what God has made known is the significant thing. What
God has not made known and what people like the Pharisees teach so
confidently and authoritatively has no future. Because it is not
divine truth it will not last. In due course it will be rooted up,
another horticultural metaphor, this one speaking of plants torn up
by the roots. This signifies final and complete destruction. In this
way Jesus makes clear his contempt for the teachers who so
confidently claimed to know the ways of God, but who had not been
“planted” by the God to whom they so brazenly appealed. So far
from being reliable expositors of the kingdom of God, the Pharisees
were not even in the kingdom.
14.“Leave them alone,” Jesus says.
People in general might look up to them and regard them as reliable
religious guides, but the disciples should not share such attitudes.
They are to keep away from the Pharisees and leave them unheeded;
teachers like these could not lead them nearer to God; they could
only becloud the issues. Jesus characterizes them as blind guides
of blind men. Eye diseases were common in first-century
Palestine, and the resulting blindness meant that blind beggars were
not uncommon. Blind people were often in need of guides, but people
who were themselves blind were not of much use as guides to others.
Indeed, Jesus says, where a blind man is acting as guide to another
blind man, they are both certain to end up in a ditch.28
Disaster is necessarily the ultimate outcome of such a situation.
Here, of course, the meaning is metaphorical, and we should not miss
the point that blind guides is a devastating description of
the Pharisees, men who prided themselves on their enlightenment. We
should not miss either the force of Jesus’ future tense, which
gives an air of prophetic certainty. He is not speaking of a
hypothetical possibility but of a certainty. Those who follow blind
guides are headed for disaster; the Pharisees of whom Jesus speaks
specifically cannot lead people to spiritual profit. This is all the
more devastating in that Jewish teachers sometimes claimed to be
guides to the blind (cf. Rom. 2:19; Luke has a reference to blind
guides of the blind in a very different context, Luke 6:39).
15. Characteristically it is Peter who responds,
asking Jesus for an explanation. Peter is referring to what Jesus has
said about uncleanness (v. 11) and finding it not at all obvious.
This is not really surprising, for, though he would never have
accepted all that the Pharisees said about uncleanness, the view that
defilement can arise from eating or drinking what has been touched by
unclean hands was so much part of his heritage that he would not find
its total abandonment easy (cf. Diétrich, “There is something so
revolutionary in his attitude that their minds have difficulty in
following him”). We should notice further that Peter speaks of this
saying as a parable; a parable is not necessarily a story, but may
simply be a wise saying.30
16. Again the Evangelist has the adversative
conjunction, this time to set Jesus over against the disciples;
clearly Peter is not alone in seeking the information, and Jesus’
plural recognizes that he is the spokesman for the group. Plainly
Jesus thought that those closest to him ought to have picked up his
meaning. He asks the question, “Are you without understanding
even now?”32 The disciples had been with Jesus for
quite some time; they had seen what he did and heard what he taught.
They ought to have had more understanding than is implied in Peter’s
request.
17. Jesus’ explanation begins with a question,
the construction showing that he expects the answer “Yes.” “Don’t
you perceive—?” he begins, where his verb points to mental
activity. They ought to have been able to think through their
problem. His everything is comprehensive; Jesus allows of no
exceptions. Everything, then, that goes into the mouth has one
destination, the stomach. Jesus passes over the digestive
processes (which formed no part of his reasoning) and comes to the
point that the end product of the process passes out of the body into
the latrine.36 The body uses what it needs and
discards the remainder. Nothing remains of any “defiling thing”
that may have entered it.
18. It is otherwise with what goes out of the
mouth. The things anyone says come from the heart, the
innermost being, and these defile the man. It is a
profound revolution in religious thinking when Jesus transfers the
source of defilement from the merely outward to the state of the
heart. At one stroke he removes the necessity for a multiplicity of
regulations to cover a variety of situations and concentrates on an
attitude that will take care of them all.
19. For introduces a reason for the
preceding statement. Out of the heart comes first with
emphasis; this is the real source of the problem. Jesus proceeds to a
list of evils that proceed from this source. He starts with evil
thoughts, which, of course, can lead to all sorts of evil deeds;
such evils are far worse than any defilement that may result from the
accidental contact of the hands with any one of the multiplicity of
objects the scribes perceived as unclean. Matthew proceeds to a
series of offenses arranged in the order in which they come in the
Ten Commandments. They are all plural: Jesus is speaking of the many
sins people commit. Matthew uses the word murders only here.
Adulteries and fornications between them cover the full
range of unlawful sexual activities, involving either married or
single people. Such sins proceed from evil desire within the persons
concerned and defile them much more than any ritual transgression can
possibly do. Jesus proceeds to thefts, which are obvious
examples of evil that can proceed from premeditation. So with
perjuries, literally “false witness,” a sin that should be
taken more seriously than it always is. Perjury, being false
testimony that involves the name of a god, is taken as serious by
people in all sorts of cultures. There is little future for society
if testimony supported by an appeal to the deity cannot be relied
upon. But to make a difference between sworn and unsworn testimony
such that the former must be true while the latter need not be is to
make the kind of pedantic distinction of which Jesus complains in the
Pharisees. Unsworn testimony must be just as reliable as testimony on
oath if a good deal of our social fabric is to hold together. It is
important that we can trust what people say, and where we cannot life
becomes a precarious affair. The last item on Jesus’ list is
blasphemies, which may be used in the sense of slanders
against our fellows (the other items in the list are offenses against
our fellow citizens). But the word is also used of offenses against
God, and it would be unwise to exclude them in this context,
especially in view of the fact that the word is plural. It would not
be in the manner of Jesus to split hairs, declaring that some forms
of blasphemy were acceptable and some were not. Clearly he is saying
that any form of blasphemous speech, whether the object is God or
people, is blameworthy and that, issuing from the heart, it defiles
the person. We should not, of course, hold that this is the complete
list of sins that defile, so that if we can avoid what Jesus has just
named, we will be in the clear (to take up such a position is to make
much the same error as that of the Pharisees). The list is no more
than a sample of the evils that proceed from the heart. All sin
defiles, and we should understand Jesus to mean that his followers
must avoid evil of any sort. To follow the example of the Pharisees
and concentrate on avoiding ceremonial defilement is to waste time
and energy. Much more important is the avoiding of evil deeds, which
really do defile the doers.
20. These are the things that defile, and
it is the intention behind them, the purpose formed in the heart,
that is the most serious thing, serious though the actual sin may
also be. For the most part ceremonial defilement must have been
accidental—people did not try to be defiled. But sins like those
Jesus has mentioned are done with serious intent or with loss of
self-control. It is this kind of thing that really defiles. Bonnard
points out that Jesus is not differentiating between an internal and
an external form of piety but is speaking of something quite
different: his teaching “presupposes that man is not pure in
himself; if that were the case he would only have to keep himself
from the world’s impurities; but he is evil precisely in his
interior, in his heart from which go out (v. 19) all his crimes”
(p. 229). Eating with unwashed hands was not, of course, the
only way of contracting ceremonial defilement, but it is the one in
question, and, of course, what Jesus says about this path to
defilement applies equally well to other paths. By putting his
emphasis on “the heart” Jesus is drawing attention to the fact
that wickedness takes its origin in our innermost being. He is
warning his followers against letting their personal desires and
lusts be the guide to their conduct.
2. The Canaan
