Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered together to him, having come from Jerusalem. Now when they saw some of his disciples eating bread with defiled, that is unwashed, hands, they found fault. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews don’t eat unless they wash their hands and forearms, holding to the tradition of the elders.
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Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered together to him, having come from Jerusalem. Now when they saw some of his disciples eating bread with defiled, that is unwashed, hands, they found fault. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews don’t eat unless they wash their hands and forearms, holding to the tradition of the elders. They don’t eat when they come from the marketplace unless they bathe themselves, and there are many other things, which they have received to hold to: washings of cups, pitchers, bronze vessels, and couches.) The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why don’t your disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with unwashed hands?”
Parallel Translations
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Then the Pharisees and some of the scribes gathered together to him, having come from Jerusalem.
Now when they saw some of his disciples eating bread with defiled, that is unwashed, hands, they found fault.
(For the Pharisees and all the Jews don’t eat unless they wash their hands and forearms, holding to the tradition of the elders.
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And the pharises came togedder vnto him and dyvers of the scribes which came from Ierusalem.
And when they sawe certayne of his disciples eate breed with comen hondes (that is to saye with vnwesshen hondes) they complayned.
For the pharises and all the Iewes excepte they washe their hondes ofte eate not observinge the tradicions of the elders.
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Then gathered vnto him the Pharises, and certaine of the Scribes which came from Hierusalem.
And when they sawe some of his disciples eate meate with common hands, (that is to say, vnwashen) they complained.
(For the Pharises, and all the Iewes, except they wash their hands oft, eate not, holding the tradition of the Elders.
Cross-references (19)
- Galatians 1:14 (v3) I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my…
- Acts 10:28 (v2) He said to them, “You yourselves know how it is an unlawful thing for a man who is a Jew to join himself or come to one of another nation,…
- Matthew 15:1-20 (v1) Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem, saying, “Why do your disciples disobey the tradition of the elders? For they don’t…
- Mark 3:22 (v1) The scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul,” and, “By the prince of the demons he casts out the demons.”
- Mark 7:13 (v3) making void the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down. You do many things like this.”
Show all 19 cross-references
- Matthew 7:3-5 (v2) Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but don’t consider the beam that is in your own eye? Or how will you tell your…
- Luke 11:53-54 (v1) As he said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be terribly angry, and to draw many things out of him; lying in…
- Romans 14:14 (v2) I know, and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean of itself; except that to him who considers anything to be unclean, to…
- Colossians 2:8 (v3) Be careful that you don’t let anyone rob you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the…
- Colossians 2:21-23 (v3) “Don’t handle, nor taste, nor touch” (all of which perish with use), according to the precepts and doctrines of men? These things indeed…
- Daniel 6:4-5 (v2) Then the presidents and the local governors sought to find occasion against Daniel as touching the kingdom; but they could find no occasion…
- Matthew 15:2-6 (v3) “Why do your disciples disobey the tradition of the elders? For they don’t wash their hands when they eat bread.” He answered them, “Why do…
- Matthew 23:23-25 (v2) “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law:…
- Mark 7:5 (v3) The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why don’t your disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with…
- Mark 7:7-10 (v3) But they worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ “For you set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to…
- Luke 5:17 (v1) On one of those days, he was teaching; and there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of every village of…
- Acts 10:14-15 (v2) But Peter said, “Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.” A voice came to him again the second time, “What…
- Acts 11:8 (v2) But I said, ‘Not so, Lord, for nothing unholy or unclean has ever entered into my mouth.’
- 1 Peter 1:18 (v3) knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed down from your…
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (29 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1–3 None do more resist the wisdom of God, than…
None do more resist the wisdom of God, than they that should be wisest, and that upon a zeal of their own traditions: for men do not please themselves more in anything than in superstition, that is to say, in a worship of God fondly devised of themselves.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1 Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and…
1 Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem.
Ver. 1. {See Trapp on "Mat 15:1"}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On v1 See Poole on "Mat 15:1", and following verses to…
See Poole on "Mat 15:1", and following verses to Mat 15:9. By the notion of traditions, our Saviour understandeth not such things as were delivered to them by God in his law, but such things as were delivered to them by the elders, that is, their rulers in the church in the former times; for, Mar 7:9, he opposeth traditions to God’s commandments, and said the latter were neglected by their zeal for the former: to give countenance to which traditions, as the papists would impose upon us to believe, that Christ communicated some things to his apostles, and they to the primitive churches, by word of mouth, which have been so transmitted from age to age; so the Jews pretended that God communicated his will in some things to Moses, which Moses did not publish to the people. And as the former pretend a power by Christ left to the church to determine rituals; so the Pharisees (their true predecessors) pretended a suchlike power. Amongst others, besides the divers washings mentioned by the apostle, Heb 9:10, amongst the carnal ordinances, imposed only until the time of reformation, they had invented many other washings, as sepimenta legis, hedges to the Divine law. They washed their hands often, when they came from market, or before they did eat, not for decency and neatness, but out of religion, lest they should have been defiled by touching any heathens, or any polluted things; and not their hands only, but their pots and cups, their beds and tables, and brazen vessels; as indeed there is no stop, when once men have passed the hedge of the Divine institution, of which popery is a plentiful instance, where it is hard to discern an ordinance of God in the rubbish of their superstitious traditions. And it is very observable, that superstitious men are always more fond of, and zealous for, the traditions of men in their worship, than keeping the commandments of God. It is with the papists more heinous to violate Lent than to violate the sabbath; for a priest to marry than to commit whoredom. This zeal in them ordinarily produces a neglect, or slight esteem, of the plain commandments of God. So it did in the Pharisees, Mar 7:9; upon which our Saviour calleth them hypocrites, Mar 7:6, and telleth them this worshipping of God was vain, sinful, and idle, and impertinent; there was in it a derogating from the authority of God, and arrogating of an undue authority to themselves, by their commands making those things necessary which are not so; and, as commonly it happeneth, when human inventions are over urged and multiplied, some are urged destructive of the Divine law, so it was with those Pharisees; so they had done as to the fifth commandment, of which we have spoken plentifully: See Poole "Mat 15:4", and following verses to Mat 15:6. Our Saviour goeth on, showing their ignorance and blindness, in imagining that any person could be defiled by eating with unwashen hands.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On v1 The former part of this chapter acquaints us with…
The former part of this chapter acquaints us with the conference or disputation which our Saviour had with the Pharisees about their superstitious observation of the Jewish traditions. These traditions were such rites and customs as were delivered to them by the elders and rulers of the Jewish church in former times: which traditions they valued and regarded more than the express commandments of God.
Learn thence, That superstitious men are always more fond of and zealous for the traditions of men in divine worship, than for the express and positive commands of God.
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Secondly, That it is the manner of such persons to tie others to their own practice and example in matters of religious worship, and to censure and condemn all those who do not conform to them in the smallest matters. The Pharisees here censure the disciples for eating with unwashen hands, because it was their custom to wash when they did eat; yet did not Christ or his disciples refuse to wash before meat, as it was a civil and decent custom, but because the Pharisees made it a religious worship, and to censure and condemn all those who do not conform to them in the smallest matters.
The Pharisees here censure the disciples for eating with unwashen hands, because it was their custom to wash when they did eat; yet did not Christ or his disciples refuse to wash before meat, as it was a civil and decent custom, but because the Pharisees made it a religious rite: teaching us, That what is in itself indifferent, and may without offence be done as a civil custom, ought to be discountenanced and opposed when required of us as an act of religion. The Jews, fearing lest they should touch any person or thing that was unclean, and so be defiled unawares, did use frequent washings, as of cups, pots, vessels, tables, beds, or couches, which they lay upon when they eat.
This Pharisaical hypocrisy puts God off with outward cleansing, instead of inward purity; regarding more the outward cleanness of the hand, than the inward purity of the heart. This was the accusation of the Pharisees, to which our Saviour replies by way of recrimination, that if his disciples did not observe the tradition of the elders, they (the Pharisees) did reject and make void the commandments of God, and did worship him in vain, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
Learn hence, That all service and worship which is offered to God, according to man’s will and ordinances, and not according to the rule of God’s own word, is vain and unprofitable: divine institution is the only pure rule of religious worship, as to the substance of it; here, what God doth not command, he forbids.
Observe next, The instance which our Saviour produces of the Pharisees’ violating an express command of God, and preferring their own traditions before it: he instances in the fifth comandment, which requires children to relieve their parents in their necessities. Now though the Pharisees did not deny this in plain terms, yet they made an exception from it, which, if children pleased, might render it vain, void, and useless.
For the Pharisees taught, That in case the child of a poor parent, that wanted relief, would give a gift to the temple, which gift they called Corban, that is, a gift consecrated to God and religious uses, that then the children of such poor persons were discharged from making any further provision for their aged and impotent parents; but might reply after this manner, "That which thou askest for thy supply is given to God, and therefore I cannot relieve thee." So that covetous and graceless children looked upon it as the most frugal way, once for all, to fine to the temple, rather than pay the constant rent of daily relief to their poor parents.
Learn hence, that the practice of moral duties is required before, and is more acceptable to Almighty God than the most solemn acts and exercises of instituted worship whatsoever. I will have mercy, says God, rather than sacrifice; and to do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than burnt-offering.
Secondly, That no duty, gift, or offering to God, is accepted where the duty of charity is neglected: it is much more acceptable to God, to refresh the bowels of his saints, who are the living temples of the Holy Ghost, than to adorn material temples with gold and silver.
Corban is a Syriac word, signifying a gift given unto God. The Pharisees applied these gifts to the use and service of the temple; possibly to repair, beautify, and adorn it; which had not been amiss, if they had not taught that such gifts to the temple did discharge children from the duty of charity to their natural parents: These things they ought to have done, in the first place, and not to leave the other undone.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 One great design of Christ's coming, was, to set…
One great design of Christ's coming, was, to set aside the ceremonial law which God made, and to put an end to it; to make way for which he begins with the ceremonial law which men had made, and added to the law of God's making, and discharges his disciples from the obligation of that; which here he doth fully, upon occasion of the offence which the Pharisees took at them for the violation of it. These Pharisees and scribes with whom he had this argument, are said to come from Jerusalem down to Galilee - fourscore or a hundred miles, to pick quarrels with our Saviour there, where they supposed him to have the greatest interest and reputation. Had they come so far to be taught by him, their zeal had been commendable; but to come so far to oppose him, and to check the progress of his gospel, was great wickedness. It should seem that the scribes and Pharisees at Jerusalem pretended not only to a pre-eminence above, but to an authority over, the country clergy, and therefore kept up their visitations and sent inquisitors among them, as they did to John when he appeared, Joh 1:19.
Now in this passage we may observe,
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I. What the tradition of the elders was: by it all were enjoined to wash their hands before meat; a cleanly custom, and no harm in it; and yet as such to be over-nice in it discovers too great a care about the body, which is of the earth; but they placed religion in it, and would not leave it indifferent, as it was in its own nature; people were at their liberty to do it or not to do it; but they interposed their authority, and commanded all to do it upon pain of excommunication; this they kept up as a tradition of the elders. The Papists pretend to a zeal for the authority and antiquity of the church and its canons, and talk much of councils and fathers, when really it is nothing but a zeal for their own wealth, interest, and dominion, that governs them; and so it was with the Pharisees.
We have here an account of the practice of the Pharisees and all the Jews, Mar 7:3, Mar 7:4. 1. They washed their hands oft; they washed them, pugmē; the critics find a great deal of work about that word, some making it to denote the frequency of their washing (so we render it); others think it signifies the pains they took in washing their hands; they washed with great care, they washed their hands to their wrists (so some); they lifted up their hands when they were wet, that the water might run to their elbows. 2. They particularly washed before they ate bread; that is, before they sat down to a solemn meal; for that was the rule; they must be sure to wash before they ate the bread on which they begged a blessing. "Whosoever eats the bread over which they recite the benediction, Blessed be he that produceth bread, must wash his hands before and after," or else he was thought to be defiled. 3. They took special care, when they came in from the markets, to wash their hands; from the judgment-halls, so some; it signifies any place of concourse where there were people of all sorts, and, it might be supposed, some heathen or Jews under a ceremonial pollution, by coming near to whom they thought themselves polluted; saying, Stand by thyself, come not near me, I am holier than thou, Isa 65:5. They say, The rule of the rabbies was - That, if they washed their hands well in the morning, the first thing they did, it would serve for all day, provided they kept alone; but, if they went into company, they must not, at their return, either eat or pray till they had washed their hands; thus the elders gained a reputation among the people for sanctity, and thus they exercised and kept up an authority over their consciences. 4. They added to this the washing of cups, and pots, and brazen vessels, which they suspected had been made use of by heathens, or persons polluted; nay, and the very tables on which they ate their meat. There were many cases in which, by the law of Moses, washings were appointed; but they added to them, and enforced the observation of their own impositions as much as of God's institutions.
II. What the practice of Christ's disciples was; they knew what the law was, and the common usage; but they understood themselves so well that they would not be bound up by it: they ate bread with defiled, that is, with unwashen, hands, Mar 7:2. Eating with unwashen hands they called eating with defiled hands; thus men keep up their superstitious vanities by putting every thing into an ill name that contradicts them. The disciples knew (it is probable) that the Pharisees had their eye upon them, and yet they would not humour them by a compliance with their traditions, but took their liberty as at other times, and ate bread with unwashen hands; and herein their righteousness, however it might seem to come short, did really exceed, that of the scribes and Pharisees, Mat 5:20.
III. The offence which the Pharisees took at this; They found fault (Mar 7:2); they censured them as profane, and men of a loose conversation, or rather as men that would not submit to the power of the church, to decree rites and ceremonies, and were therefore rebellious, factious, and schismatical. They brought a complaint against them to their Master, expecting that he should check them, and order them to conform; for they that are fond of their own inventions and impositions, are commonly ready to appeal to Christ, as if he should countenance them, and as if his authority must interpose for the enforcing of them, and the rebuking of those that do not comply with them. They do not ask, Why do not thy disciples do as we do? (Though that was what they meant, coveting to make themselves the standard.) But, Why do not they walk according to the tradition of the elders? Mar 7:5. To which it was easy to answer, that, by receiving the doctrine of Christ, they had more understanding than all their teachers, yea more than the ancients, Psa 119:99, Psa 119:100.
IV. Christ's vindication of them; in which,
1. He argues with the Pharisees concerning the authority by which this ceremony was imposed; and they were the fittest to be discoursed with concerning that, who were the great sticklers for it: but this he did not speak of publicly to the multitude (as appears by his calling the people to him, Mar 7:14) lest he should have seemed to stir them up to faction and discontent at their governors; but addressed it as a reproof to the persons concerned: for the rule is, Suum cuique - Let every one have his own.
(1.) He reproves them for their hypocrisy in pretending to honour God, when really they had no such design in their religious observances (Mar 7:6, Mar 7:7); They honour me with their lips, they pretend it is for the glory of God that they impose those things, to distinguish themselves from the heathen; but really their heart is far from God, and is governed by nothing but ambition and covetousness. They would be thought hereby to appropriate themselves as a holy people to the Lord their God, when really it is the furthest thing in their thought. They rested in the outside of all their religious exercises, and their hearts were not right with God in them, and this was worshipping God in vain; for neither was he pleased with such sham - devotions, nor were they profited by them.
(2.) He reproves them for placing religion in the inventions and injunctions of their elders and rulers; They taught for doctrines the traditions of men. When they should have been pressing upon people the great principles of religion, they were enforcing the canons of their church, and judged of people's being Jews or no, according as they did, or did not, conform to them, without any consideration had, whether they lived in obedience to God's laws or no. It was true, there were divers washings imposed by the law of Moses (Heb 9:10), which were intended to signify that inward purification of the heart from worldly fleshly lusts, which God requires as absolutely necessary to our communion with him; but, instead of providing the substance, they presumptuously added to the ceremony, and were very nice in washing pots and cups; and observe, he adds, Many other such like things ye do, Mar 7:8. Note, Superstition is an endless thing. If one human invention and institution be admitted, though seemingly ever so innocent, as this of washing hands, behold, a troop comes, a door is opened for many other such things.
(3.) He reproves them for laying aside the commandment of God, and overlooking that, not urging that in their preaching, and in their discipline conniving at the violation of that, as if that were no longer of force, Mar 7:8. Note, It is the mischief of impositions, that too often they who are zealous for them, have little zeal for the essential duties of religion, but can contentedly see them laid aside. Nay, they rejected the commandment of God, Mar 7:9. He do fairly disannul and abolish the commandment of God; and even by your traditions make the word of God of no effect, Mar 7:13. God's statutes shall not only lie forgotten, as antiquated obsolete laws, but they shall, in effect, stand repealed, that their traditions may take place. They were entrusted to expound the law, and to enforce it; and, under pretence of using that power, they violated the law, and dissolved the bonds of it; destroying the text with the comment.
This he gives them a particular instance of, and a flagrant one - God commanded children to honour their parents, not only by the law of Moses, but, antecedent to that, by the law of nature; and whoso revileth, or speaketh evil of, father or mother, let him die the death, Mar 7:10. Hence it is easy to infer, that it is the duty of children, if their parents be poor, to relieve them, according to their ability; and if those children are worthy to die, that curse their parents, much more those that starve them. But if a man will but conform himself in all points to the tradition of the elders, they will find him out an expedient by which he may be discharged from this obligation, Mar 7:11. If his parents be in want and he has wherewithal to help them, but has no mind to do it, let him swear by the Corban, that is, by the gold of the temple, and the gift upon the altar, that his parents shall not be profited by him, that he will not relieve them; and, if they ask any thing of him, let him tell them this, and it is enough; as if by the obligation of this wicked vow he had discharged himself from the obligation of God's holy law; thus Dr. Hammond understands it: and it is said to be an ancient canon of the rabbin, That vows take place in things commanded by the law, as well as in things indifferent; so that, if a man make a vow which cannot be ratified without breaking a commandment, the vow must be ratified, and the commandment violated; so Dr. Whitby. Such doctrine as this the Papists teach, discharging children from all obligation to their parents by their monastic vows, and their entrance into religion, as they call it. He concludes, Any many such like things do ye. Where will men stop, when once they have made the word of God give way to their tradition? These eager imposers of such ceremonies, at first only made light of God's commandments in comparison with their traditions, but afterward made void God's commandments, if they stood in competition with them. All this, in effect, Isaiah prophesied of them; what he said of the hypocrites of his own day, was applicable to the scribes and Pharisees, v. 6. Note, When we see, and complain of, the wickedness of the present times, yet we do not enquire wisely of that matter, if we say that all the former days were better than these, Ecc 7:10. The worst of hypocrites and evil doers have had their predecessors.
2. He instructs the people concerning the principles upon which this ceremony was grounded. It was requisite that this part of his discourse should be public, for it related to daily practice, and was designed to rectify a great mistake which the people were led into by their elders; he therefore called the people unto him (Mar 7:14), and bid them hear and understand. Note, It is not enough for the common people to hear, but they must understand what they hear. When Christ would run down the tradition of the Pharisees about washing before meat, he strikes at the opinion which was the root of it. Note, Corrupt customs are best cured by rectifying corrupt notions.
Now that which he goes about to set them right in, is, what the pollution is, which we are in danger of being damaged by, Mar 7:15. (1.) Not by the meat we eat, though it be eaten with unwashen hands; that is but from without, and goes through a man. But, (2.) It is by the breaking out of the corruption that is in our hearts; the mind and conscience are defiled, guilt is contracted, and we become odious in the sight of God by that which comes out of us; our wicked thoughts and affections, words and actions, these defile us, and these only. Our care must therefore be, to wash our heart from wickedness.
