Mark 7.6-13 • Matthew 15.3-9 • Luke 11.37-41.
So I mentioned when Jesus was accused of not washing his hands, we’re not talking about the kind of washing we do before we leave the bathroom. This was a ritual thing: Stick your arms in a barrel of water, lift them as if to pray (but prayer is optional), then go on your way… with wet hands. It was a Pharisee custom, loosely based on the ritual washing in temple. Had little to do with actual washing; it was barely hygienic. Not commanded in the scriptures either, so Jesus didn’t bother with it. His students likewise.
And when Jesus was challenged about it, he responded by challenging the Pharisees right back.
Mark 7.6-8 KWL
6 Jesus told the Pharisees and scribes, “Just as Isaiah prophesied about you hypocrites—
like he wrote, ‘This people revere me with lip-service. Their hearts keep far away from me.
7 They worship me meaninglessly, teaching human decrees as if they’re my teachings’ Is 29.13
8 —you dismiss God’s command and cling to human tradition,
washing pots and cups, and doing many similar such things.”
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Matthew 15.7-9 KWL
7 “Hypocrites. Just as Isaiah prophesied about you, saying,
8 ‘These people revere me with lip-service. Their hearts keep far from me.
9 They worship me meaninglessly, teaching human decrees as if they’re my teachings.’ ” Is 29.13
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Matthew has Jesus say this right after his criticism about Pharisee custom, and that last line of Mark 7.8 is actually from the Textus Receptus, not the oldest copies of Mark. That’s why you’ll find it in bible footnotes and the KJV. It’s a little redundant… and probably got added by some monk who was sick of having to do the dishes every night.
Jesus is briefer in the other gospels, but he has much the same objection: Exactly like Christianists, too many Pharisees had replaced God’s commands with their customs and loopholes.
Our culture tends to presume Pharisees were legalists, so that’s what “pharisee” means to a lot of people: Someone who’s so fixated on the rules, they don’t bother with grace. And yeah, sometimes Pharisees got that way, particularly when it came to Sabbath. But sometimes the early Christians also got so hung up on rules, we forgot grace. ’Cause all humans make that mistake.
But read your bible again: Other than their spin on honoring the Sabbath day, Jesus’s critiques of the Pharisees were regularly, consistently about their loopholes. About how they claimed to follow the Law, but their elders’ rulings permitted them to bend and break it all the time. They only pretended to follow God. That’s why Jesus kept calling ’em hypocrites: Their religion was fake. The outward trappings of Yahwism with none of the real commitment—and a seriously damaged relationship with the LORD.
’Cause if they really knew the LORD, they’d’ve quickly recognized his Son. Jn 8.19 Not tried to get him killed.
So in the rest of the following article: If you happen to see a whole lot of parallels between the Hebrews of Isaiah’s day, the Pharisees of Jesus’s, and the Christians of ours, y’ought not be surprised. Times change, but people still sin, and hypocrites still try to fake true religion.