JESUS AND LAWS

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).¹

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.²

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).³

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 Canaan⁴

1 Campbell, I. D. (2008). Opening up Matthew (p. 91). Leominster: Day One Publications.

2 McGee, J. V. (1991). Thru the Bible commentary: The Gospels (Matthew 14-28) (electronic ed., Vol. 35, pp. 34–35). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

3 Augsburger, M. S., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1982). Matthew (Vol. 24, p. 18). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.

4 Morris, L. (1992). The Gospel according to Matthew (pp. 387–400). Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press.