3. He gives his disciples, in private, an explication of the instructions he gave the people. They asked him, when they had him by himself, concerning the parable (Mar 7:17); for to them, it seems, it was a parable. Now, in answer to their enquiry, (1.) He reproves their dulness; "Are ye so without understanding also? Are ye dull also, as dull as the people that cannot understand, as dull as the Pharisees that will not? Are ye so dull?" He doth not expect they should understand every thing; "But are ye so weak as not to understand this?" (2.) He explains this truth to them, that they might perceive it, and then they would believe it, for it carried its own evidence along with it. Some truths prove themselves, if they be but rightly explained and apprehended. If we understand the spiritual nature of God and of his law, and what it is that is offensive to him, and disfits us for communion with him, we shall soon perceive, [1.] That that which we eat and drink cannot defile us, so as to call for any religious washing; it goes into the stomach, and passes the several digestions and secretions that nature has appointed, and what there may be in it that is defiling is voided and gone; meats for the belly, and the belly for meats, but God shall destroy both it and them. But, [2.] It is that which comes out from the heart, the corrupt heart, that defiles us. As by the ceremonial law, whatsoever (almost) comes out of a man, defiles him (Lev 15:2; Deu 23:13), so what comes out from the mind of a man is that which defiles him before God, and calls for a religious washing (Mar 7:21); From within, out of the heart of men, which they boast of the goodness of, and think is the best part of them, thence that which defiles proceeds, thence comes all the mischief. As a corrupt fountain sends forth corrupt streams, so doth a corrupt heart send forth corrupt reasonings, corrupt appetites and passions, and all those wicked words and actions which are produced by them. Divers particulars are specified, as in Matthew; we had one there, which is not here, and that is, false witness-bearing; but seven are mentioned here, to be added to those we had there. First, Covetousnesses, for it is plural; pleonexiai - immoderate desires of more of the wealth of the world, and the gratifications of sense, and still more, still crying, Give, give. Hence we read of a heart exercised with covetous practices, Pe2 2:14. Secondly, Wickedness - ponēriai; malice, hatred, and ill-will, a desire to do mischief, and a delight in mischief done. Thirdly, Deceit; which is wickedness covered and disguised, that it may be the more securely and effectually committed. Fourthly, Lasciviousness; that filthiness and foolish talking which the apostle condemns; the eye full of adultery, and all wanton dalliances. Fifthly, The evil eye; the envious eye, and the covetous eye, grudging others the good we give them, or do for them (Pro 23:6), or grieving at the good they do or enjoy. Sixthly, Pride - huperēphania; exalting ourselves in our own conceit above others, and looking down with scorn and contempt upon others. Seventhly, Foolishness - aphrosunē; imprudence, inconsideration; some understand it especially of vainglorious boasting, which St. Paul calls foolishness (Co2 11:1, Co2 11:19), because it is here joined with pride; I rather take it for that rashness in speaking and acting, which is the cause of so much evil. Ill-thinking is put first, as that which is the spring of all our commissions, and unthinking put last, as that which is the spring of all our omissions. Of all these he concludes (Mar 7:23), 1. That they come from within, from the corrupt nature, the carnal mind, the evil treasure in the heart; justly is it said, that the inward part is very wickedness, it must needs be so, when all this comes from within. 2. That they defile the man; they render a man unfit for communion with God, they bring a stain upon the conscience; and, if not mortified and rooted out, will shut men out of the new Jerusalem, into which no unclean thing shall enter.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv2–3 And when they saw some of his disciples,.... An…
And when they saw some of his disciples,.... An opportunity soon offered of giving them an handle against him: for observing some of his disciples to sit down to meat, they took notice that they
eat bread with defiled (that is to say, with unwashen) hands, and
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they found fault; with them, and charged them with the breach of the traditions of the elders, and took an occasion from hence of quarrelling with Christ. The Jews use the same phrase the evangelist here does, and interpret it in just the same manner: so, speaking of things eaten, , "with defiled hands"; that is, says the commentator (i), it is all one as if it was said, , "without washing of hands"; which was esteemed a very great crime, and especially if done in a contemptuous way: for they say (k),
"he that despiseth washing of hands, shall be rooted out of the world; for in it is the secret of the decalogue:''
and particularly to eat with unwashed hands, was unpardonable in a disciple of a wise man; for they looked upon this to be the characteristic of one of the vulgar people, a common and illiterate man: for they ask (l),
"who is one of the people of the earth, or a plebeian? he that does not eat his common food with purity.''
By this also they distinguished a Jew from a Gentile; if he washed his hands, and blessed, he was known to be an Israelite, but if not, a Gentile (m); See Gill on Mat 15:2.
(i) Bartenora in Misn. Cholin, c. 2. sect. 5. (k) Zoharin Numb fol. 100. 3. (l) T. Bab. Gittin, fol. 61. 1. (m) Bevaidbar Rabba, fol. 228. 4.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On v1 Coming from Jerusalem - Probably on purpose to find…
Coming from Jerusalem - Probably on purpose to find occasion against him. Matt. xv, 1.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–3 The Pharisees find fault with the disciples for eating…
CHAPTER VII.
The Pharisees find fault with the disciples for eating with
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unwashen hands, 1-5.
Christ exposes their hypocrisy, and shows that they had made
the word of God of no effect by their traditions, 6-13.
He shows what things defile men, 14-16;
and teaches his disciples in private, that the sin of the heart
alone, leading to vicious practices, defiles the man, 17-23.
The account of the Syrophoenician woman, 24-30.
He heals a man who was dumb, and had an impediment in his
speech, 31-37.
NOTES ON CHAP. VII.
Verse 1. Came from Jerusalem.] Probably for the express purpose of disputing with Christ, that they might entangle him in his talk. Malice and envy are never idle - they incessantly hunt the person they intend to make their prey.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 Mar 7:1-2. Then came the Pharisees and scribes from…
Mar 7:1-2. Then came the Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem — They probably came on purpose to find occasion against him. For some of them followed him from place to place, looking on every thing he did, even on his most innocent, yea, and most benevolent and holy actions, with an evil and censuring eye. Accordingly, here they ventured to attack him for allowing his disciples to eat with unwashed hands, thereby transgressing, they said, the tradition of the elders, which they thought to be a very heinous offence. When they saw his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is, with unwashen, hands — The Greek word here rendered defiled, literally signifies common. It was quite in the Jewish idiom to oppose common and holy; the most usual signification of the latter word, in the Old Testament, being, separated from common and devoted to sacred use. As we learn from antiquity that this evangelist wrote his gospel in a pagan country, and for the use of Gentile converts, it was proper to add the explanation, that is, unwashen, to the epithet common, or defiled, which might have otherwise been misunderstood. They found fault — The law of Moses, it must be observed, required external cleanness as a part of religion; not, however, for its own sake, but to signify with what carefulness God’s servants should purify their minds from moral pollutions. Accordingly, these duties were prescribed by Moses in such moderation as was fitted to promote the end of them. But in process of time they came to be multiplied prodigiously: for the ancient doctors, to secure the observation of those precepts which were really of divine institution, added many commandments of their own as fences unto the former. And the people, to show their zeal, obeyed them. For example: Because the law, Lev 15:11, saith, Whomsoever he toucheth, that hath the issue, he shall wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, &c., the people were ordered to wash their hands immediately on their return from places of public concourse, and before they sat down to meat, lest, by touching some unclean person in the crowd, they might have defiled themselves. The Pharisees, therefore, being very zealous in these trifles, would not eat at any time unless they washed their hands with the greatest care. From this source came that endless variety of purifications not prescribed in the law, but ordained by the elders. These ordinances, though they were of human invention, came at length to be looked upon as essential in religion; they were exalted to such a pitch, that, in comparison of them, the law of God was suffered to lie neglected and forgotten, as is here signified.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On v1 See this passage explained in the notes at Mat.…
See this passage explained in the notes at Mat. 15:1-20.
Mar 7:1
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Came from Jerusalem - Probably to observe his conduct, and to find matter of accusation against him.
Mar 7:2
Defiled hands - The hands were considered defiled or polluted unless they were washed previous to every meal.
Mar 7:3
Except they wash their hands oft - Our word “oft” means frequently, often. The Greek wore translated oft has been rendered various ways. Some have said that it means “up to the wrist” - unless they wash their hands up to the wrist. Others have said up to the elbow.” There is evidence that the Pharisees had some such foolish rule as this about washing, and it is likely that they practiced it faithfully. But the Greek Word πυγμή pugmē - means properly the “fist,” and the meaning here is, “Unless they wash their hands (rubbing them) with the fist” - that is, not merely dipping the finger or hands in water as a sign of ablution, but rubbing the hands together as a ball or fist, in the usual Oriental manner when water is poured over them. Hence, the phrase comes to mean “diligently, carefully, sedulously.” - Robinson, Lexicon. The idea is, unless they pay the utmost attention to it, and do it carefully and according to rule.
The tradition - What had been handed down; not what was delivered “by writing” in the law of Moses, but what had been communicated from father to son as being proper and binding.
The elders - The ancients; not the old men “then living,” but those who had lived formerly.
Mar 7:4
Market - This word means either the place where provisions were sold, or the place where men were convened for any purpose. Here it probably means the former.
Except they wash - In the original, “Except they baptize.” In this place it does not mean to immerse the whole body, but only the hands. There is no evidence that the Jews washed their “whole bodies” every time they came from market. It is probable that they often washed with the use of a very small quantity of water.
The washing of cups - In the Greek, “the baptism of cups.”
Cups - drinking vessels. Those used at their meals.
Pots - Measures of “liquids.” Vessels made of wood, used to hold wine, vinegar, etc.
brazen vessels - Vessels made of brass, used in cooking or otherwise. These, if much polluted, were commonly passed through the fire: if slightly polluted they were washed. Earthen vessels, if defiled, were usually broken.
Tables - This word means, in the original, “beds or couches.” It refers not to the “tables” on which they ate, but to the “couches” on which they reclined at their meals. See the notes at Mat 23:6. These were supposed to be defiled when any unclean or polluted person had reclined on them, and they deemed it necessary to purify them with water. The word “baptism” is here used - in the original, “the baptism of tables;” but, since it cannot be supposed that “couches” were entirely “immersed” in water, the word “baptism” here must denote some other application of water, by sprinkling or otherwise, and shows that the term is used in the sense of washing in any way. If the word is used here, as is clear it is, to denote anything except entire immersion, it may be elsewhere, and baptism is lawfully performed, therefore, without immersing the whole body in water.
Mar 7:7
For doctrines - For commands of God binding on the conscience. Imposing “your” traditions as equal in authority to the laws of God.
Mar 7:8
Laying aside - Rejecting, or making, it give place to traditions; considering the traditions as superior in authority to the divine law. This was the uniform doctrine of the Pharisees. See the notes at Mat 15:1-9.
The tradition of men - What has been handed down by human beings, or what rests solely on their authority.
Mar 7:9
Full well - These words are capable of different interpretations. Some read them as a question: “Do ye do well in rejecting?” etc. Others suppose they mean “skillfully, cunningly.” “You show great cunning or art, in laying aside God’s commands and substituting in their place those of men.” Others suppose them to be ironical. “How nobly you act! From conscientious attachment to your traditions you have made void the law of God;” meaning to intimate by it that they had acted wickedly and basely.
Mar 7:17
The parable - The “obscure” and difficult remarks which he had made in Mar 7:15. The word “parable,” here, means “obscure” and “difficult saying.” They could not understand it. They had probably imbibed many of the popular notions of the Pharisees, and they could not understand why a man was not defiled by external things. It was, moreover, a doctrine of the law that men were ceremonially polluted by contact with dead bodies, etc., and they could not understand how it could be otherwise.
Mar 7:18
Cannot defile him - Cannot render his “soul” polluted; cannot make him a “sinner” so as to need this purifying as a “religious” observance.
Mar 7:19
Entereth not into his heart - Does not reach or affect the “mind,” the “soul,” and consequently cannot pollute it. Even if it should affect the “body,” yet it cannot the “soul,” and consequently cannot need to be cleansed by a religious ordinance. The notions of the Pharisees, therefore, are not founded in reason, but are mere “superstition.”
The draught - The sink, the vault. “Purging all meats.” The word “purging,” here, means to purify, to cleanse. What is thrown out of the body is the innutritious part of the food taken into the stomach, and leaving only that which is proper for the support of life; and it cannot, therefore, defile the soul.
All meals - All food; all that is taken into the body to support life. The meaning is, that the economy or process by which life is supported “purifies” or “renders nutritious” all kinds of food. The unwholesome or innutritious parts are separated, and the wholesome only are taken into the system. This agrees with all that has since been discovered of the process of digestion and of the support of life. The food taken into the stomach is by the gastric juice converted into a thick pulp called chyme. The nutritious part of this is conveyed into small vessels, and changed into a milky substance called “chyle.” This is poured by the thoracic duct into the left subclavian vein and mingles with the blood, and conveys nutriment and support to all parts of the system. The useless parts of the food are thrown off.
Mar 7:20
Hat which cometh out of the man - His words; the expression of his thoughts and feelings; his conduct, as the development of inward malice, anger, covetousness, lust, etc.
Defileth the man - Makes him really polluted or offensive in the sight of God. This renders the soul corrupt and abominable in his sight. See Mat 15:18-20.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv2–3 With common hands. It may be translated, with defiled…
With common hands. It may be translated, with defiled hands; as also ver. 15; but the circumstances plainly shew the sense. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain On v1 Mark Chapter 7
Mark Chapter 7
The ruling power in exercise among the Jews had shewn itself hostile to the testimony of God, and had put to death the one whom He had sent in the way of righteousness. The scribes, and those who pretended to follow righteousness, had corrupted the people by their teaching, and had broken the law of God.
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They washed cups and pots, but not their hearts; and, provided that the priests-religion-gained by it, set aside the duties of children to their parents. But God looked at the heart, and from the heart of man proceeded every kind of impurity, iniquity, and violence. It was that which defiled the man, not having his hands unwashed. Such is the judgment on religiousness without conscience and without fear of God, and the true discernment of what the heart of man is in the sight of God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.
But God must also shew His own heart; and if Jesus judged that of man with the eye of God-if He manifested His ways and His faithfulness to Israel; He displayed nevertheless through it all, what God was to those who felt their need of Him and came to Him in faith, owning and resting upon His pure goodness. From the land of Tyre and Sidon comes a woman of the condemned race, a Gentile and a Syrophenician. The Lord replies to her, on her request that He would heal her daughter, that the children (the Jews) must first be filled; that it was not right to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs: an overwhelming answer, if the sense she had of her need and of the goodness of God had not gone beyond, and set aside, every other thought. These two things made her humble of heart, and ready to own the sovereign favour of God towards the people of His choice in this world. Had He not a right to choose a people? And she was not one of them. But that did not destroy His goodness and His love. She was but a Gentile dog, yet such was the goodness of God that He had bread even for dogs. Christ, the perfect expression of God, the manifestation of God Himself in the flesh, could not deny His goodness and His grace, could not say that faith had higher thoughts of God than were true, for He was Himself that love. The sovereignty of God was acknowledged-no pretension made to any right whatsoever. The poor woman rested only upon grace. Her faith, with an intelligence given of God, laid hold of the grace which went beyond the promises made to Israel. She penetrates into the heart of the God of love, as He is revealed in Jesus, even as He penetrates into ours, and she enjoys the fruit of it. For this was brought in now: God Himself directly in presence of and connection with man, and man as he was before God-not a rule or system for man to prepare himself for God.
In the next miracle, we see the Lord, by the same grace, bestowing hearing and speech upon a man who was deaf and unable even to express his thoughts. He could have received no fruit from the word, from God, and could give no praise to Him. The Lord is returned into the place where He arose as light on Israel; and here He deals with the remnant alone. He takes the man apart from the multitude. It is the same grace that takes the place of all pretensions to righteousness in man, and that manifests itself to the destitute. Its form, though exercised now in favour of the remnant of Israel, is suited to the condition of Jew or Gentile-it is grace. But as to these too it is the same: He takes the man apart from the crowd, that the work of God may be wrought: the crowd of this world had no real part therein. We see Jesus here, His heart moved at the condition of man, and more especially at the state of His ever-loved Israel, of which this poor sufferer was a striking picture. He causes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak. So was it individually, and so will it be with the whole remnant of Israel in the latter days. He acts Himself, and He does all things well. The power of the enemy is destroyed, the man’s deafness, his inability to use his tongue as God gave it him, are taken away by His love who acts with the power of God.
The miracle of the loaves bore witness to the presence of the God of Israel, according to His promises; this, to the grace that went beyond the limits of these promises, on the part of God, who judged the condition of those who asserted a claim to them according to righteousness, and that of man, evil in himself; and who delivered man and blessed him in love, withdra wing him from the power of Satan, and enabling him to hear the voice of God, and to praise Him.
There are yet some remarkable features in this part of the history of Christ, which I desire to point out. They manifest the spirit in which Jesus laboured at this moment. He departs from the Jews, having shewn the emptiness and hypocrisy of their worship, and the iniquity of every human heart as a source of corruption and sin.
The Lord-at this solemn moment, which displayed the rejection of Israel-goes far away from the people to a place where there was no opportunity for service among them, to the borders of the stranger and Canaanite cities of Tyre and Sidon (chap. 7:24), and (His heart oppressed) would have no one know where He was. But God had been too plainly manifested in His goodness and His power, to allow Him to be hidden whenever there was need. The report of what He was had gone abroad, and the quick eye of faith discovered that which alone could meet its need. It is this that finds Jesus (when all, that had outwardly a right to the promises, are deceived by this pretension itself and by their privileges). Faith it is that knows its need, and knows that only, and that Jesus alone can meet it. That which God is to faith is manifested to the one that needs it, according to the grace and power that are in Jesus. Hidden from the Jews, He is grace to the sinner. Thus, also (chap. 7:33), when He heals the deaf man of his deafness and of the impediment in his speech, He takes him aside from the multitude, and looks up to heaven and sighs. Oppressed in His heart by the unbelief of the people, He takes the object of the exercise of His power aside, looks up to the sovereign Source of all goodness, of all help for man, and grieves at the thought of the condition in which man is found. This case then exemplifies more particularly, the remnant according to the election of grace from among the Jews, who are separated by divine grace from the mass of the nation, faith, in these few, being in exercise. The heart of Christ is far from repulsing His (earthly) people. His soul is overwhelmed by the sense of the unbelief that separates them from Him and from deliverance; nevertheless He takes away from some the deaf heart, and looses their tongue, in order that the God of Israel may be glorified.
Thus also on the death of Lazarus, Christ grieves at the sorrow which death brings upon the heart of man. There, however, it was a public testimony.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 2. Contest with the Pharisees and Scribes from Jerusalem…
2. Contest with the Pharisees and Scribes from Jerusalem concerning Traditions respecting Eating. Mar_7:1-23.
(Parallel: Mat_15:1-20.)
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1Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. 2And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled [common ], that is to say, with unwashen hands, they found fault.1 3For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the 4elders. And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, 5and pots, brasen vessels, and of tables. Then2 the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? 6He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart 7is far from me. Howbeit, in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments 8of men. For, laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.3 9And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. 10For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth [revileth] father or mother, let him die the death: 11But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou 12mightest be profited by me; he shall he free. And4 ye suffer him no more to do aught for his father or his mother; 13Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye. 14And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them [again5], Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: 15There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him, can defile him: but the things which come out of him,6 those are they that defile the 16, man. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.7 17And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. 18And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; 19Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging8 all meats? 20And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. 21For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications. murders, 22Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: 23All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Comp. the parallel place in Matthew. The occurrence before us took place in the summer of the year 782: in the midst of the year of persecutions. The combination of the Pharisees of Galilee and the Pharisees of Judea in their opposition to Jesus had already been concerted and entered upon. They had begun to institute against Him ecclesiastical proceedings in Galilee, and to watch His every step. The basis of the conspiracy consists of the preceding Galilean crisis, Mark 2, 3, and the confederacy against Jesus at the Feast of Purim in Jerusalem, 782 (John 5). The progress and the conclusion of the scheme appear in Mar_8:11. From the time of the Feast of Purim a common action and combination of the Sanhedrim in Jerusalem and the Galilean synagogue was inaugurated. The Sanhedrim were in constant connection and correspondence with the synagogues of the provinces, and even with those of foreign lands (see Act_9:2). Some, therefore, appointed by them, diligently visited the provinces; and watched especially those teachers whose doctrines declined from the principles of Pharisaism, at the head of which stood that of tradition (Ammon, Leben Jesu, ii. 264). There were two official transactions or interferences. And there were two retreats on the part of Jesus: the first time, as far as the borders of the Gentile territory; the second time, into the solitude of the mountain beyond the sea, and even to the borders of the other world (transfiguration);—and all for the preparation of the new Church. (See my Leben Jesu, ii. 2, 858.)—Between the narrative of the first feeding, the walking of Christ upon the sea, and our present narrative, there are many things to be interposed, which Mark has already communicated. Among these are the heretication of Jesus in the cornfield; the healing the man with a withered hand; the allegation of the Galilean Pharisees, that the works of Christ were done in the power of Beelzebub, etc. (See the Table of Contents, Leben Jesu, ii. 2, 14.)—Peculiar to Mark is the expression, συνάγονται πρὸς αὐτόν, in which we cannot fail to see reference to an official interference of the Sanhedrim with our Lord. Also the exact account of the religious washings of the Jews; the detailed characterization of the conflict between the Pharisaic traditions and the commandment of God, including the Corban; the striking and profound sentence concerning the purging all meats; and the perfect description of those evil things which proceed out of the heart. Also, in the following section, which may be glanced at here, the design of Christ to remain concealed in a house (belonging to a friend) on the borders of Phœnicia, during the time of His sojourn there; and the Lord’s return to the Sea of Galilee through the Sidonian territory and that of Decapolis. It is observable that Peter must have communicated the account of these remarkable travels, having faithfully preserved the individual details. On the other hand, this Evangelist omits the intercession of the disciples on behalf of the woman of Canaan, and the declaration of Christ that He was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Mar_7:2. And when they saw.—Probably on the appearance of the disciples in Jerusalem at the Passover, which He did not attend in the year 782. The spiritual impulse of freedom which actuated the disciples might at that time have led them into the commission of certain acts of thoughtlessness.—With common, that is to say, with unwashen hands.—So Mark explains for Roman readers. We must particularly define the idea of unwashen hands by that of unwashen in the sense of a religious ceremony prescribed by tradition; and the idea of common by that of ecclesiastically profane, unclean, and defiling. Those who persisted in this uncleanness, which had for its result excommunication, must at last draw down upon themselves the decisive ban.
Mar_7:3. With the fist; oft. [Margin of Eng. Ver. diligently.] Πυγμῇ.—Among the many explanatory translations which have missed the meaning of the difficult expression are these: Vulgate, crebro; Gothic, ufta (oft); Syriac, diligenter. See in De Wette and Meyer the various exegetical methods adopted. “Probably it was part of the rite, that the washing hand was shut; because it might have been thought that the open hand engaged in washing might make the other unclean, or be made unclean by it, after having itself been washed” (Leben Jesu, 2:2, 858). The expression might mean a vigorous and thorough washing.
Mar_7:4. And from the market.—Codex D. has the addition, ἐὰν ἔλθωσιν, when they come; which Meyer, De Wette, and others regard as a sound interpretation. According to this view the progression would be this: 1. Before every meal the washing of hands; 2. but, after the return from market, where there was so much danger of coming into contact with unclean men, the bath was used as a washing of the whole body; hence ἐὰν μὴ βαπτ. But that which follows—the βαπτισμοὶ ποτηρίων—requires still another degree in the progression, and proves that βαπτισμός must be understood in a wider sense. Therefore we interpret it, with Paulus, Kuinoel, and Olshausen, of that which came from the market. De Wette, on the contrary, observes that this was everywhere customary. But it was not customary as a religious ceremony of washing, or as a kind of baptism, like that of the pots and cups, or the Romish baptism of bells. And, moreover, the same held good of the washing of hands; for the washing of hands before eating was generally customary amongst the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. Thus, in our view, there was a triple washing at meals: 1. That of the persons; 2. that of the victuals; 3. that of the vessels.—Cups and pots.—Made of wood, in contrast with those of brass, which follow; or, it may be, considered as earthen. [“Pots,” ξεστῶν, perhaps from ξέω, to polish; or else from the Latin sextus or sextarius, denoting the sixth part of a larger measure.—Ed.] Meyer says, indeed, “Earthen vessels, when they were Levitically unclean, were broken to pieces, according to Lev_15:12.” But the case supposed there was that of positive desecrations; and it is not to be supposed that the Jews, after or before every meal, broke all the earthen vessels which they used. [Tables (in the margin beds), i.e., couches, anything on which men recline, whether for sleep, or, according to the later use of the ancients, to partake of food,—which accounts for the word used in the text of our Bible. That these couches were immersed in every instance of ceremonial washing, can be thought probable, or even possible, only by those who are under the necessity of holding that this Greek word not only means to dip or plunge, originally, but, unlike every other word transferred to a religious use, is always used in that exclusive and invariable sense, without modification or exception; to those who have no purpose to attain by such a paradox, the place before us will afford, if not conclusive evidence, at least a strong presumption, that beds (to say no more) might be baptized without immersion. Alexander, in loco.—Ed.]
Mar_7:9. Full well, καλῶς.—Ironically, as among ourselves.—Your own tradition, ἵνα.
Very strong and deep. At the bottom of all rigorous enforcement of traditional observances there is an unconscious or half-conscious repugnance to submit perfectly to the law of God. Bengel: Vere accusantur, hanc suam esse intentionem. “Not only unconsciously, but with the fullest purpose, the Rabbis exalted their precepts above the law of Moses.” In the Talmud we read: “The words of the scribes are more noble than the words of the law; for the words of the law are both hard and easy, but the words of the scribes are all easy (to be understood).”—“He who deals with Scripture, it is said in the Bava Mezia, does a thing indifferent; he who reads the Mishna has a reward; but he who devotes himself to the Gemara is most meritorious of all.” Sepp, Leben Jesu, ii. p. 345.
Mar_7:11. Corban.—Comp. on Mat_14:5; as also, for the ellipsis in Mar_7:11, Luther’s marginal note: “Corban means an offering, and it was as much as to say, Dear father, I would willingly give it to thee, but it is Corban: I count it better to give it to God than to thee, and it will help thee better.”
Mar_7:14. He said again.—The significant πάλιν—the reading we adopt—throws light upon the whole preceding occurrence; and, together with the συνάγονται at the beginning, gives it the appearance of a judicial process of the synagogue.
Mar_7:17. His disciples asked Him.—Comp. Matthew, where Peter is marked out as the questioner; and observe here, as elsewhere, his modest suppression of himself in the Gospel which sprang from himself. And here, again, there is emphatic prominence given to the disciples’ want of developed spiritual vigor and insight of faith, and their slow advancement in knowledge.
Mar_7:19. Purging all meats.—Meyer: καθαρίζον might be connected with the ἐκπορεύεται as an appositional expression. The apposition, however, would not be connected with the ἐκπορεύεται, but with its subject, that is, meat; and that could not be tolerated. Καθαρίζον is rather the substantival definition of ἀφεδρών, as being a general means of purification for all the external impurities of meats: the better supported reading καθαρίζων, on the other hand, expressed the same thought adjectivally.—The ἀφεδρών makes all meats clean, not because it simply takes away all impurities, but because the uncleanness or impurity of the object consists in its being out of its place, and therefore defiling something else. It is therefore a place of filth for all the house; a place of cleansing, on the contrary, for the great household of nature. Not without irony does Christ make prominent this ideal significance of the external means of cleansing for meats, addressing as He did the men of traditions, who strove to ensure a prophylactic external purity to their food.
Mar_7:21. Evil thoughts.—In relation to the distribution here, we must notice the change between the plural and the singular forms; or, 1. predominant actions, and 2. dispositions. The acts in the plural are arranged under three categories: a. lust; b. hatred; c. covetousness. They then combine into wickednesses (πονηρίαι), by which the forms of evil dispositions are then introduced: deceit and lasciviousness indicate, in two contrasts, the concealed and the open wickedness of self-gratification; whilst the evil eye and blasphemy indicate concealed and open enmity (blasphemy against God and man). Pride or self-exaltation, and foolishness (נְבָלָה), are the internal and the external side of the one ungodly and wicked nature. “The evil eye” is notorious in the East; here it is the description of an envious look.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. See the parallel passage in Matthew.
2. The Jews have fallen through their Sabbath or Rest-day traditions into eternal unrest, through their law of purification into moral defilement, through their many baptisms into an abiding lack of baptism, through their service of the letter into Talmudist fables, through their separation into dispersion all over the world, through their millenarian Messiahship into enmity to Christ, through their trifling with the blessing into the power of the curse. The irony of the Spirit, that He punishes extremes by extremes.
3. The prophecy of Isaiah (Isa_29:13) pronounces a condemnation, always in force, upon all dead and fanatical zeal, and upon all mere ceremonial worship and work.
4. Zeal for traditional observances in its abiding conflict with the eternal commandments of God and laws of humanity. The conflict between false ecclesiasticism and morality. The contradiction of fanaticism has for its foundation an evil bias towards externalizing the inner life. The worm of superstition is unbelief; the worm of fanaticism is religious death or atheism; the worm of hypocritical outside religion is impiety. For the conflict between human fanatical ecclesiasticism and the divine fundamental commandments of morality, see the history of By-zantism and Romanism.
5. Tradition and human ordinances identical. Tradition needs continual reform through the law of God; and human ordinances, through the living development of this law.
6. Contrast between external and internal fellowship; i.e., between being excommunicated, and being out of the Church.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See on Matthew.—Christ in judgment upon human tradition.—Christ the Deliverer of His disciples: 1. The Originator, 2. the Defender, 3. the Guardian, 4. the Director and Consummator, of their freedom.—Christ and Christianity a hundred times exposed to spiritual censure: 1. The censure of school-learning (theology); 2. of the tradition of the elders (clerical office); 3. of the synagogue (popular assembly).—Christ and tradition: 1. He is the foundation or kernel of all true internal tradition; 2. therefore He unites in one and renews all external tradition; 3. and He is the Judge of all externalized and impious tradition.—The conflict between the law and human ordinances, or between ecclesiasticism and morality. It Isaiah , 1. an unnatural conflict, for true ecclesiasticism and true morality can never come into collision. 2. It is a light conflict, when false morality contends with true ecclesiasticism. 3. It is a critical conflict, when false ecclesiasticism fights against true morality. 4. There is a frightful doom upon both, when false ecclesiasticism and false morality struggle with each other.—The old conflict between fanaticism and humanity Ecclesiastical systems which bury piety (household relations, filial obligations, etc.) condemn themselves.—The indivisible unity of faith and love, of piety and duty.—The fearful perversion of the conflict between divine revelation and human sin into a contradiction between the divine and the human nature.—The triumph of human ordinance is always upon the ruins of the law of faith.—To enjoy with thankfulness, is the sanctification of enjoyment, 1Ti_4:4.—In the place of the washing of hands before meat, has come in the folding of hands. Therefore we must mind the reality of the symbol, even in this latter case.—Isaiah, Christ, and the Reformation, agreeing in their judgment upon what is true and what is false worship of God.—The right process of a true reformation: 1. It distinguishes between spirit and flesh, between the internal and the external. 2. It fights against the false intermixtures of the two, in which the spirit is made subservient to the flesh, and the internal to the external. 3. It seeks to connect the two aright, so that the spirit may make the flesh its own and glorify it. 4. It therefore contends also against a false and unnatural separation between the two.—The purity and the purifying power of the great divine economy of nature.—Christianity has consecrated even natural infirmity; or, a beam of the glorification which shines upon the dark natural ways of men.—The decisive objection against human ordinances, that they vainly attempt to effect symbolically a purity which actual life better provides for: 1. Holy water, God’s Streams; 2. arbitrary penances, divine burdens; 3. ecclesiastical purgatory fires, God’s salting fires.—The evil things which proceed from the heart and defile the man. See Critical Notes on Mar_7:21.
Starke:—Majus:—As Christ and His disciples were not without their slanderers, so the devout are never without their accusers and rebukers, 1Pe_2:12.—Nova Bibl. Tub.:—From Jerusalem hypocrisy went forth into all the land.—Hedinger:—What is the dross to the pure gold? what the inventions of men to the truth of God? what superstition to faith?—Quesnel:—As man may dishonor God by overmuch caring for beauty and external purity, Isa_3:16, so God is honored by the neglect of these things, when that neglect springs from humiliation of self and true mortification, Jon_3:6-10.—We must wash the heart after having been defiled by the world; that is, we must test ourselves and cleanse ourselves of sin, Job_1:5.—Majus:—With hypocrites, regard to man and human ordinances has more weight than the commandments of God.—The hypocrisy of hypocrites must be revealed.—Cramer:—The enemies of the truth must be confounded by the word of God.—Canstein:—The true worship of God is the union of the heart with Him.—Men commonly do willingly and cheerfully all things that do not set them about changing their own hearts.—Self-love, or the selfish mind, is so mad, that it prefers expending its care upon pots and cups rather than upon itself.—Many external ceremonies and human ordinances are not good in the Church of God; for, those who are bent upon rigidly observing them easily come to forget, or postpone to them, the true commandments of God.—Quesnel:—The openly impious do not dishonor the truth of the divine law so much by their evil life, as those do who give themselves out to be lovers of the law of God, and yet falsely interpret it.—After God, our parents are most important; and them their children should honor as the channel of the first gifts of God—nature, life, nourishment, and education.—Bibl. Wirt.:—Christian children should learn well the fourth and fifth commandments.—Quesnel:—Man may disguise his godlessness under the fairest show of piety, but God sees it nevertheless; and, as He condemns it now, He will hereafter make it manifest to all the world.—Majus:—Vows against the honor of God are sinful, and must not be paid.—Bibl. Wirt.:—He who departs from God’s word in one point, and in that point prefers the ordinances of men, may become so thoroughly entangled as not again to escape, Tit_1:15.—In the New Testament, the making distinctions of meats is classed among the works of the devil, 1Ti_4:1-3.—Canstein:—All depends upon the state of the heart: as that is, we are.—As the heart is the source of all evil, we should carefully watch its issues, Jer_17:9.
Schleiermacher:—This was the sense in which the Lord Himself said that His yoke was easy and His burden light; for He contrasted Himself, and the fellowship which He would found upon His own name, with the yoke and the manifold external burdens which the elders were never weary of imposing upon the Jews.—Those who rest wholly on external things have always the same vain labor as the Pharisees; and this has its ground in a lack of confidence. It springs from the fact that man can never have so much firm assurance concerning that which is not the truth as he can concerning that which is the truth; and this unrest manifests itself in looking anxiously at the letter, and in seeking after external uniformity. The greater the number, the greater their hope of internal confidence: of that which is strictly internal they have nothing.—This also He would say, that whosoever contributes to confirm such notions in the minds of men, and make their notions of God’s service purely external, leads them thereby away from the true worship of God in spirit and in truth, and seeks to give their ideas of God such a direction and such a form, that they no longer represent to themselves that God who will be worshipped in spirit and in truth, but an imaginary Being, such as the Gentiles frame in their imaginations.—The same feeling which leads to the honor of father and mother leads to the honor of our Father in heaven.—Gossner:—Manifestly, wicked human ordinances do not injure the divine doctrine so much as specious and seemingly holy superstitious inventions and false interpretations, which are received with confidence by the weak devout, and held fast with stubborn pertinacity.
Footnotes:
[1]Mar_7:2.—The addition ἐμέμψαντο (after ἄρτους) has slight support; and the κατέγνωσαν (after ἄρτους) of Cod. D. is equally weak. The former arose from undervaluing the emphatic συνάγονται, which itself suggests an act of the synagogue. Hence we cannot, with Tischendorf, take Mar_7:3-4 as a parenthesis, and Mar_7:5 as the conclusion.
[2]Mar_7:5.—The ἔπειτα is a continuation of the former misunderstanding: Codd. B., D., L., Lachmann, Tischendorf, Meyer, &c., read καί.—The κοιναῖς, instead of ἀνίπτοις, is sanctioned by B., D., Versions.
[3]Mar_7:8.—Βαπτισμοὺς to ποιεῖτε is wanting in B., L., Δ., &c. It is bracketed by Lachmann, struck out by Tischendorf. Meyer defends it.
[4]Mar_7:12.—The καί is omitted by Lachmann and Meyer, after B., D. It disturbs the connection of thought.
[5]Mar_7:14.—The reading πάλιν, recommended by Griesbach and adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Meyor, following B., D., L., Δ., is important. It shows, that is, that the previous incident must be regarded as an examination by the synagogue, in which Christ was separated from the people.
[6]Mar_7:15.—Τὰ ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐκπορευόμενα, according to B., D., L., Δ., Lachmann, Tischendorf.
[7]Mar_7:16.—This verse is wanting in B., L. Omitted by Tischendorf, it is retained by Lachmann and Meyer. An interpolation here is not probable. The connection requires this point.
[8]Mar_7:19.—A., B., E., F., G., Δ., Chrysostom, Lachmann, Meyer, read καθαρίζων, not καθαρίζον; D. reads καθαρίζει.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–3 § 66. — DEBATE WITH THE PHARISEES AND SCRIBES…
§ 66. — DEBATE WITH THE PHARISEES AND SCRIBES IN REGARD TO TRADITIONS, Mar_7:1-23.
(See notes on Mat_15:1-20.)
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1. Scribes, which came from Jerusalem — It does not certainly appear, as Olshausen remarks, whether the scribes from Jerusalem really belong to Jerusalem, or are scribes of the north, just returned from the passover, full of the temper caught at Jerusalem, and ready to raise a dispute.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Ch. Mar_7:1-23. Contest with the Pharisees of Jerusalem concerning…
Ch. Mar_7:1-23. Contest with the Pharisees of Jerusalem concerning Traditions of Eating
1. Then came together] A few days only were assigned to the performance of those deeds of mercy described at the close of the last chapter. But the Saviour’s labours of love were soon rudely interrupted. Having kept the Feast at Jerusalem the Scribes and Pharisees returned to seek out matter for accusation against Him. The combination of the Pharisees of Galilee and the Pharisees of Judæa had already been concerted and entered upon, and they now watched His every step.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–3 (1-23) Then came together unto him.—See Notes on Mat_15:1-20.
VII.
(1-23) Then came together unto him.—See Notes on Mat_15:1-20.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 Vers. 1, 2. These verses, according to the Greek…
Vers. 1, 2. These verses, according to the Greek construction, should run thus: And there are gathered together unto the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which had come from Jerusalem, and had seen that some of his disciples ate their bread with defiled, that is, unwashen, hands. The word (ememqanto) translated in the Authorized Version, "they found fault," does not appear in the best authorities. It seems to have been interpolated to help the construction. St. Mark explains the meaning of the word koinaiv (literally, common), by the word (aniptoiv) "unwashen." The disciples, doubtless, washed their hands, but they abstained from the multiplied ceremonial washings of the Pharisees, which they had received by tradition and punctiliously observed. The scribes and Pharisees, who had come from Jerusalem, were doubtless sent as spies, to watch and to report in no friendly spirit the proceedings of the great Prophet of Nazareth.
Vers. 1-23. Ceremonialism and spirituality.
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The teaching of our Lord Jesus was often in opposition to that of the religious leaders of his age and nation. The Pharisees and scribes were most religious, but their religion was of a bad type. They themselves practiced, and they inculcated upon the people, the observance of religious forms and ceremonies; whilst, generally speaking, they were negligent of the weightier matters of the Law. They laid great stress upon the outward, but they were careless of the spiritual. Our Lord"s teaching, on the contrary, exalted the spiritual, and insisted upon the supreme importance of a true, a pure, a reverent heart. The contrast between ceremonialism and spirituality is exhibited in this passage in several particulars.
I CEREMONIALISM SUBSTITUTES WASHING WITH WATER FOR PURITY OF HEART. Ablutions occupied an important place in the system of ritual. In addition to the washings and sprinklings required by the Law, many others were invented by the superstitious. It was a religious duty to wash the hands before eating and upon returning from market; to sprinkle and cleanse ceremonially cups and pots, vessels and furniture. In contradistinction from all these ritual purifications, our Lord laid stress upon the true baptism, the washing and purifying of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
II CEREMONIALISM SUBSTITUTES THE TRADITIONS OF THE ELDERS FOR THE COMMANDS OF GOD. The Jews were a nation highly conservative in character and habit. They cherished their history, they revered the memory of their heroes, they treasured and superstitiously honored their sacred books, and any doctrines or practices which came down from antiquity were, by that fact, commended to their respect. Their fault here was in magnifying the precepts of men rather than the commands of God. Human interpretations, human additions, human corruptions of the Word, were put in the place of the Word itself. The Lord Jesus came not to destroy, but to fulfill the Law; yet with mere tradition he would have no truce.
III CEREMONIALISM SUBSTITUTES THE WORSHIP OF THE LIPS FOR THE WORSHIP OF THE HEART. This was an old error and fault. The prophet Isaiah had seen reason to complain of its prevalence among the Hebrews of his time; and, as it is the product of sinful human nature, it need not surprise us if we meet with instances of the working of the principle of formality in any nation and in any age. Our Lord Jesus had frequent occasion to censure the vain repetitions, the prayers in the marketplaces, which he knew were in many cases the proof, not of a devout but of a hypocritical nature. "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth.
IV CEREMONIALISM SUBSTITUTES A SUBTLE EVASION FOR FILIAL DUTY. Natural piety concurs with the revealed commandment, in requiring of children honor and reverence towards their parents. To support them when in old age and poverty has ever been deemed a plain duty and, indeed, a true privilege. The way in which the unrighteous but religious Jews evaded this obligation is characteristic. Whatever a parent needed, the son declared to be dedicated to God, and therefore not applicable to the relief of the parent"s wants. Such a device was hateful in the eyes of the holy and affectionate Saviour, who not only condemned unfilial conduct, but still more the mean hypocrisy which could use religion for its cloak.
V CEREMONIALISM SUBSTITUTES AVOIDANCE OF UNCLEAN FOOD FOR AVOIDANCE OF IMPURE AND MALICIOUS THOUGHTS. Even Christ"s disciples found it difficult to understand their Master"s position with regard to clean and unclean food. The distinction was in itself recognized by the Law, but additions were made by human ingenuity, and the distinction itself was exaggerated, so as to imply more than was divinely intended. In the exercise of his authority, he "made all meats clean." He taught that sin works not from without inwardly, but from within outwardly; that the heart of man needs to be guarded against sinful thoughts and desires, in order that the life may be just, peaceful, and pure.
APPLICATION. It is possible to be, in a sense, religious, and yet, in a deeper sense, sinful, and out of harmony with the mind and will of God. It is a temptation from which none is wholly free, to substitute the external, the formal, the apparent, for what God requires the faith, love, and loyalty of the heart. Hence the need of a good heart, which must be a new heart the gift and the creation of God by his Spirit. The religion of the New Testament both enjoins this and provides for its acquirement. He who is in Christ" is a new creation; and having the fountain cleansed, sends forth pure and purifying streams.
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR Vers. 1-23. Externalism versus righteousness.
In vers. 3, 4 of this chapter we are furnished with an interesting piece of antiquarianism. The daily life of the devout Jew is set before us in its ceremonial aspect; not as Moses had originally ordered it, but as custom and human casuistry had gradually transformed it. The light thrown upon several questions is very searching and full of revelation, viz. the various senses in which baptism seems to have been understood by the contemporaries of Christ, and the punctilio, vigor, and detail with which ceremonial purifications were carried out. It is only as we realize the background of daily Jewish life, against which the life to which Jesus called his disciples stood out so prominently, that we are in a position to appreciate the current force of the objections raised by Pharisee and scribe. We have here
I CHRISTIANITY CRITICIZED FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF RELIGIOUS TRADITION.
(Vers. 1-5) The exaggerated form the latter assumed brought out the more strikingly the peculiarity and essential character of Christ"s teaching.
1. It was an age in which Jewish ceremonalism had reached its highest. The doctrine of Pharisaism had penetrated the common life of the people. They might be said to have fallen in love with it. The distinctions are artificial and super-refined, e.g. between "common," "profane," or defiled" hands, and hands ceremonially clean. They washed diligently" (a paraphrase of the original substituted by our revisers for "oft" of the Authorized Version, and apparently the best rendering of the difficult word in the original), "carefully," or the "many other Amongst the respectable Jews ceremonial strictness and nicety held a place very similar to what "good manners," or polite behavior and refinement, occupy with ourselves, having, of course, an additional supernatural sanction from association with the Law. Thus to-day the customs and observances of nations amongst whom civilization has long existed might equally serve as a foil for the Christian moralist; and all casuistries or secondary, customary moralities.
2. The objectors were the leaders and representatives of the religious life of the time. "Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which had come from Jerusalem." They were the leaders and teachers of metropolitan fanatical ritualism. It is well when Christianity is judged that such men appear on the bench; there can then be no question as to the representative and authoritative character of the criticism. It would be a splendid thing if the representatives of modern political, social, and ecclesiastical life could be convened for such a purpose.
3. What, then, is the objection thus raised? It concerned an observance of daily life. Christians are now judged on the same arena. In small things as in large the difference will reveal itself. I t depended upon an abstract distinction: the hand might be actually clean when it was not ceremonially so. It was, in the eyes of those who made it, the worst accusation they had it in their power to make. The moral life of the disciples was irreproachable; they "had wronged no man, corrupted no man, taken advantage of no man." The Christians of to-day ought to emulate this blamelessness; infidels can then fire only blank cartridge.
II THE TABLES TURNED. (Vers. 6-23) The critics are themselves reviewed. Trifling captiousness must be summarily dealt with, especially when it wears the garb of authority. The character of the objectors is of the first consequence in judging of Christ"s tone. Grave issues were at stake. The ground of the fault-finding was superficial and untrustworthy, and a truer criterion must be discovered. "Deceivers may be denounced, that the deceived may be delivered" (Godwin). The essential nature of rectitude the grand moral foundations must be laid bare.
1. Christ begins with an appeal to Scripture. He is careful to show that the distinction between righteousness and ritualism is a scriptural one, and not of his own invention. At the same time, he gives the reference a satirical or ironical turn by making a prophetic identification! We don"t know how much is lost in ignoring the written Word of God. It is "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.
2. He next pointed out the opposition that existed between their traditions and the Law. The instance selected is a crucial one, viz. that of the fifth commandment first commandment with promise." Others might have been given, but that would be sufficient. Family obligations are the inner circle in which religion most intensely operates; if a man is wrong there, he is not likely to be very righteous elsewhere. To prove their opposition to the Law was to strip them of all pretense to religion.
3. Lastly, common sense and conscience were appealed to as regarded rites and ceremonies. The "multitude" is here addressed; it is a point which the common man is supposed able to decide. There are many weapons that may thus be supplied to the evangelical armoury. If philosophy was rescued from barrenness by this method in the hands of a Socrates or a Reid, may we not hope for greater things with regard to a common-sense religion? The great foundation of all religious definitions and obligations is the true nature of man. The essential being of man is spiritual; the body is only the garment or case in which he dwells. Purity or its opposite must therefore be judged of from that standpoint. If the soul, will, spirit, inner thought of a man is pure, he is wholly pure. Spiritual and ceremonial cleanness must not be confounded. Religion is not a matter of forms, ceremonies, or anything merely outside; but of the heart. Yet the thought and will must influence the outward action, habit, and life. The spiritual is the only eternal religion. (Joh_4:23, Joh_4:24) The private question of the disciples is worthy of notice. A "parable" seems to have been their common name for a difficult saying of Christ"s. Their incapacity was not intellectual but spiritual. Professed Christians themselves often require to be more fully instructed. The progressive life of the true Christian will itself solve many problems. "Had our Saviour been speaking as a physiologist, he would have admitted and contended that many things from without, if allowed to enter within, will corrupt the functions of physical life, and carry disorder and detriment into the whole fabric of the frame. But he was speaking as a moralist, and hence the antithetic statement of the next clause (cf. ver. 15)" (Morison). M.
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON Vers. 1-23. The ritual and the reality of purification.
I THE MOST NATURAL ACT MAY BE PERVERTED INTO A RITUAL SIN. The disciples were seen eating with unholy hands, that is, unwashed! How this came about we are not told; probably it was a case of necessity: there was no water to be had. Probably it was a choice between going without food and being ritually correct, or being ritually incorrect and supplying the wants of nature.
II THE MEANING AND USE OF RITUAL IS CONSTANTLY LOST SIGHT OF BY SMALL MINDS. "The Pharisees and all the Judaeans, unless for a pygmy"s length they wash the hands and arms, do not eat." The Talmud (Lightfoot) directs that the hands be washed to the elbow a rule like that here hinted at; "pygmy" denoting the arm and hand. The custom went beyond what the original ritual required. And so the associations or the market-place were thought peculiarly profane. They carried the rule out in application to cups, jugs, copper vessels, and couches; things which cannot feel, which are not spiritual, and which therefore are no subjects of baptism. " The root of the error was:
1. Blind respect for custom. Custom commands our respect; but a blind respect defeats its end and meaning.
2. The reversal of the spiritual order. That order is: first the spiritual, then the material; the body for the soul. The Pharisaic order was: first the material, and the spiritual through the material.
3. The postponement of the present to the past. What tradition of the fathers can make it a duty to neglect the welfare of the sons? The rules of the past conserved the privileges of the present; if they block the way and tend to hurt human life, they must give way. We must study the perspective of duties if we do not desire to become narrow in intelligence, and defeat the spirit of law.
III ATTACHMENT TO RITUAL MAY ACTUALLY OBSCURE THE VIEW OF RELIGIOUS DUTY. Religion begins in the heart. Unless we love our God and our fellow-man, we shall miserably blunder in our construction of duties. Great teachers have always placed us at this moral center; face to face with God, in immediate relation to his universal imperative.
1. Isaiah. (Isa_29:13) He taught that the lips might readily be made to do duty for the heart; and that invented obediences might distract from the genuine, natural obedience of the right and loving heart.
2. Moses. To go back further in the stream of sacred tradition: no name more honored than that of the great lawgiver of the desert. He distinctly enunciated the duty of filial reverence, founded on the instincts of the heart. How were the Pharisees carrying this out? The way in which Christ refers to this is keenly ironical.
3. Christ himself. The Pharisees can and do actually evade the great command of filial piety under the show of obedience to the ceremonial Law. "By a general consecration to the temple of whatever might be useful to parents, it was made sacrilege to give anything to them, because whatever was given to them was included in the vow." A miserable trickery, cheating God of his due while seeming to obey him! Tradition may be so followed as to subvert its very essence; for there is no tradition respectable which does not enshrine Divine commands.
IV THE TRUE VIEW OF PURITY RESTORED.
1. Impurity is not from without but from within. The external defilement may be cleansed away. It is not part of the man. The moral impurity is. It is only what the imagination conceives and the will affirms that is real for us. "In morals and in religion the conscious mind is everything" (Godwin).
2. This true view m ay require an effort to attain. Strange! the disciples "could not quite see it!" "And he said to them, Are you also so inconsiderate?" And Christ must explain to them the lesson as to a class of tyros. Want of thoughtfulness in the mind is like want of stirring and raking to the garden-ground. The weeds and mosses soon creep. The man"s thought is soon overrun by the trash of opinion and empty practice, if he will not think for himself.
3. The human source of evil. It lies in the thought, the fancy, or imagination. Lust "conceives "a thought of pleasure, clashing with the thought of right. The conception germinates, and brings forth a deed. But a splash of mud that we receive on our garments in crossing the street has no effect on our conscience. And generally, what we do not adopt as part of ourselves, cannot be imputed to us as sin. "What does not affect the moral character, cannot affect the relation of man to God" (Godwin). J.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN Vers. 1-23. The tradition of men in competition with the commandments of God.
Pharisees and scribes of Jerusalem had detected some of the disciples of Jesus eating bread "with defiled, that is, with unwashen, hands." "Holding the tradition of the elders" with great tenacity themselves, they demand of the new Teacher a reason for his disciples" departure from the old paths. It was a favorable opportunity for exposing the error of substituting human for Divine precepts, and for placing the external in its right relation to the internal and spiritual. Christ here appears as the authoritative Interpreter of the Divine commands; and, as a true Teacher, discriminating between the "commandment of God" and "the tradition of men." Of old time it was well said, "Man looketh on the outward appearance, but God looketh on the heart." Here the men who "sit on Moses" seat," alike in what they "bid" and in what they "do," lay great stress on the "washings of cups, and pots, and brasen vessels," and of hands. Truly great matters! But the searching eye Divine discerns the hidden heart" that is "far from" God, and whose many evils send forth a thick stream of pollution in unholy practices, defiling not merely the hands but the whole life. Jesus rebuts their accusation against his disciples, first by a justly merited rebuke, and then by readjusting the relative authority of the commandment of God and the tradition of men, which, in the practice of these accusers, through their selfish, grasping covetousness, had been so greatly distorted. He teaches once and for ever that no commandment of men, no tradition of elders, must be allowed to make "void the Word of God." Thus Jesus, who is so often erroneously spoken of as despising "mere commands," redeems the very "word," and pays his utmost tribute to the letter of the command. In the conflict between the Church and the sacred relationships of common life, to the latter must be assigned the pre-eminence. The necessities of the temple, of its services or its servants, must not be met at the expense of filial faithfulness. The sin of the Pharisees and scribes was
I A GROSS PERVERSION OF THE RELATIVE CLAIMS OF THE PARENT AND THE CHURCH.
II A WICKED INTERFERENCE WITH THE FIRST COMMANDMENT WITH PROMISE.
III A CRUEL UNDERMINING OF FILIAL AFFECTION AND FIDELITY, AND AS CRUEL AN EXPOSURE OF THE AGED AND ENFEEBLED PARENTS TO A FALSELY JUSTIFIED NEGLECT. And it was
IV AS UNWARRANTED USURPATION OF AUTHORITY TO WEAKEN THE OBLIGATION OF A DIVINE LAW. Christ"s words, whilst correcting these errors,
(1) traced the tradition to its true source tradition, which ye have delivered;
(2) reduced it to its proper place of inferiority; and
(3) exalted the Divine command, "Honour thy father and thy mother," to its unassailable supremacy. So he prepares the way for a correction of the "many such like things" which were done by these "hypocrites," who taught "as their doctrines the precepts of men. G.
HOMILIES BY J.J. GIVEN Vers. 1-23. Parallel passage: Mat_15:1-20. Exposure of Pharisaism: its errors and evils.
I DOCTRINE OF DEFILEMENT.
1. Contents of this chapter. This chapter contains three principal sections. The first section treats of defilement; the second gives an account of a demon being expelled from the daughter of a Syro-phoenician woman; and the third narrates the cure of a deaf mute. The first section, again, contains the following: The charge of defilement which the Pharisees preferred against the disciples; the evangelist"s digression for the purpose of explaining to his Gentile readers the Jewish notions and usages in this matter; Christ"s applying to the Jews of his day a description of their fathers by Isaiah; the reason of this application in the displacement by them of God"s Law to make room for the traditionary teachings of man; a much graver delinquency in nullifying the Law of God not merely with respect to ceremonial washings, but in regard to moral duties; a specific example of this in a glaring and most culpable neglect of filial obligation; our Lord"s exposition, publicly in the presence of the assembled people and privately to the disciples, of the true nature of real, that is, moral defilement; and a reference to the distinction of clean and unclean in the matter of meats, which formed a main partition between Jews and Gentiles. The way was thus prepared for, and an easy transition made to, the subject of the second section, which narrates our Lord"s only recorded visit to the Gentile world, and the miracle there wrought in the case of the Gentile maiden who was dispossessed under singularly interesting circumstances. The third section records a miracle which is only mentioned by St. Mark, and so peculiar to his Gospel. Our Lord, having just returned from the cities of Phoenicia, was making his way through the midst of the region of the Ten Cities, when he cured the dent" mute or dumb man of Decapolis in a very remarkable manner, and by a method of external application not employed hitherto in the miracles wrought by our Lord.
2. Linguistic peculiarities in the first section.
(1) The first peculiarity of the kind indicated is the use of the Greek word pugmh , which is a hapax legomenon, and qualifies the verb "wash." In our English version it is translated
(a) oft, and in the margin
(b) diligently, which is adopted in the Revised Version. The former is supported by the Vulgate, which has crebro, and depends on the analogy of similar but not really related words, such as puknh or puknwv ; while the marginal rendering has the support of the Peshito Syriac btiloith. Some of the older interpreters understand it as
(c) a measure of length, and so Euthymius has mecri tou agkwnov , "as far as the elbow;" and Theophylact similarly, adding that it is the space from the elbow to the knuckles; the water poured out into the hollow of the hand would thus, by the elevation of the same, flow down to the elbow. The more natural explanation seems to be that which takes it
(d) in the primary signification of the word, which is clenched hand or fist; not in the sense of the closed hand being raised so as to allow the water to flow down to the elbow; nor yet in the sense of rubbing the closed hand or fist with the hollow of the other hand, which, as Fritzsche suggests, would require the words to be th palamh niqwntai thn ; but in the sense of washing the hand with the fist, that is, by rubbing one hand with the other closed or clenched or with the fist, in the sense of vigorously. This explanation, which corresponds with that of Beza, amounts to the idea of diligence conveyed by the Syriac. This verb niptw , it may be observed in passing, generally refers to "washing the hands or feet," as plunw signifies to "wash clothes," and louw to "wash," usually the body, and therefore in the middle voice "to bathe.
(2) Again, in ver. 4, a different kind of washing must be meant by baptiswntai . Olshausen and others refer the washing which it implies, not to the Pharisees themselves, but to the articles of food bought in, and brought from, market; and explain the middle voice consistently with its usual meaning, that is to say, in the signification of washing for themselves. This rendering scarcely deserves the serious consideration given to it, and is to be rejected unhesitatingly. It must, as we think, refer to the men themselves. The washing of ver. 3 is partial, only including the hands; it was the ordinary custom with the Jews of that day before partaking of food; but in case they had been to the market or bazaar, and had come into contact with the crowd that resorted thither, it was scarcely possible to escape defilement of some kind in mixing with that motley multitude, and therefore a more general washing, extending to the whole body, became a ceremonial necessity. The other reading (rantiswntai), denoting "to sprinkle" or "cleanse by sprinkling," is properly regarded as a gloss; the word baptiswntai , in the absence of regimen, is quite unrestricted as to mode, signifying "wash themselves," as it is rendered in the Revised Version. There is
(3) a slight diversity about the connection of the words apo agorav , which are joined by Krebs and Kuinoel to esyiousi , in the sense of eating of things bought in the market, like the construction which occurs in Ver. 28 of this same chapter, where the dogs are said to eat of the crumbs (esyiei apo twn qiciwn); while agora is admitted to have in the classics the signification of provisions bought in the market, as in the phrase agora . This, however, appears a straining both of the sense and construction, the plain rendering being "alter market," or, as the English has it, "when they came from the market;" thus ajpopnou means "after supper.
3. Additional baptisms. These washings, which the Pharisees and indeed all the Jews practiced, were not confined to their hands or whole persons; but, besides such personal ablutions, there were baptisms of cups and pots, of brazen vessels, and of couches. Of these domestic utensils the first are named from the use to which they are applied, namely, for drinking, as is expressed by its root; the second, corresponding to the Roman sextarius, from which, and not from xew , to polish, is the word derived, are named from their size, and contain a pint, or sixth part of a congius (somewhere about a gallon); the third are called from the material copper of which they are made; the fourth get their name like the first, from their use, to wit, of reclining on, either for the purpose of sleep or at meals.
4. The origin of these washings. Several chapters of Leviticus (12-15) contain a tolerably full account of the ablutions enjoined in the Law, and employed for Levitical purifications. These purifications were resorted to for the purpose of ceremonial cleansing. They had generally respect to certain states or conditions of the body, symbolical of the defiling nature of sin. In some of these cases we read that the person to be cleansed "shall wash his clothes, bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean." But Pharisaism extended these washings far beyond the limits of the Law applied them to cases neither contemplated by, nor comprehended in, the Law, and multiplied them to an absurd amount. Persons, before engaging in the commonest acts of domestic or social life, were compelled to a strict observance of such washings; nay, the very articles of household furniture, including those here enumerated, had to be subjected to them. God had, for good and wise purposes, instituted certain temporary means of ceremonial cleansing; but man perverts and pollutes, or, when he does not pollute, he perverts the wisest means to the worst ends. The perversions in the case before us, besides being excessively burdensome and extremely inconvenient from their multiplicity, were perfectly contemptible from their very puerility and triviality, and positively sinful from the seemingly magical efficacy with which they invested mere mechanical operations.
5. Ceremonialism. Ceremonies of human invention, especially when multiplied and perverted from their legitimate or appointed use, like the ablutions referred to, instead of being helps, become hindrances to devotion. They promote irreligion at the same time that they foster pride. Their tendency is to put outward purifying in the place of inward purity, to substitute external cleansing for internal cleanness, to prefer clean hands to a clean heart, and to rest in "the righteousness which is of the Law" instead of "the righteousness which is of God by faith." True religion, under whatever dispensation, beans with the heart. Thus the psalmist prays so beautifully, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me." The promise here is limited to such, as when it is said, "Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart;" the prospect hereafter is for them, and for them alone; for it is only "the pure in heart" that shall "see God." No amount of outward observances or ceremonial ablutions could constitute real religion or supply its place, nor entitle the person that performed them to the privileges of a true child of God. The apostle insists on this when he says, "He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
6. Tradition. Tradition in general is that which is handed down from father to son, or from one generation to another. The word is sometimes used in a good sense, and signifies instructions, whether relating to doctrine or duty, faith or practice, and whether the delivery be oral or written; but, and this is the main thing, consisting of truths immediately delivered by inspired men. Such is its signification in 1Co_11:2, where the apostle commands or exhorts the Corinthians to "hold fast the traditions, even as I delivered them to you;" also in 2Th_2:15, "Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle;" and again in the same Epistle, (2Th_3:6) "Withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us." But it has another sense also in Scripture, and is employed to denote what is merely human and untrustworthy, as when St. Paul speaks of himself as he was in his original sinful, unconverted state, and says, "I profited in the Jews" religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers;" and again, when he warns the Colossians, saying, "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." It is in this latter sense that it is used in ver. 6 of the present chapter, when "the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders?" The Jewish theory of tradition was that, along with the written Law, Moses received at Sinai a second or oral law, and that this latter law was handed down through succeeding generations. This law, consisting of traditional interpretations and gradual additions, was at length embodied in the text of the Talmud, called "Mishna," or "second law." This oral law held a higher rank, and was more highly esteemed than the written Law. It not only supplemented the written Law by large additions, but was employed as the key to its interpretation. Thus in the end it was used in instances innumerable to supplant, or supersede, or set aside, the written Law at pleasure. We do not despise tradition in the proper and legitimate sense which, as we have seen, the word sometimes has, nor in its present ordinary sense of something handed down ordinance or ceremony pro-vided it be agreeable to the Divine Word; but we must not set up tradition side by side with the written Word of God, nor bring God"s Word into conformity with tradition; on the contrary, whenever God"s Word and human tradition clash, the latter must be corrected by the former. One example of this kind we have in relation to the Apostle John, about whom the saying went abroad that he should not die. Jesus had said, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?" This was in the first instance misinterpreted, then the misinterpretation spread from mouth to mouth as a regular tradition, till the apostle himself felt called upon to correct it by the specific statement, "Yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.
7. Isaiah"s prediction as applicable to the Pharisees as to their fathers. The statement of Isaiah, though not in the strict and specific sense a prediction concerning our Lord"s contemporaries, was a description so all-embracing and so pregnant with meaning, that it exhibited with striking exactness the chief features of their religious life, or rather of their irreligious, soulless formality. Isaiah foretold it (proefhteusen aorist) in the past, but it stands written from then till now, and so our Lord, in this case, uses the perfect (gegraptai) What was said then, so long before, was equally true in the Saviour"s day; it was as true of the children, or remote descendants, as of their ancestors, as though the traits of character referred to had become stereotyped.
(1) He charged them with hypocritical lip-service, saying, as though with withering scorn, "Ye hypocrites, ye honor me with lip-service, but without sincere heart-worship!
(2) with vanity or empty form in worshipping according to the commandments which human tradition taught; and
(3) our Lord, in stating the ground of the application which he makes of the prophet"s words, brings home the charge, asserting that by those human precepts they displaced the commandments of God; and then
(4) he backs his assertion by an example of most glaring and flagrant criminality as the natural result of such Pharisaic teaching.
8. Practical remarks on the preceding. We cannot fail to notice
(1) the depth of meaning in the Divine Word; of this characteristic of Scripture we have here a notable illustration. What Isaiah spoke in his moral portraiture of his contemporaries, applied to their children"s children many centuries after, as accurately and as exactly as if he had had the latter solely in view, or rather as if the distant ancestors and the remote posterity both sat together before this great spiritual limner. Such apt and felicitous delineation was not the result of human intuition or prophetical sagacity, but of Divine inspiration; it was the Spirit that gave the prophet such foresight, and thus testified the truth beforehand. The word "hypocrite
(2) originally meant one who answered in a dramatic dialogue, and thus an actor; and further, one who wore a mask as actors did. It denotes one who assumes a character which does not really belong to him, or acts a part that is unreal, or feigns virtues not possessed. The persons to whom the word is here applied approached God with their lips, while their heart was far distant from (porrw apecei , "holds far aloof from") him. They were acting the part of true worshippers, but were not so in reality; they were wearing a mask of profession which they put on to conceal their real character. They pretended to be honoring God, but the honor which they gave him did not proceed from the heart; it was only in outward seeming, or for external show. This worship
(3) was confined to the utterances of their lips as the main instrument employed in such worship; but the understanding and its faculties, the heart and its affections, were not engaged, and took no part in it. It was hollow hearted and false-hearted; it was vain (mathn , in vain, a word which may come from maw , to seek but without finding). It was meant as worship, no doubt, but it was fruitless, being worship that God could not accept. The vanity
(4) of this worship, however, did not arise so much from the manner of it heartless as that was, and spiritless as it was but from the matter of it. All worship presumes certain doctrines and duties, and proceeds in accordance with these. Every time we open our lips in praise or prayer, or other act of worship, doctrines or duties of some sort are involved, implied, or referred to. But the doctrines which these Pharisaic formalists taught were the commandments of men; they had no higher source and no better origin. If we would worship God aright, we must worship according to the way and means which God himself has prescribed; if we teach acceptably, we must teach the doctrines which God directs. Not so the Pharisees: their doctrines were human commandments; their teaching, therefore, was often false, always fallible, often puerile, and not unfrequently pernicious. But worse still, their teachings were not merely negative, in so far as they did not teach what God commanded, but only what men invented; they were positively subversive of the commandment of God in any given case, and hence the word here is singular (entolhn); as our Lord himself affirms, when in ver. 8 he states the ground on which he applies to the Pharisees of his time the words spoken by Isaiah in relation to their ancestors. Ye give up or let go the commandment of God, but hold fast the tradition of men in the matter of ceremonial washings, and of many other things of like kind. Not only so; ye set aside the commandment of God (not by, as in the Authorized Version, but) for the sake of your tradition (dia thdosin umwn , St. Matthew), or, as St. Mark more fully expresses it, "in order that ye may keep your own tradition." Thus there is a climax; for, first, they let go or dismiss the commandment of God, while they hold with obstinate tenacity human tradition; then, secondly, they set aside or displace, putting something else in its room, or reject with something akin to contempt, the commandment of God; from omission they proceeded to commission as usual, and all this in order to guard, observe, or maintain their own tradition. Isaiah had finely (kalwv) described them beforehand, and now they finely (kalwv , the same word, but used ironically in this second instance, and not with the meaning of "entirely") act up to that description.
9. Moral obligation set aside through Pharisaism. Our Lord proceeds to expose the practical and pernicious effect of Pharisaic traditionalism in the domain of ethics. He had shown the hollowness of its teaching in cases of ceremonial cleansings; but he now advances from the ceremonial to the moral. For this purpose he selects the fifth commandment, and proves that the antagonism between the written Law, or Law of God, and the oral, or human law, in respect to this commandment, is complete. He quotes the prescriptive part of the commandment, and omits the promissory as not required by the object he has in view; instead of the promissory clause attached to obedience, he substitutes the punitive sentence pronounced on the person guilty of a breach of the commandment in question. "Moses said and here it will be observed that the commandment of God, who spake by Moses, is identified with the commandment of his inspired servant, so that what was really said by God is here attributed by our Lord to his servant Moses thy father and thy mother." These words were graven by the finger of the Almighty on the stone tablet at Sinai, and the precept thus solemnly delivered at first was enforced by the awfully severe sanction which follows: curseth that is, speaketh ill of or revileth or mother, let him die the death.
(1) In the "precept" the possessive pronoun and article are used with both words, "father" and "mother," as if to individualize, and point out specifically to every reader or hearer of the Law, the duty as individual and personal; but, in the penalty clause, the pronoun and article, though expressed both in the original Hebrew and Septuagint Version, are omitted in the record of both evangelists, as if to generalize or treat as a class, and present the duty in the abstract, thus denoting unfaithfulness to such a relationship such a sacred object of affection as a father and a mother. The omission of the article by itself draws attention to the quality, character, or nature, rather than the substance, of the thing thus spoken of.
(2) The original Hebrew expression is a peculiar idiom of that language, implying intensity by means of an infinitive mood joined to the finite verb of the same signification, and denoting, "Let him be surely put to death literally, "dying, let him be put to death." The Septuagint Version has two ways of expressing this Hebrew idiom, either by the verb and cognate noun in the dative, or by the verb and its participle; the former is the mode not exactly adopted, but only approximated in this instance, with merely an insignificant variation, by the evangelist, namely, "Let him end with death." But
(3) the words "he shall be free" of the common version are supplied in order to make out the sense. If the reading of the received text, which begins the next verse with kai , be retained, the verse before us may be regarded
(a) as an instance of the figure aposioposis, by which our Lord, as if with inexpressible indignation at the thought of conduct so unnatural and reprehensible, breaks off without completing the sentence; while the supplied words of the English version express the acquittal conceded in the case by Pharisaic casuistry. Another way
(b) of evading the difficulty was suggested by Fritzsche, who supplies here the closing words of ver. 10 with a negative that is, mh yanatw teleutatw so that this verse would read as follows: ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatseover thou mightest be profited by me, let him not die the death. " The Revised Version,
(c) however, cuts the knot by adopting the reading which excludes kai from the beginning of ver. 12; thus, "But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or his mother, That wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me is Corban, that is to say, Given to God; ye no longer suffer him to do aught for his father or his mother.
10. Farther development of our Lords retort. The word "corban" meant anything brought near to the altar or to the God of the altar for presentation, and applied, like the cognate verb hikrib, to bring near, to any offerings, whether bloody or unbloody, animal or vegetable. The evangelist, as is his custom, explains it by a Greek word denoting a glint in general, but more particularly, according both to Homeric and Hellenistic usage, a gift to God, or a votive offering. It is thus a correct equivalent of the word which the evangelist explains by it. When, then, a Jewish child wished to discard, and entirely free himself from, filial obligation, he had only to pronounce this mystic word of potent meaning, and the traditional law of Pharisaism gave him a full release. whenever a man said of any part of his property or of his whole possessions, "It is Corban," that is," given to God," he was bound by his vow, and the property was devoted to the service or support of the altar or temple or national religion; it was made over for religious purposes, though the time of fulfilling such vow was left to his own option, and so its fulfillment because discretionary, or was evaded. To revile or curse father or mother was surely bad enough and wicked enough; but to refuse to supply the wants of a parent when reduced to poverty, or to support a parent in old age and when needing such support, or to withhold from an indigent parent the necessaries of life, on the plea that the means or resources out of which such could be supplied were devoted to religious uses, was a refinement of unnatural and inhuman wickedness almost incapable of being expressed in words. And thus, as the next verse informs us, they suffered him no longer to do anything for his parents, even if he would; or, if he would not, they suffered him to have his way, conniving at his sin and overlooking his shame, nay, putting words into his mouth to enable him to perpetrate in the name of religion such abominable villainy. If, from a spirit of greedy avarice, or miserable meanness, or detestable stinginess I or in a fit of spiteful passion; or under the influence of superstition, a wicked Jew pleased to say to either parent suffering from disease, or labouring under age and poverty," That whereby I might have helped, or relieved, or in any way benefited, you, is devoted to the service of God and religion, and cannot now be withdrawn, the oral law of the Pharisee granted full liberty to do so, taught him its formula for that very purpose, and salved his conscience that he might withal feet at ease. Now, to those censorious Pharisees who watched our Lord and his disciples with such lynx-eyed vigilance and malign intent, and who had seen, not all the disciples, but some of them, partaking, not of a regular repast, but eating a morsel of bread with hands common, that is, in the ordinary or general state clean, it may be, but not ritually cleansed our Lord may be supposed to say, Ye blame my hungry disciples for snatching the fragment of a hurried meal without ceremonial ablution, and censure them for neglecting a silly ceremony enjoined no doubt, by your traditional law, which is only of human origin, and, in such a case as that just referred to, of most nefarious tendency; but ye teach your disciples to violate, not a trivial ceremonial observance for which only human authority can be pleaded, and from which no benefit can be derived, but a moral duty, based on closest human relationship, written by God"s own finger, recorded in his written law, and enforced by the most solemn sanction! Is not this to establish man"s law and set aside God"s Law; to adhere punctiliously to the miserable tradition of miserable or wicked men, but to invalidate and even abrogate the Law of an infinitely pure and holy God a Law, too, like its Author, holy and just and good! To wash the hands before a regular meal, or any meal, may be proper enough as a custom, or for cleanliness, or as a matter of delicacy, yet can never be exalted into a religious act or rite; but to trifle with or trample underfoot the law of natural affection, of filial piety, of common humanity a law specially honored with a most gracious promise, and sternly hedged in with the severest sanction must bring down the vengeance of Heaven on the guilty head of its transgressor. Thus our Lord left them to look at this picture and on that.
II DISTINCTION BETWEEN CLEAN AND UNCLEAN.
1. Statement of a principle. After our Lord had put to silence and covered with confusion these intermeddling, faultfinding, censorious, and cavilling Pharisees, he proceeds to state a great and fundamental principle, which covered the whole ground and went to the very root of the matter. Before doing so, he requests the particular attention of the multitude. Whether they had withdrawn to a respectful distance during our Lord"s interview with the Pharisees and triumphant answer to their objection, or whether, from indifference to their obtrusive questionings the malevolent intention of which was obvious, they had sunk into a state of listless inattention, does not appear. They required, from whatever cause, to have their attention stimulated. For this purpose he calls on all and each, not only to listen attentively, but to reflect, with intelligence wide awake and active, on the great principle he is about to enunciate. Having thus gained their intelligent attention and roused their powers of reflection, he states the important distinction that "there is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man." After making this statement, he again appeals to them to give it their careful consideration.
2. Important distinction. Our Lord, in the principle stated, distinguishes between the physical and spiritual natures of man, as also between ceremonial and moral defilements; between positive regulations and moral requirements; and thus between precepts given for a particular purpose and obligations for a limited time, and those laws that were unvarying in their nature and perpetual in their obligation. The principle in question our Lord propounds in the form of an antithetic paradox. The first part of it seemed to collide with the distinction between meats clean and unclean, which God himself had appointed and minutely specified; and, if taken in a ceremonial sense, so it did; but understood morally, as our Lord had intended, it pointed not obscurely to the purpose for which such distinctions had been instituted. That purpose was temporary in its duration, and for the segregation of the chosen people from the mass of mankind, as well as for the symbolic intimation of the difference that should exist between "the holiness to which the people of God were! called, and the heathenism that prevailed around. Our Lord meant to correct an injurious error under which the people of the Jews in general then laboured. He had rebuked their superstitious punctiliousness about certain ceremonial washings, and their sinful regardlessness of moral obligations. This naturally leads him to expose the grave mistake they made when they foolishly supposed that meats of themselves exercised any moral efficacy or possessed any moral potency. That they defiled ceremonially, and exposed to disabilities of a ceremonial kind and entailing purification, was not doubted; but that they had any power of themselves either to cleanse or purify is here most positively denied. The cause of defilement was man"s fallen nature; the source of it was within; the seat of it was the heart; the stagnant pool from which such polluted waters issued was deep down in the very depths of his being. Thence proceeded defilements of speech through the mouth, defilements of work in the conduct, defilements of thoughts in the character and conversation. The disciples had shared the errors and prejudices of their race to a very large extent, and not understanding the strange paradoxical statement, sought an explanation in private. After a gentle reprimand for their dulness of apprehension, they were favored by their Master with a full explanation.
3. Moral impurity. The belly is the stomach and viscera, or organs of digestion generally; the heart is used for both the intellect and affections the whole soul. These are totally distinct; what enters the former does not and cannot reach the latter. There is no connection between these parts of man"s nature, and no compatibility between the objects that affect them. Meats only enter the stomach and intestines, and minister to man"s life and strength; even the exclusion, of their refuse tends to purification rather than defilement. But the things that do defile proceed out of the heart; and they are sins against God"s Law, or dispositions that incline to those sins, and incentives that prompt to them. Those sins are against the commandments in the so-called second table of the Law. According to a rough classification that has been made, some are sins against the sixth commandment, as murders, wickedness, and an evil eye; some against the seventh, as fornication, adultery, and lasciviousness; some against the eighth, as theft and deceit; some against the ninth, as blasphemies, or evil-speaking, and false witness (in St. Matthew"s enumeration); and some against the tenth, as covetousness, or, literally, "reachings after more." But of the evil dispositions that lead to overt acts of sins, the chief place is occupied by evil thoughts, whether the reference is to evil thoughts in general, or to such vicious reasonings as those in which the Pharisees were accustomed to indulge. While such inward thoughts or reasonings (dialogismoi) are the seminal principles from which sinful actions proceed the bitter roots from which they shoot up and grow a leading motive to sin is specified: it is pride (uperhfania , a desire to appear above others), the wish for conspicuous elevation. In pride itself the predominant clement is selfishness that selfishness that prompts men to seek the pre-eminence in all things, and to prefer self to all other persons or interests, in contrariety to the scriptural precept which directs us" in honor to prefer one another." Pride implies that overbearing demeanour and haughtiness of carriage that make men look down on others, supposing themselves so much superior. Pride centres all in self, disregarding others" interests whenever they seem to stand in the way; at the same time proud persons, male or female, "sacrifice to their own net, and burn incense to their own drag." Pride is thus a most powerful motive to sin, to selfish indulgence, to self-aggrandizement, to supercilious speech in regard to others, and to self-interest, whatever form it may assume, and however much detriment may be done to the rights of others. Further, one characteristic of all sin, and a name frequently used in Scripture as synonymous with "sin," is "folly" (afrosunh). This senselessness denies God the glory that pertains to him, for "the fool has said in his heart, There is no God." While it thus robs God, it refuses to man his due. In the cud it ruins the individual himself. "This their way is their folly." Oh, the folly of sin! The enumeration of the things which defile a man, as given here by St. Mark, is fuller than that given by St. Matthew. The latter mentions only seven; while St. Mark specifies thirteen. The cause of this additional number by the latter may be found in the vices that commonly prevailed among the Romans, for whom in the first instance St. Mark wrote, as compared with those to which the Jews, whom St. Matthew more especially kept in view in his Gospel, were addicted. A comparison also of the catalogue of crimes, which St. Paul, in writing to the Romans, gives at the close of his first chapter, will probably confirm the same conclusion, that the cause of the difference in the enumeration is connected with the different classes of sins to which persons belonging to these different nationalities were respectively addicted. Judaism at its worst, if this theory be correct, had greatly the advantage of paganism; so the lowest type of Christianity is superior to heathenism. J.J.G.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Then came together unto Him the Pharisees, and certain…
Mar_7:1-16
Then came together unto Him the Pharisees, and certain of the Scribes.
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Scribes and Pharisees coming to Christ
I. When they came. When Gennesaret turned its heart toward Him. When diseased bodies had felt the virtue of His touch, and imprisoned souls had been set free by His word. Then. As soon as ever the Churchs Child was born, the devil sought to drown Him (Rev_12:1-17).
II. Who they were that came. Pharisees and scribes. The learned and the religious. These two classes have always been the greatest opponents of Christs kingdom.
III. Whence they came. From Jerusalem. Machiavel observed that there was nowhere less piety than in those that dwelt nearest to Rome. The nearer the Church, the farther from God. It cannot be that a prophet shall perish out of Jerusalem.
IV. Where they came. To Jesus. As the moth flies at the lamp, and bats fly at the sun, What a contrast between such a coming and those named in Mar_6:56. I will draw all men unto Me. (L. Palmer.)
The tradition of men
It is the folly of men that, in discharge of me duties of religion, they are satisfied to put ceremonies and confessions that cost but little, in the place of righteousness of heart and life which cost a great deal.
I. There is today an ecclesiastical ritualism, which is disastrous to piety. It starts with the assumption that its methods of worship are the best possible; and, after a little, declares they are the only ones acceptable to God. The Church usurps the place of Christ. Of any church that estimates ritual above character, that endeavours to build up form rather than shape life, Christ says, Full well do ye reject the commandment of God that ye may keep your tradition.
II. There is today a social ritualism, which is disastrous to true piety. Public opinion is a power; it has its theory of religion. Certain things done, and certain others left undone, are the credentials of piety. Mens actions are the only things taken into account, not the men themselves. Society has agreed that a little honesty, a little charity, and church going, shall be accepted as religion. Such reject the commandment of God that they may keep their tradition.
III. There is a ritualism of personal opinion, which is disastrous to true piety. Every man has his own idea of the conditions on which he personally may be right with God. They forget that it is for God to decide what is satisfactory to Him. It is sometimes argued that, since there are so many opposite theories and conflicting creeds, our acceptance or rejection of what is called religion cannot be of much importance. But religion is a simple matter. Piety is the being and doing what God has commanded; just that; nothing more and nothing less. Those commandments are few, brief, intelligible. Whatever vagueness and confusion there may be in our ideas of religion, it is of our own making. Let God speak for Himself, and listen only to Him, and all is plain. (Monday Club Sermons.)
Tradition accumulates rubbish
Accepting the traditions of men as our rule, we get to be heirs of a vast deal of rubbish. Just as around the anchored rock in the ever-swinging tide, there gathers all sorts of debris, floating fragments of wrecks, drifting grass and weeds, with perhaps now and then some bright sea blossom, or shell of beauty cast up by the heave of the surge-so a church that takes as pattern of its creed and ceremonial the belief and methods of men of other times, is sure to be cumbered with a mass of outworn mistakes, the refuse and driftwood of centuries, with here and there a suggestion of world long value, but as a whole, out of date and useless. (Monday Club Sermons.)
Tradition conceals truth
Each generation encumbered the divinely ordained ritual with its own comments; so after awhile mens notions overgrew and hid from sight Gods thought, as some wild vine in the forest wreathes its fetters of verdure around the hearty tree, interlacing and interknotting its sprays, looping mesh on mesh of pliant growth, till the tree is smothered and hidden, and the all-encompassing vine alone is seen and seems to bare life. (Monday Club Sermons.)
Perverted tradition the bane of the Church
It is a subtle artifice of the Great Enemy of mankind, to make the real Word of God of none effect by means of a pretended Word. When he cannot prevail with men to go contrary to what they know to be the Word which came from God, then he deals with them as he taught his lying prophet to deal at Bethel with the prophet of God who came from Judah. When Jeroboam said to the Man of God, Come home with me, and refresh thyself, and I will give thee a reward, the prophet resolutely repelled the invitation: If thou wilt give me half thy house, I will not go in with thee, neither will I eat bread nor drink water in this place; for so was it charged me by the Word of the Lord, saying, Eat no bread, nor drink water. An old prophet, however, followed the man of God, and gave him a like invitation, and received a like refusal. But, when the great deceiver put a falsehood into the mouth of the wicked old man: I am a prophet also, as thou art, and an angel spake unto me by the Word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with thee into thy house, that he may eat bread and drink water, but he lied unto him-the lie proved fatal! He went back with him, and did eat bread in his house, and drank water (1Ki_13:1-34). The Man of God was greatly to be pitied, yet he was greatly to be blamed. He had received it explicitly from God that he should neither eat nor drink in idolatrous Bethel; and it was his plain duty to adhere to that command, unless God repealed it in the same way in which he gave it, or with equal evidence that such was His will; whereas he believes an old man of whom he knows nothing, on his own word, under suspicious circumstances, and in opposition to what had been the Word of God to himself. While a direct and palpable temptation to go contrary to Gods command was offered, he resisted and repelled the temptation; but when a temptation was offered, which came as a repeal of the command and in relief of his necessities, though on no sufficient authority, then his weakness prevailed. Why, think you, were lying prophets permitted? Why are lying teachers still suffered? Why, even lying wonders? To try the state of mens hearts. Is your heart, by the grace of God, made humble and teachable? then will you be taught of the Spirit to discern the things which differ-to detect the fallacies and delusions practised upon it-and to approve the things which are more excellent. Is your heart self-sufficient, careless, carnal? then will it be deceived and led astray by plausible and flattering pretences. In contending that the Scriptures are the sole rule of faith, we give them exclusive authority over the judgment and the conscience. This authority lies in the real sense, and the just application of that sense, not in any sense or application contrary to that which is just and true, and which man may seek to impose. This sense is to be ascertained, and the right application of it is to be learnt by humble, teachable, diligent, and devout study, with the use of all needful helps thereto. The influence of the Scriptures on the heart is the special work of Him who dictated them. The blessing of God is needful to our success in endeavouring to ascertain the sense and right application of them; but so great are the obstacles to our receiving with meekness the engrafted Word, that God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, must shine into our hearts by the special grace of the Holy Spirit, in order to our feeling the transforming influence of the light of the knowledge of His glory, as seen in the face of Jesus Christ. No consent of man in any interpretation or application of Scripture is of binding authority on others. Consent is often contagious-not enlightened. The influence of leaders, the supposed interests of party, early associations, and prejudices, often bias the judgment. But the unerring standard remains. And the deviations of churches, and councils, and nations, from this standard, and the continuance of those deviations for ages, cannot deflect this standard one jot or tittle from its rectitude. But while no consent of men can bind of authority to any interpretation or application of Scripture, yet those views of truth which are commended to us by the consent in them of varied bodies of enlightened and devout men, come to us under a just and commanding influence. (J. Pratt, B. D.)
Ceremonialism and spirituality
I. Ceremonialism substitutes washing with water for purity of heart.
II. Ceremonialism substitutes the traditions of the elders for the commands of God.
III. Ceremonialism substitutes the worship of the lips for the worship of the heart.
IV. Ceremonialism substitutes a subtle evasion for filial duty.
V. Ceremonialism substitutes avoidance of unclean food for avoidance of impure and malicious thoughts. Application: It is possible to be, in a sense, religious, and yet, in a deeper sense, sinful, and out of harmony with the mind and will of God. None is wholly free from the temptation to substitute the external, formal, apparent, for the faith, love, and loyalty of heart required by God. Hence the need of a good heart, which must be a new heart-the gift and creation of God by His Spirit. (J. R. Thomson, M. A.)
The tradition of men versus the commandments of God
In the conflict between the Church and the sacred relationships of common life, to the latter must be assigned the preeminence. The necessities of the temple, of its services or its servants, must not be met at the expense of filial faithfulness. The sin of the Pharisees and scribes was-
I. A gross perversion of the relative claims of the parent and the Church.
II. A wicked interference with the first commandment with promise.
III. A cruel undermining of filial affection and fidelity and as cruel an exposure of the aged and enfeebled parents to a falsely justified neglect.
IV. An unwarranted usurpation of authority to weaken the obligation of a Divine law. (R. Green.)
The religion of the Jews
The interference of the Pharisees and scribes served to bring out their religion. Consider some of its features. The religion here depicted and condemned-
I. Consisted mainly of external observances (Mar_6:2-4).
1. By this feature the same system of religion may be detected in the present day.
2. Religion in this sense is upheld by many strong principles in the nature of man-awakened conscience, self-righteousness, vanity.
3. This system is exceedingly dangerous. Misleads the awakened sinner; produces a deep and fatal slumber.
II. Rests on human authority as its warrant (Mar_6:3; Mar_6:5; Mar_6:7).
1. By this feature we may detect it in the present day. Among those who take away the right-duty and exercise of private judgment. Among those who derive their religious belief from man-in whatever way.
2. This form of false religion is exceedingly dangerous. It dishonours Christ as a prophet, etc. It gives despotic power to man, which he is not qualified to wield. It degrades the soul to be a servant of servants, etc.
3. Call no man mawr.
III. Puts dishonour upon the sacred Scriptures.
1. By this feature we detect its existence now. In the Church of Rome, etc., the Scriptures are wholly concealed-made to speak according to tradition and the Church. Amongst ourselves: opinions are not surrendered to them, and they are neglected.
2. This form of religion stands opposed to those Scriptures which it dishonours (Joh_5:39, and others).
3. Know the Scriptures and revere them.
IV. Made light of the moral law (Mar_6:8-12).
1. May be seen in our own day-in the Church of Rome. May be seen, amongst ourselves, in those who put religious ceremonies in the place of moral duties.
2. This form has its origin in the love of sin, and is accommodated to an unsanctified heart.
3. It has no tendency to purify, but the reverse.
4. Beware of Antinomianism.
V. Consisted in hypocrisy, putting on appearances.
VI. Was vigilant and jealous of Christ and censured His disciples (Mar_6:1-2). (Expository Discourses.)
Unwashen hands
It was laid down that the hands were first to be washed clean. The tips of the ten fingers were then joined and lifted up, so that the water ran down to the elbows, then turned down, so that it might run off to the ground. Fresh water was poured on them as they were lifted up and twice again as they hung down. The washing itself was to be done by rubbing the fist of one hand in the hollow of the other. When the hands were washed before eating, they must be held upwards, when after it downwards, but so that the water should not run beyond the knuckles. The vessel used must be held first in the right, then in the left hand; the water was to be poured first on the right, then on the left hand; and at every third time the words repeated, Blessed art thou who bast given us the command to wash the hands. It was keenly disputed whether the cup of blessing or the handwashing should come first; whether the towel used should be laid on the table or on the couch; and whether the table was to be cleared before the final washing or after it. (Geikies Life of Christ.)
The tradition of the elders
The excess to which these regulations were carried is well illustrated by what is told of one Rabbi Akaba, who, in his dungeon, being driven by a pittance of water to the alternative of neglecting ablution or dying with thirst, preferred death to failing in ceremonious observance.
Moses commanded washing very freely
But it was always in connection with some very definite cause; being required either
(1) because of physical pollution which had been gathered, or
(2) in connection with moral consecration which was purposed.
The priests at consecration were washed. So was the leper after his recovery, and so were all after defilement or contact with those defiled. But the tradition of the elders had come to require as many washings in a day as Moses would have required in a month. The secret of this development lay in the adoption of the principle of The Hedge, i.e., something which guarded the Law by prohibiting not only actions forbidden, but all actions which might by any possibility lead to them. Accordingly, because Moses said that he who was defiled by contact with a corpse should wash, they held it was well to wash always after being out of doors, as you might have touched someone who might have touched some one or something dead … Thus life became a very slavery. Of course the common people, as they were contemptuously styled, could not afford either time, or thought, or money, to practise such scruples. But a great number associated themselves together, calling themselves Haberim, or Comrades, to observe these scruples. The Pharisees belonged to this society, of course, to a man. (R. Glover.)
Pharisaic prejudice
These Pharisees found fault because Christs disciples did not obey mans law, the quoted tradition, the authority of their Church. It was not until the great (seventh) Earl of Shaftesbury was twenty-five years of age that he supposed that anyone outside the Church of England was worth listening to, or ever wrote anything worth reading. As to their having any views of their own worthy of consideration, he says, it never crossed my mind until one day I got hold of a copy of some Commentary, and, after reading for awhile with great interest, it suddenly struck me, The writer must have been a rank Dissenter! and I instantly shut up the book, recoiling from it as I would from poison. One of the first things that opened my eyes was reading of Doddridge being condemned as a Dissenter, and I remember exclaiming, Good heavens! how will he stand in the day of judgment at the bar of God, as compared with Pope Alexander VI? It was not till I was twenty-five years old, or thereabouts, that I got hold of Scotts Commentary on the Bible, and, struck with the enormous difference between his views and those to which I had been accustomed, I began to think for myself.
A hypocrite
A hypocrite has been likened to one who should go into a shop to buy a pennyworth, and should steal a pounds worth; or to one who is punctual in paying a small debt, that he may get deeper into our books and cheat us of a greater sum. (T. Manton.)
Hypocrites perform small duties and neglect great
Hypocrites make much ado about small things that they may be more easy in their consciences while living in great sins. They pay the tithe of mint to a fraction, but rob God of His glory by their self-righteousness. They give God the shells, and steal the kernels for their own pride and self-will. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Heart worship required
God requires soul worship, and men give Him body worship; He asks for the heart, and they present Him with their lips; He demands their thoughts and their minds, and they give him banners, and vestments, and candies. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Perverse penances
No matter how painful may be the mortification, how rigid the penance, how severe the abstinence; no matter how much may be taken from his purse, or from the wine vat, or from the store, he will be content to suffer anything sooner than bow before the Most High with a true confession of sin, and trust in the appointed Saviour with sincere, child-like faith. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Faith and works reversed, or the plant upside down
Some time ago a lady showed me a small seedling acacia, remarking, I cannot make this plant out; it doesnt do well at all; it doesnt grow a bit, though I water it well, and attend to it carefully. I looked at the plant, and soon discovered the cause. The little plant had a tap root, as all seedlings have, and this tap root should have been inserted in the soil, where it would soon have struck out its lateral rootlets; but, instead of this, the plant was upside down, the leading root being in the soil, and the tap root exposed to the sun and air. It was impossible that the plant could grow or even live. It is thus with some peoples religion. (Sword and Trowel.)
In what sense worship is voluntary
The duties of worship ought to be voluntary, as voluntary is opposed to constrained; but they must not be voluntary, as voluntary is opposed to instituted or appointed. God doth no more approve of that worship we give Him according to our will, than He doth approve of our neglect of that which is according to His own will. (Burkitt.)
Human tradition versus Divine command
The experience is a universal one, that Gods commandments suffer from the competition of human rules. The great precepts of God have only an unseen God behind them, but behind the human rules there is generally a class whose pride is gratified by their observance and incensed by their neglect. Accordingly, whenever small rules of outward conduct begin to flourish, the great principles of religion-faith, love, honour-fall into the background. It is so today. The Thug in India who confessed to having killed 320 people had no pangs of conscience for killing them, but was somewhat distressed on account of having killed a few of them after a hare had crossed his path or a bird whistled in a certain direction. Murder was no crime in his opinion, but the neglect of an omen from Bowany was a grave one. In Hinduism, which is ceremonial throughout, a man may be a most religious man, and yet very wicked. Many in our own country would unscrupulously commit great crimes, and yet be very careful to avoid eating flesh on Good Friday. It seems as if we only had a certain amount of power of attention in us, and, if it goes to little rules, there is none left for great principles. (R. Glover.)
Tradition and inspiration
As with the man who attempts to serve two masters, so with him who thinks to walk by two lights: if he would keep in the straight loath he must put out one of the two, and guide himself by the other. (Dr. Wylie.)
Laying aside the commandment of God
A philosopher at Florence could not be persuaded to look through one of Galileos telescopes, lest he should see something in the heavens that would disturb him in his belief of Aristotles philosophy. Thus it is with many who are afraid of examining Gods Word, lest they should find themselves condemned. (Buck.)
The inefficacy of Gods Word-how produced
We make it of none effect when we-
I. Fail to read and study it and to appropriate its blessings.
II. When we give precedence to any human authority or law.
III. When by our lives we misrepresent it before the world.
IV. When we fail to urge its truths upon the anxious inquirer or careless sinner. (J. Gordon.)
Ears to hear
This rule must needs be of very great importance to Christians. For our Great Master
(1) calls all the people unto Him on purpose to tell them only this.
(2) He requires of them a particular attention.
(3) He requires it of every one of them without exception.
(4) He exhorts them to endeavour thoroughly to understand it.
(5) He lets them know that in order, to do it they have need of a singular grace and a particular gift of understanding.
It was for want of understanding this rule that the Jews still remained Jews, adhering to a mere external way of worship. It is for the very same reason that numbers of Christians, even to this day, serve God more like Jews than Christians. (Quesnel.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1. Then came together unto him the Pharisees. This…
1. Then came together unto him the Pharisees. This sharp controversy, which contains the sharpest rebuke that Christ had thus far paid to the Pharisaical system, is recorded also by Matt. 15:1–20, where see notes. Mark, for the benefit of Gentile readers, adds a few words concerning Jewish customs. Come from Jerusalem. Probably formally sent by the Sanhedrim to investigate the work and teaching of Jesus.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 Mar_7:3. Oft.—Literally, with the fist, hence vigorously. The idea…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mar_7:3. Oft.—Literally, with the fist, hence vigorously. The idea is, that the Pharisees had inaugurated an elaborate and painstaking ceremonial, which was now adopted by the whole body of the Jews. The Evangelist may possible mean, that it was actually a part of the prescribed ritual to keep the one hand closed while the other was being rubbed with it.
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Mar_7:4. Wash.—Either βαπτίσωνται, take a bath, or ῥαντίσωνται, sprinkle water over themselves. Have received to hold.—Accepted as suitable or worthy to retain (or hold fast).
Mar_7:11-13. For true reading and rendering see R. V. When an unnatural son wished, either in a temporary fit of passion, or under the goad of an abiding selfishness, to get quit of the importunity of a destitute father or mother, he had just to say, in reference to whatever was craved, Corban! and then not only was he released from obligation to assist his needy parent, but was actually bound, as by the highest authority, to withhold the desired relief. Nor was it necessary that he should actually make the offering to the service of God; he might keep it himself, or do anything he chose with it, save only that he must not give it to his parent! Could human ingenuity go further in the direction of annulling the Word of God?
Mar_7:18. Are ye so, etc.—Or, What! are ye also void of understanding?
Mar_7:19. It is difficult to determine whether the words purging (or cleansing) all meats are a part of our Lord’s discourse, or an explanatory addition by the Erangelist. The R. V., following Origen, Chrysostom, and Gregory Thaumaturgus, adopts the latter interpretation, reading καθαρίζων for the καθαρίζον of the Textus Receptus; and certainly the ἕλεγε δέ which immediately follows looks like an indication that the quotation of Christ’s words, after being broken off for a moment, is now resumed. “He saith … (and in so saying He cleanseth all meats). And He said further …”—Dr. Jas. Morison, however, while defending καθαρίζων as the true reading, thinks that it “must apparently refer to the draught, which, by receiving the refuse, draws off as it were the impurities of the food, or those elements that remain after the nutritive ingredients have been eliminated and assimilated.”—Mr. J. B. McClellan, on the other hand, decides against καθαρίζων, on the ground that although it has far the greatest external support, yet “as Wordsworth has noted, the itacism of ω and ο is so common in MSS. that this fact ‘is of little weight against the ordinary rules of grammatical construction,’ and, he might have added, against the certain requirements of the sense. It was not by the appeal and explanation to the disciples in our present verse, but by the original declaration to the multitude in Mar_7:15, that our Lord made all meats clean. Hence in the verse before us the masc. καθαρίζων is out of place in regard to our Lord. In every other reference it is grammatically untenable. With all confidence therefore we retain the neut. καθαρίζον, and construct it in apposition with the sentence.”
Mar_7:22. Covetousness.—The word is in the plural—πλεονεξίαι: “for this greedy lust of lawless having runs out on more lines than one: it is a moral monster of several tentacles: like the cuttle-fish, it puts forth many feelers armed with suckers. Avarice is a branch only of the root covetousness. Sometimes this pleonexy, or “amor sceleratus habendi,” is associated with adultery: but in that case it less denotes the lust of impurity than connotes a lawless desire to overreach one’s neighbour; for the adulterer defrauds the husband in seizing what is the husband’s property. In short, love of pleasure, and love of money, and love of power are but so many forms of this “unbridled and unhallowed possessiveness.” Wickedness.—Also in plural: villainies—active wrongdoing of all sorts. Jeremy Taylor explains it as “an aptness to do shrewd turns, to delight in mischief and tragedies; a love to trouble our neighbour and to do him ill offices; crossness, perverseness, and peevishness of action in our intercourse.” An evil eye.—Niggardliness as to one’s own possessions, and envy as to those of others. See Deu_15:9; Deu_28:54; Sir_14:8-10; Tob_4:7-9; Mat_6:23; Mat_20:15. Blasphemy.—Reviling either of God or man. Pride.—An overbearing attitude. Folly.—Senselessness or infatuation. Such is the true nature of all sin.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mar_7:1-23
(PARALLEL: Mat_15:1-20.)
The tradition of men.—
I. Traditionalists conspiring against Christ.—
1. Their evil design. See Joh_7:1.
2. Their cunning method. They sought to bring in our Lord guilty of impiety by teaching His disciples to transgress the tradition of the elders.
II. Traditionalists confounded by Christ.—
1. By shewing that they taught for doctrines the commandments of men which were in opposition to the commandments of God.
2. By shewing the folly of these human traditions.
Lessons.—
1. A sad tendency of human nature—to honour God with the lips while the heart is far from Him.
2. The manifestation of this tendency (Mar_7:8-9).
3. The real source of evil—the human heart.
4. The manifestations of the controlling power of the sinful heart (Mar_7:21-22).
5. Real defilement before God—that of the inner source of evil.—D. C. Hughes.
Christian controversy.—Christ, when on earth, maintained two descriptions of intercourse with the people: the one was of a friendly and social nature, such as a friend maintains with his friend, when a congeniality of mind, combined with a similarity of habit, is found to subsist between them; the other was controversial, when proclaiming the true character, mind, and will of His Heavenly Father in opposition to the false opinions entertained respecting Him by the scribes and Pharisees, who, while altogether uninfluenced by the spirituality of what they taught, nevertheless maintained such strictness in the form and selfish regard for the moral requirements of religion, that, being irreproachable in the sight of men, they vainly conceived they must be equally so in the sight of God, forgetting or being wilfully ignorant that, whilst men judged from the appearance only, His all-seeing eye penetrated within the veil, discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart. Respecting the first of these two, namely, our Lord’s social and friendly intercourse with men, we may well conceive the meek, the gentle, yet dignified Jesus a guest within the house of one of His disciples, unfolding the nature of God to those in company with Him, announcing Him a Spirit who cannot be deceived, and who claims from His creatures a “worship in spirit and in truth,” which, when rendered, He willingly accepts, and mercifully pardons their transgressions. But though there were some who gladly received Him, and listened with the purest joy to His holy conversation, they were comparatively but few, and for the most part humble in their circumstances; whilst the great majority—the wealthy, the noble, and the learned—stood opposed to Him, ever on the watch to entangle Him in His talk, and find something whereof they might accuse Him to their rulers, and so be rid of One whose arguments they could not meet, and whose positions they could not controvert; yet with the most uncompromising integrity did the Saviour stand His ground, exposing the falsehood, the fraud, the errors, or the hypocrisy of those who from their superior education ought to have been the first to recognise Him as Messiah and submit to His authority, combating wrong notions, rectifying mistaken principles, whenever or by whomsoever advanced. This controversial intercourse in no small degree characterised our Lord’s ministry; nor could it be maintained without incurring all that hatred and opposition which the exposure of falsehood and error is sure to draw down on the person whose sense of moral responsibility would prevail to incite to it; still, disagreeable as is the office of setting those right who have been all their lives wrong, it becomes a solemn obligation, because involving the exercise of that charity or love which will not suffer us to see an immortal being persisting in a course obviously opposed to the will of God without warning him of his danger. With the psalmist the true and faithful servant of Christ can say, “All false ways I utterly abhor.” Receiving his instructions from that Divine Master, he learns “to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints,” and “as a good soldier,” serving a good Master, to “endure hardness” in the contention, when others “oppose themselves” and “would pervert the right ways of the Lord,” knowing as he does that “there is no other name under heaven given among men [but Jesus Christ], whereby we must be saved” (Act_4:12); nor can any man lay any other foundation on which to build his hopes for admission into heaven hereafter “than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1Co_3:11). Thus does the Bible furnish one great saving truth, and one only, which men are called upon to receive, and which, if they reject, they reject at their peril. To proclaim God’s eternal and unalterable truth, whether men will hear or whether they will forbear, is charity—love unfeigned. Would it be charity to suffer some dear friend or relative to languish from day to day upon the bed of sickness and not administer the medicine which the physician’s skill had prescribed for a cure, lest it might prove nauseous and unpalatable? Would it be charity if, passing through a town at dead of night, and seeing a house on fire, we should refrain from rousing its inhabitants, through fear of disturbing their slumbers? Or would it be charity if, observing a blind man fearlessly to approach a precipice, we should be silent, suffer him to advance on his destruction, and not tell him of his danger? We protest against such charity as this. We prefer the discharge of our duty, as faithful ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ, commissioned to preach “repentance towards God, and faith in Him who has sent us”; we are ready, in maintaining the Lord’s controversy with His people, to endure the world’s misrepresentation. Nevertheless we do maintain that “our labour is labour of love,” “the work of faith,” the fruit whereof “is charity out of a pure heart.” Our Lord did not shrink from the work which the Father had given Him to do because of the misconstruction put upon His conduct by the enemies-of righteousness, nor was He restrained by the rude rebuffs of an insolent world; no, He loved even His cruel persecutors too well to suffer them to run upon their ruin without telling them the consequences which would inevitably result, should they pass from time to eternity without effecting their reconciliation with God, through Him, the only Mediator. In what moral darkness would the world now be plunged had error and falsehood been progressing for the last eighteen hundred years in a ratio similar to what it had been up to the period of the Saviour’s manifestation in the flesh, to detect and dissipate the fearful gloom by the shining of the glorious gospel of truth into the hearts of His people! An accumulation of falsehood such as dissolved the tie of filial affection and filial duty, on the child’s telling his aged and perhaps destitute parent that it was “Corban, that is to say a gift, by whatsoever” that parent might be profited by him, suffering the son “no more to do ought for his father or his mother”—thus permitting a corrupt and unnatural tradition, derived from sinful and selfish men, virtually to repeal the fifth commandment, given by God Himself, and the unwritten expedient of human policy to supersede the unalterable will of Jehovah, proclaimed with a trumpet’s tongue amidst thunderings and lightnings and smoke, which, the people seeing, removed and stood afar off. Had falsehood thus audaciously advanced, what bonds would have proved strong enough for uniting the relative positions of society, what barriers have restrained the overflowings of ungodliness, or checked the violation of natural affection, when thus sanctioned by uninspired and lawless traditions, usurping the sacred authority of God’s Holy Word? The scribes and Pharisees ranked the foremost in opposing our Lord in all His teaching; their principal error consisted in a superstitious regard for “the traditions of the elders”; and to such a length did they carry their veneration for this description of authority that there was scarcely a passage of any moment in the sacred records that was not frittered away, and its plain and obvious meaning lost in the false glosses put upon it by these unauthorised means, “making the Word of God of none effect” through their traditions: their scrupulous exactness regarding external cleanliness made them unconcerned respecting that which was of higher importance, though hidden and unseen—the heart—and for the cleansing of which one (who, had they remembered him as an elder, it would have been well) evinced such anxiety that he prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” Their spring of action, however, arising from a desire to be seen of men rendered them totally indifferent about any and everything not having human applause for its object, so that the heart, the inward part, where God requires truth to dwell, was overlooked and unattended to by them. Such were the practices and such the doctrine which our Lord on the present occasion set Himself to refute, shewing how injurious in its effect was every deviation from the written Word; for however useful the tradition of the elders might be for the well-regulating of society or establishing habits of personal cleanliness, yet it would be infinitely better to forego it altogether, than by adopting it cast a slight upon a much higher authority. To teach for doctrines the commandments of men was a most grievous error, and fraught with the most dangerous consequences, for which reason our Lord fearlessly condemns it, and nobly reproves those who, whilst professing an honour for God’s Word, would sanction a system which directly insulted it. “Well hath Esaias prophesied of you, hypocrites,” etc. Then instancing the case of the fifth commandment, Jesus proceeds to shew that it was not external cleanliness, or the neglect of it—washing the hands on certain occasions, or omitting it—not one sort of meat or another; in fact, “nothing from without a man, entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.” What is in the heart the heart will, like a fountain, be sending up, until changed by Divine grace; for by nature it is a corrupt fountain, and consequently “from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts,” etc. Let us take any of these evil things which abide in the heart of the unconverted and natural man, and observe its process of defilement.
1. Look at covetousness, e.g. the love of money, justly called “the root of all evil.” What can debase the soul more than this all-absorbing lust?—hours, days, weeks, months, and years, nay, a man’s entire life, passed in contrivances whereby to increase his store of gold, involving too often falsehood and deceit in order to attain his object; and when attained, with what complacency does he regard his success! Nor does moderate success satisfy him, verifying the proverb, “Much must have more,”—religion discarded, its ordinances contemned, the Lord’s Day itself polluted, that nothing may impede his unhallowed pursuit of gain. Whence come the murders, the thefts, of which our Lord speaks? Come they not from covetousness? While other evils are partial in their operation, this takes no rest, knows no intermission, will have no repose. If the laws of the land protect the property of the owner from the aggression of the violent, and the penalty attached to the violation of the law restrains the covetous man from unlawfully attacking that which is another’s, yet how near will he approach the forbidden limit! If he is honest, he is hardly so; if he does bear restraint, ’tis with a bad grace: the evil lust of covetousness withers every generous sentiment; the sons and daughters of adversity may pine and die ere the sordid mind of covetousness would be moved to commiserate or relieve; nought is known but self; gold is the idol to whose service not only the bodily energies but the affections of the heart and all the faculties of the mind are devoted.
2. Consider, also, the countless impurities contained under the head “evil thoughts.” You are quite conscious of the vain ideas which run to and fro in the mind throughout the four-and-twenty hours of the day, so vain and evil that we should feel ashamed to speak of them to our nearest or dearest friend, and would be glad were they blotted from our memory the moment they recur to us; yet God searches and knows us, etc. (Psa_139:1-4).
3. Look, again, at the insidious working of pride, often at the very moment when we think ourselves most humble,—at one time piquing ourselves upon the elegance or beauty of our persons; at another regarding ourselves with the utmost satisfaction on a comparison with some one whom we look down upon as an inferior, either in birth, or fortune, or education, or mental capacity. Examine one or all, or which you will, of “these evil things,” and, oh! what an abyss of defilement forms itself, fed by that corrupt stream which ever flows from that polluted source, an unconverted heart, “deceitful” as it is “above all things, and desperately wicked.” Well might Abraham call himself “sinful dust and ashes,” or Job exclaim, “Behold, I am vile,” or Isaiah, “I am a man of unclean lips”: for who can know the depths of its depravity? Jesus knew them, and in our text declares them. And yet there is nothing over which we can exercise less control than our thoughts: a thought, a foolish or a corrupt thought, rises in the heart, and, like the blood in the natural system, is in an instant propelled through every inlet of the mind, and has fastened itself on us ere we are aware; and such is the strength and subtlety of that fiend who suggests the evil thought, that it not infrequently happens that what we desire to think least about is that which, through his agency, we think most of. I see from this review of my natural corrupt heart, says the newly awakened sinner, that it requires cleansing, must have renewing, must be fully converted, before I should either like heaven or be received in thither. But what can I do? It is not in my power to change my heart, and so produce a new current of thought, which would make me relish the pure and holy enjoyments of the redeemed,—the work is superhuman. Beloved, you are quite right; the work is superhuman. But though powerless in ourselves, though the work of converting the sinner’s heart is superhuman, yet it is not impossible that Christ, by whom God the Father works, having put all things in subjection to Him, having given Him all power in heaven and in earth, power even to bend the stubborn and rebellious heart of His sinful creatures, He can cleanse and purify the fountain, so that the stream of thought shall run pure and holy. What says St. Paul, after confessing himself a wretched being, unable to deliver himself from the body of death, a naturally wicked heart? “I can do all things through Christ strengthening me.” Christ has changed and renewed the hearts of millions. The way in which He accomplishes this important change is worthy of attention. First He sends His Holy Spirit into the heart, whereby the sinner is enabled to take a view of that corrupt stream which flows from it, and upon an examination of the “evil things” spoken of in our text to feel its sinfulness, then acknowledge in prostrate humility those particulars which offend us most to the Lord Jesus Christ, not in the least palliating them, but laying them open to Him in all their fearful aggravations, till we abhor ourselves, and cry, Unclean! unclean! His next influence upon the heart is to make the sinner renounce himself as bankrupt in righteousness, and desire above all things the imputation of Christ’s righteousness as his only hope. From thence he is led to recognise Christ as greater in his behalf than he who seeks his destruction. These feelings grow with his growth and strengthen with his strength, until sin is hated and shunned; and though the remains of indwelling sin may tease and harass the Christian, yet it has altogether lost its supremacy in his heart. Thus is the poor sinner changed by the Holy Spirit from the power of Satan to the power of God, and from rejoicing in the perishing things of time and sense to rejoice in God his Saviour, who has done such great things for him: from that time, also his conversation is in heaven, from whence he also looks for the Saviour.—M. J. Taylor.
Insincerity in worship.—The great sin of hypocrisy, laid by our Saviour to the charge of the Jews in His time, had been charged, long before, upon the same people by Isaiah. A sin thus chargeable upon the same people at various periods of their history may justly be considered as a national sin. But then it must be borne in mind, that it was a sin on account of which it was not competent to the Gentile world, that is, to the great bulk of mankind, to reproach the Jewish nation, or, on account of their own exemption from it, to flatter or felicitate themselves. If the Jew satisfied himself with the outward confession of God and the lip-honour he paid Him, the Gentile world did not pay even that, but offered a debasing worship to idols. So far from being in a condition to look down upon the Jew, the Gentile had a great step to take to be even upon a level with him. The Jew was so far right that he believed in “one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” The Jews’ worship was, in form and externals, such as God Himself had appointed, and their notions of Himself such as He had taught them. How then is it spoken of with disapprobation instead of praise, both by Isaiah in his time and our Saviour in His? There was the outward shew, not the inward feeling; great professions, but little practice; long prayers, and cold hearts. A question then arises whether we of these times and this nation are concerned in our Lord’s remark. Now I hope there is neither flattery nor self-deceit in saying that it is not true of us in the same sense and degree as it was of the Jews. I find what I think to be error, wrongheadedness, an uncharitable and angry spirit, in the language and writings of men, on religious subjects, but little that I can presume to call insincerity. Then, again, the endeavour to make up by high professions and scrupulosity in little things for laxity in great things is a vain endeavour now. Men are disgusted by such attempts. They look with a more indulgent eye upon the open and avowed violator of God’s laws, than upon him who, by a shew of piety, would cover or make up for a selfish and licentious life. But although the sin of hypocrisy should not be chargeable, as a national sin, upon us at this time, in the same degree that it was upon the Jews in our Saviour’s time and in the time of Isaiah, it still remains for each man to ask himself whether it be chargeable upon him as an individual in any degree or sense. I fear we shall find that there is a sense in which it is chargeable upon us all.
1. I lay the case of the blasphemer out of consideration, as one that can consist only with an estranged state of the heart from God, and as one not falling within the range of our Lord’s observation, and I would ask whether we are not oftentimes forgetful of God, when engaged, not in things which He has forbidden, but even in things which He has commanded. When we pray, for example, are we then all of us, are we any of us, so attentive as we ought to be to the work we are about? It is the mind, the serious and attentive mind, that gives life to forms and effect to prayer. It is, no doubt, a difficult thing to keep the attention fixed upon the proper object of worship, and to prevent the intrusion of idle thoughts.
(1) One reason of this may be, that that object is invisible, and “no man hath seen God at any time.” It was, I presume, as an expedient to help attention, and as a resource against the difficulty we speak of, that image-worship came to be so much practised.
(2) Another reason is, that when we are engaged in our ordinary work-day business, we are wont, without ceasing from that business or neglecting it at all, to give the mind leave to range and wander through a variety of subjects. Practice has made us so perfect in those operations whereby we have long earned our bread, that we can perform them correctly with a degree of attention so slight that we are hardly conscious of exerting it. Now this is not only pleasant, but innocent, if the thoughts be employed upon things innocent. But this will not do in worship. If the mind is not in this work it cannot prosper. We can say our prayers, no doubt, as we can do other familiar things, with little exertion of attention, and give the thoughts leave to settle on other subjects; but when we do so we pray in vain, or, more properly speaking, do not pray at all. That is wanting which is essential to prayer—an attentive mind and an awakened heart. It has been recommended to those who lament their proneness to this wandering inattention in prayer not to clothe their private addresses to God with any words—not to say, but as it were to think their prayers to God. This advice proceeds upon the supposition that the method of using thought alone, unclothed in words, may prevent self-deceit, and make us at once perceive that if we are not praying internally, with the understanding and the feelings, we are doing nothing.
2. Again, we may be said to worship God in vain, and to draw nigh to Him with our lips while our hearts are far from Him, if we continue in sin, or intend so to do. The principal subject of a good man’s prayers is grace—the grace of God, and the help of the Holy Spirit to his naturally infirm endeavours to resist temptation. But such prayer is poisoned at its source, if it be not faithful, if it be not accompanied with a faithful and unreserved intention and willingness on the part of him who prays to part with his sins and with whatever causes him to sin.
3. These things make worship vain, and they spring from a defect in the heart, that is, in the disposition with respect to God, which it concerns us before all things to remove. It is to be removed by more positive and earnest endeavours than have yet been used to keep the mind intent upon its work, and by cries for the help of that Holy Spirit which is said to “help our infirmities,” especially in that work.—A. Gibson.
Zeal and diligence in false worship no ground of comfort.—
I. It is a vain and unprofitable sign to support and comfort ourselves by, that we are diligent in the worship of God, if not commanded by Him.—
1. It lieth as a necessary duty upon all to worship and serve God. Now this worship and service may be either internal, or external, or mixed, compounded of both: internal consists in our love of God above all things, faith and hope in Him, obedience to His commands, which Scripture preferreth before all external worship; external is that of adoration and inclination of the body, kissing the hand, bowing the knee, dedicating temples, altars, and offering of sacrifices; mixed is compounded of both these, such as calling upon God’s name by petition and thanksgiving.
2. This worship and service of God is not given to God because He needs it or is made more happy thereby. God is no more better by our worship than the fountain is because a man drinks of it, or the sun because a man seeth by the light of it. Such do not advantage the fountain or the sun, but their own selves. So God hath appointed this worship, not that He might receive good from us, but communicate good to us.
3. Such is the infinite excellency and majesty of God, that we are to tremble and greatly to be ashamed of any worship or service we tender to Him. The angels, that are not conscious to the least sin in themselves, but are pure above the sun, that cannot call themselves dust and ashes, yet cover their faces before God.
4. God only may appoint that worship which He will accept of. The deformity of an ape lieth in being so like a man, and yet not a man; so doth the loathsomeness of all false worship lie in this, that it imitateth the worship of God, but indeed it is not so.
5. Our Lord briefly lays down what is acceptable worship unto Him (Joh_4:22). To worship God in the spirit is to have a spiritual and holy inward frame of heart in all our addresses to Him. This is worshipping of God in a way the most of men are not acquainted with. Oh, it is a hard matter to have a spiritual man in prayer, hearing, and other worship! And indeed this is the soul and life of the service of God. The other way of worship is in truth, which by some is explained against hypocrisy and guile of spirit; for this God complaineth of, that they drew nigh with their mouths, but their hearts were far from God. Lastly, as a Father, they must worship, though humbly, yet not slavishly and servilely. Seneca speaketh of the superstitious, intimidated person, that while he worships God he provoketh Him.
6. Howsoever worship of God be commanded by Him, yet such is the nature of all moral duties that the obedience to them is required before any instituted worship. “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice”; go and learn what that meaneth, saith our Saviour: insomuch that comparatively to obedience God is said not to command these at all.
7. The heart of man is exceeding subtle and ingenious to palliate over all false worship: insomuch that there never were superstitious abuses of God’s worship, but that there have been learned men and wise men to plead for them.
II. Why men addicted to false worship, though they much admire themselves, yet are indeed vain men, and lean upon vain props.—
1. Because always such persons have the bitterest enmity against true godliness.
2. Here is no ground of confidence in these, because they are consistent with the ordinary practice of gross and sinful courses.
3. If a man may not rely or trust on the instituted worship of God, yea, nor on the graces wrought by God’s Spirit in us, then much less in a worship of his own. If thy own graces are not helmet strong enough to repel God’s wrath, then thy own voluntary worship is but as so many cobwebs, when a furious tempest bloweth upon them.
4. These are not to be relied upon, which are vain and unprofitable, and so frustrate of that end we expect. Now the text saith, “In vain do they worship Me”; other duties commanded by God, though they are not pillars to be leaned on, yet they are not vain. God saith not to Jacob, to seek His face in vain, but all this service is lost labour: “Who hath required all these things at your hands?” Now of all things to labour in vain in religious matters is the saddest expense of all. After all that zeal thou art never a whit the nearer heaven, thou art no more endeared to God. Thy state is noways spiritually advantaged: yea, though it be a fruitless labour one way, yet it is not another way; for there is a fruit of these labours, but it is bitterness and wormwood—God is more provoked by thee.
5. That which is a sad curse and fruit of former sins, that can be little comfort to any man that rightly considereth of things. Thus we say it is an absurd thing to be proud of clothes, for in that thou needest clothing it is an argument thou art fallen from integrity and innocency. But in this matter the curse of God is more wonderful upon thee, for all that admiration and applause of false worship is inflicted upon thee as a punishment, because thou hast not received the truth in the love of it.
6. These of all men are in a most unsafe estate (notwithstanding their security), because they are in a most absolute contrariety and indisposition for receiving of Christ, in whom only our souls have rest. Publicans and harlots went to heaven before the Pharisees. Why so? Because the former were sooner convinced of their sin, their undone estate, and so more willingly flying unto Christ.—A. Burgess.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mar_7:1-2. Fault-finding.—Those see most faults in others who have most themselves. None are such critics of small faults as those guilty of grave ones. Beware of fault-finding. He that censures others cures not himself.—R. Glover.
We must not always follow great men.—Those who for their place and calling should be greatest friends and favourers of Christ and His followers are often greatest enemies and readiest to oppose them.
1. See how unfit it is to tie ourselves to the example of great men in the Church in matters of religion—not safe always to follow them, for so we may with them become the worst enemies of Christ and His Church. 2. Admonition to great men in high place in the Church to use their dignity, place, and office to the honour of Christ and good of His Church.—G. Petter.
Mar_7:3-4. Lessons.—
1. It is the manner of hypocrites to tie others to their own practice and example in matters of religion, and to censure all uncharitably who do not conform to them even in trifles.
2. Hypocrites put religion and holiness in outward rites, ceremonies, and superstitious observances, and think that by performance of these they become holy and acceptable before God.
3. Superstition makes wise men become foolish, absurd, and childish, in busying and troubling themselves about trifles and toys.—Ibid.
Rabbinical washings.—The legal washing of the hands before eating was especially sacred to the Rabbinist; not to do so was a crime as great as to eat the flesh of swine. “He who neglects hand-washing,” says the book Sohar, “deserves to be punished here and hereafter.” “He is to be destroyed out of the world, for in hand-washing is contained the secret of the Ten Commandments.” “He is guilty of death.” It was laid down that the hands were first to be washed clean. The tips of the ten fingers were then joined and lifted up, so that the water ran down to the elbows, then turned down so that it might run off to the ground. Fresh water was poured on them as they were lifted up, and twice again as they hung down. The washing itself was to be done by rubbing the fist of one hand in the hollow of the other. When the hands were washed before eating, they must be held upwards; when after it, downwards, but so that the water should not run beyond the knuckles. The vessel used must be held first in the right, then in the left hand; the water was to be poured first on the right, then on the left hand; and at every third time the words repeated, “Blessed art Thou who hast given us the command to wash the hands.”—C. Geikie, D.D.
The “tradition of the elders” was an after-growth of the Captivity, originating not improbably with the Great Synagogue, out of which the Sanhedrin was developed. The reverence and care for Holy Scripture, revived by Ezra, and fostered by later scribes, were handed down from generation to generation, and treated with so much honour that the highest authority was sought for their origin. Some Rabbi, bolder than his predecessors, put forward the theory that God had given to Moses not only the Ten Commandments, but also at the same time a full explanation, even in the minutest detail, of all their applications. This Oral Law, he said, had been revealed by Moses to Aaron and his sons, and the memory of it was cherished and handed on without any loss or diminution in the progress of transmission. As soon as such a view of its origin had gained acceptance with the people, its authority became equally binding upon the conscience with that of the Written Law, and the estimation in which it was held even higher. In lapse of time it received its interpretation at the hands of the Rabbis, and the disquisitions, illustrations, and additions grew into a great body of doctrine; and after the Jewish motto “Commit nothing to writing” had been forgotten, these were all combined in a vast collection, under the title of Gemara, or Talmud. The publication in writing of the Mishnah itself, as the Oral Law was called, had preceded it by two hundred years. It was issued authoritatively by Rabbi Judah, the Holy, at the close of the second century of the Christian era.—Dean Luckock.
There were two familiar sayings among the later Jews which enable us to understand how widely traditionalism must have conflicted with the teaching of Christ. “The words of the elders,” they said, “are of more weight than the words of the prophets”; and, even more startling than this, “The Mosaic Law is as water, the Mishnah as wine, and the Gemara as hippocras” (a richly spiced drink, most highly esteemed).—Ibid.
The traditions of the elders were all, without exception, the product of the later ages of the Jewish dispensation in the time of its decay and fall, when it was at its worst; whereas the opinions and practices which are invidiously called “traditions” in these days, i.e. the opinions and practices of the earliest Fathers of the Christian Church, are the products of the earliest ages of the Christian religion, when it was at its best, and was least contaminated with the influence of the world from without, and kept most pure by godly discipline from within. The opinions of the Fathers on the interpretation of Scripture, when they can be ascertained, are far more likely to be in accord with its real meaning than any opinions or practices of later ages.—M. F. Sadler.
Mar_7:6-9. The external preferred.—It may seem almost incredible that men should leave the simple principles of righteousness for a region so barren and burdensome as that of external observances. But the secret is not difficult to find.
1. External acts can be seen and felt by oneself, and so can give complacency.
2. They can be seen by others, and thus can gain credit.
3. They are easier than walking with God. To approach Him needs the courage of purity and penitence; and to take His guidance requires perpetually the self-denial and consecration of faith.—R. Glover.
The abuse of ceremonies.—It cannot be too carefully noticed that no condemnation is passed upon these rites of purification in themselves. Had the Pharisees recognised their symbolism and deep moral significance, had Jesus been certain that when they washed their hands they thought of or prayed for purity of heart and life, He would have been the last person to rebuke them, however much they multiplied external forms and ceremonies. These are useful as stepping-stones to higher things; but the moment they begin to satisfy in themselves they become snares and lead to superstition.—Dean Luckock.
Mar_7:6-7. The whole Old Testament history was prophetic of Christ and of those around Him in this respect, that everywhere in the continually recurring contest between light and darkness, between truth and error, there were displayed the types of that which, in its highest energy, developed itself in and around Christ.—H. Olshausen, D.D.
Mar_7:9. Irony sometimes lawful.—In that Christ here, by this sharp irony or taunting speech, derides the gross superstition of the scribes and Pharisees, we may gather that it is lawful to deride and scoff at the sins and unlawful practices of others, especially at the gross and notorious sins of the wicked and ungodly. See 1Ki_18:27; Isaiah 44. Yet some cautions are to be observed for the lawful use of such ironical reproofs of sin.
1. They must proceed from a holy and upright affection in such as use them, viz. from zeal for God’s glory, and hatred of sin, and not from private malice or revenge.
2. They must tend to the right end, viz. God’s glory, and the good of the party reproved, that by such a sharp and taunting reproof he may, if possible, be brought to be ashamed of his sin, and to be touched with remorse for it, as also to grow in dislike and hatred of it: not the disgrace of the person is to be sought, but the disgrace of the sin reproved, and the reformation of the person.
3. Such taunts and ironies are to be used against sin in due manner, i.e. after a grave and serious manner, not with shew of lightness or vanity.—G. Petter.
Mar_7:15. The heart the seat of defilement.—
1. Material processes cannot produce spiritual effects.
2. The true source of spiritual pollution is the heart. The internal translates itself into the external.
3. But the principle itself implies that the body may be defiled. See 1Co_3:16-17. The sins enumerated by our Lord (Mar_7:21-23) shew themselves in words and deeds, and defile the tongue, the eye, the hand, etc. They who commit them yield their members as servants of iniquity unto iniquity (Rom_6:19).
4. Our Lord did not sanction indifference to the use and abuse of food and drink, to habits of personal cleanliness and filthiness. The principle He lays down witnesses to the contrary. These matters are under our control, and indicate our tastes and tendencies, our desires, choice, will—in one word, our character.
5. No man, however, can put his heart right, or keep it right. For the first is needed the converting, for the second the sustaining and restraining grace of God. True morality needs a supernatural foundation and continuously bestowed Divine energy. The very idea of inward purity points us to the Holy Spirit and the new birth.—J. R. Gregory.
Mar_7:16. An important rule.—This rule must needs be of very great importance to Christians. For our Great Master—
1. Calls the people unto Him on purpose to tell them only this.
2. He requires of them a particular attention.
3. He requires it of every one of them without exception.
4. He exhorts them to endeavour thoroughly to understand it.
5. He lets them know that in order to do it they have need of a singular grace and a particular gift of understanding. It was for want of understanding this rule that the Jews still remained Jews, adhering to a mere external way of worship. It is for the very same reason that numbers of Christians, even to this day, serve God more like Jews than Christians.—P. Quesnel.
Mar_7:17. Dulness in spiritual matters.—
1. See here how great dulness and slowness of capacity there is, even in the best Christians, to conceive spiritual and heavenly matters when they are taught them.
2. The best should not be ashamed to acknowledge their own ignorance in spiritual matters to such as are able to teach them, that so they may be better informed and instructed.
3. It is commendable in Christians to move profitable questions unto their teachers or others.—G. Petter.
Mar_7:18. The Saviour refers to the material things that enter into a man through his mouth. His principle, however, is applicable, on a higher plane of reference, to spiritual things too which come in from without. These, however noxious, cannot of themselves defile a man. “The man within the breast” must act in reference to them before guilt can be contracted.—J. Morison, D.D.
Mar_7:19. Lessons.—
1. The wisdom of God shewn in the frame of man’s body, ordaining every part for necessary ends and uses. See how it should be in the body of the Church: there should be no unprofitable member, but even the meanest should so live as to further the good of the whole (1Co_12:25).
2. Howsoever the belly serves for necessary use in man’s body, yet it is for such use as is base and vile in comparison of most of the other parts of the body. See then the sin of those who serve and worship their belly, as if they were born for no other end but to eat and drink.—G. Petter.
Mar_7:20-23. Heart-defilement.—This is a hard saying, but our conscience acknowledges the truth of it. We are not the toy of circumstances, but such as we have made ourselves; and our lives would have been pure if the stream had flowed from a pure fountain. However modern sentiment may rejoice in highly coloured pictures of the noble profligate and his pure-minded and elegant victim; of the brigand or the border ruffian full of kindness, with a heart as gentle as his hands are red; and however true we may feel it to be that the worst heart may never have betrayed itself by the worst actions, but many that are first shall be last,—it still continues to be the fact, and undeniable when we do not sophisticate our judgment, that “all these evil things proceed from within.” It is also true that they further “defile the man.” The corruption which already existed in the heart is made worse by passing into action; shame and fear are weakened; the will is confirmed in evil; a gap is opened and widened between the man who commits a new sin and the virtue on which he has turned his back.—Dean Chadwick.
Mar_7:20. Inward corruption.—That which St. James saith of the tongue (Mar_3:6) is much more true of man’s corrupt heart, without the sanctifying grace of God renewing and changing it, and purging it from this natural filthiness and corruption of sin.
1. Labour to see and bewail this great corruption of our own heart. To this end examine and view our own heart often in the glass of God’s law. And we must deal thoroughly in searching out the corruptions of the heart, remembering how deceitful it is, and how hard to know it.
2. See what need for us to get our heart purged and cleansed from this sink and puddle of sin which is in it.
(1) By the power and efficacy of God’s sanctifying Spirit.
(2) By the ministry of the Word.
(3) Get true faith, apprehending God’s saving love and mercy in Christ.
3. See by this how great a work is the work of regeneration and sanctification, whereby the heart must be purged from such a world of wickedness and sea of filthiness. Such a work is not easily done, or soon. The whole time of our life is too little for doing it thoroughly.—G. Petter.
The thoughts.—Nothing seems of less consequence than a thought—so silent, swift, subtle, is it, and yet in that lightning-flash of the brain, in that throb of the heart, in that fiat of the will, in that airy nothing, all the vast things of man’s history, its grandeur and its grief, have their birth. The heart of man is the gateway of strange worlds, and through it are ever gliding thoughts fraught with infinite consequence to the individual and to the race. Let not the Church of God abandon that appeal to reason, to conscience, to the hearts of men, which is the true preaching of the gospel of Christ.—W. L. Watkinson.
Imagination.—Says Jacob Boehme in a deep passage, “All now depends on what I set my imagination upon.” Setting his imagination upon the kingdom of God, upon the highest objects, patterns, and callings of the spiritual universe, the believer conquers successively all selfishness and sensuality, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. All depends upon what we set our imagination—upon the ideals we choose. upon the vivid realisation of those ideals, upon the daily striving toward those ideals, upon the faithful, confiding surrender of the soul to those ideals.—Ibid.
Inward renewal needed.—We need all the faculties and powers of our inward being renewing. We need our conscience to bear us witness in the Holy Ghost; our imagination to eye supremest ideals of light and beauty, and urge its flight thitherto as the eagle seeks the sun; our will by virtue of a Divine strengthening to become imperative and invincible; our affections to be filled, dominated, by the sovereign love of God. Nothing but this new heart and right spirit will meet the case. Let us begin here, and all will be well. Out of the heart shall proceed good thoughts, and out of them all fair and noble characteristics and actions.—Ibid.
Mar_7:21-23. The things that defile.—At the head of the list Christ places the “evil disputings” so fresh in His memory from His encounter with the Pharisees; then adulteries and fornications, the outcome of a corrupt imagination; murders, which proceed from anger; thefts and covetousness, from secret promptings to overreach others and gain more than one has a right to; knaveries and fraud; lasciviousness or reckless insolence, which outrages the decencies of life; the malicious glance and slanderous tongue; the proud and haughty bearing which bespeaks the self-centred man; and last in the list, the comprehensive sin of foolishness, which embraces every senseless, wicked act.—Dean Luckock.
Mar_7:21. Evilthoughts.—Evil thoughts in the heart are like internal diseases of the body, very dangerous and very difficult of cure. Stealthy in effecting a lodgment, but most tenacious in maintaining their hold; singly appearing of little consequence, mere specks of human infirmity upon the soul, but soon spreading and leavening the whole being with their corruption, constituting our character and deciding our eternal state,—we cannot afford to make light of these enemies of our peace. A constant watchfulness against their approach, promptitude in repressing their incursion; the diligent study, the conscientious practice of every method that may help against their power,—this is the bounden duty of every Christian who sincerely desires to keep himself unspotted from the world, or to recover himself from the dominion of past sin. St. Paul speaks of God as “a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart,” and declares that “all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” In the prophet we have God asserting this prerogative (Eze_11:5). And so the psalmist appeals to His omniscience (Psa_139:1). And thus we are told on the eve of the Deluge, Gen_6:5-6. The indulgence of an evil thought is as much an offence against God as an injurious speech or a blow is an offence against our neighbour. Even under the Old Testament we have the wise man declaring, Pro_24:9. And in the New Testament, in the Sermon on the Mount, our Saviour still more expressly declares that the gospel law reaches to the thoughts and intents of the heart (Mat_5:22; Mat_5:28). And by this law shall we give account in the end. And it is just that it should be so. The prevailing character of our thoughts is the best index of our spiritual state. For it is not always what we actually do, but what we would do, if we could, what we wish for, and think about, and take delight in—this it is which constitutes our moral character for good or evil, and decides our state before God. Evil thoughts are the beginning and source of all iniquities. We think we are safe. We mean to draw back in time. But some sudden impulse takes us; our resolution gives way, and we fall headlong. And though, by mercy above our deserts, we do stop short of any flagrant act of sin, yet the mere indulgence of evil thoughts imprints a character and stamp upon the heart which years of sorrow and conscientious striving will often fail to obliterate. The soul becomes engrained with evil, and evil becomes connatural to the soul. It acquires a sad facility for uncharitable suppositions. It becomes wonderfully apt at finding fuel for its vanity in the most indifferent circumstances. It will contract fresh stains from objects upon which a purer mind would rest without experiencing any affection of evil; while grosser suggestions will fall upon such a diseased soul like sparks upon tinder, and inflame it into evil passions at once. And this will last on, when those sins have been utterly renounced, when the soul has checked itself in its wilfulness, and has turned sincerely to God, and is striving to walk daily in His fear, and to cleanse itself from iniquity; still will the shadows of his past life darken the repentant sinner’s path, and embarrass his efforts in religion; and in his holiest moments, even upon his knees, before the altar, will some train of evil thought start up suddenly, and take possession of that soul which has been used formerly to delight in them.
1. The most general, perhaps, are vain thoughts. Young people are most open to them, but they are congenial enough to all. We are all too apt to dwell with complacency upon the thing we excel in; we long for an opportunity of displaying our abilities; we please ourselves by imagining how much better we could have acquitted ourselves than a neighbour has done; we plan all sorts of schemes for the future, abandon ourselves to the most extravagant reveries, picture imaginary scenes and positions, and fancy how we should act in them. The habit of indulging such thoughts is weak and foolish indeed, but it is more, it is sinful. It is an artifice for gaining food for our vanity out of an imaginary future, when the ordinary tenor of our daily life yields too humble materials to please us. It dissipates our energies, it injures our religion, and estranges us from God.
2. In close connexion with vain thoughts we must place discontented thoughts. By overrating his ability, and by dreaming of the future, a man gets dissatisfied with his present lowly position, and thinks himself equal to something much more trying and important.
3. Next I may name uncharitable thoughts. We are all too apt to take dislikes, to impute motives, to rehearse over to ourselves the affronts we have received, to take pains to make out that we have been ill used, and be glad when we have fixed upon some reasonable ground for being angry.
4. But I have yet to name the most evil of all those evil thoughts which proceed out of the heart and defile a man; I mean impure thoughts—the most dangerous and the most difficult to conquer of all our inward corruptions; and yet one, it is to be feared, in which too many indulge without much compunction, thinking it enough so long as they abstain from grosser acts of shame. It is to this sort of evil thoughts that Bishop Beveridge’s words seem particularly to belong, when he recalls the experience he had had of the devil’s temptations, and the working of his own corruptions; by which he says: “I find that there is no sin I am betrayed into but what takes it rise from my froward thoughts. These are the tempters that first present some pleasing objects to my view, and then bias my understanding and pervert my will to comply with the suggestions. So that though the Spirit of God is pleased to dart a beam into my heart at the same time, and shew me the odious and dangerous effect of such thoughts, yet, I know not how or why, I find a prevailing suggestion within that tells me it is but a thought, and that so long as it goes no further it cannot do me much hurt. Under this specious colour and pretence I secretly persuade myself to dwell a little longer upon it; and finding my heart pleased and delighted with its natural issue, I give it a little further indulgence, till at last my desire breaks out into a flame, and will be satisfied with nothing less than the enjoyment of the object it is exercised upon.”
5. There are other evil thoughts less under our control. We are liable to be afflicted by blasphemous thoughts, by unbelieving thoughts, and by desponding thoughts, which may indeed owe their origin to past sins, but which may be injected by Satan, or induced by bodily weakness, or arise from ignorance or misapprehension of revealed truth. When our minds are thus disordered, we are not fit judges of our own estate, and our remedy is to have recourse to some discreet and learned minister of God’s Word, and to open our grief.
6. Against the other evil thoughts I mentioned our remedy lies more within our reach, and various rules may be given for resisting them. The first and most obvious is prayer—painstaking, earnest prayer. Avoid all occasions of sinning. Avoid the great snare of having time on your hands. Avoid vicious books. Forbear to read the details of crime in the public prints: they can do you no good; they may corrupt your mind with suggestions of evil. And when evil thoughts assail you, flee them at once. I do not advise any one to argue against them. Your plan is to turn your attention at once to something else; to go and do something, to think of something, different. And accordingly we must store our minds with subjects of meditation; we must get hymns and psalms by heart, or favourite pieces of Scripture; and directly an evil thought assails us, we must begin and say to ourselves one or other of these, and we shall so succeed in foiling the enemy of souls. And when we have sinned in thought, we should take notice of it in our nightly examination, and humble ourselves for it before God. We must strive, we must hope, and we shall overcome. We have the Spirit of God pledged to us to transform our affections and desires, to make us new hearts and new spirits, and bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.—C. F. Secretan.
Mar_7:22. An evil eye.—Oh, how can we hope with Job to “see our Redeemer,” with these eyes so vain, so proud, so wanton, so polluted, so prostitute! They had need be well washed with the eye-water of penitent tears, and then with the blood of Christ (Mat_5:8; Psa_119:37; 1Jn_3:3; Job_31:1).—Bishop Gauden.
The eye the window of the soul.—The mind looks through the eye; so does the heart. Lactantius beautifully compares the eyes to glazed windows, through which the mind beholds. “And therefore,” adds he, “the mind and will are often discerned from the eyes.” Salvianus uses the same comparison of windows, but adds that hence “all wicked desires enter into the heart through the eyes, as through their natural avenues.” But the Saviour unfolds here a far profounder philosophy, when He says that the evil desires arise in the heart, and come looking out wistfully at the eyes.—J. Morison, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 7
Mar_7:6-7. Externalism in religion.—How many striking examples might be cited where men have united the form of godliness with the mystery of iniquity, under the manifest impression that their great zeal for religious observances atoned for their moral delinquencies, or that the latter were entirely overlooked on account of the approbation they earned by the former! We are told that Ivan the Terrible retired sometimes to a monastery which he had built, for his religious improvement. He rang the bell for matins himself at three o’clock in the morning. “During the services, which lasted many hours, he read, chanted, and prayed with such fervour that the marks of his prostrations remained on his forehead. But at intervals he went to the dungeons to see with his own eyes his prisoners tortured, and always returned, it was observed, with a face beaming with delight.” What a mingling it was of diabolical cruelty with religious service! Christianity, in its corrupt branches, abounds in such absurdities. That is the way they became corrupt—by setting up a false standard of righteousness, by accepting zeal and fidelity in the observance of the forms of worship as a substitute for genuine piety.
Lip-service.—Panchcowrie, a Hindoo convert, thus spoke one day in the market: “Some think they will avert God’s displeasure by frequently taking His name on their lips, and saying, ‘O Excellent God!’ ‘O Ocean of Wisdom!’ ‘O Sea of Love!’ and so on. To be sure, God is all this; but whoever heard of a debt being paid in words instead of rupees! God says to such people, ‘Ye hypocrites, why do you honour Me with your lips when your heart is far from Me?’ ”
Routine service.—Go out with me into the woods, where the white oak is, and where the beech is. Their leaves died last November, but they all hang on the trees yet. The trees have not strength enough to slough them. They always make me think of a great many people. Sap does not run in them any more, but their duties hang on them like dead leaves all over. They would not like to drop their duties—they are not quite in that state yet; but those duties are dry, sapless, and enforced.
Mar_7:9. God’s commandments and human rules.—The experience is a universal one, that God’s commandments suffer from the competition of human rules. The great precepts of God have only an unseen God behind them, but behind the human rules there is generally a class whose pride is gratified by their observance and incensed by their neglect. Accordingly, whenever small rules of outward conduct begin to flourish, the great principles of religion—faith, love, honour—fall into the background. It is so to-day. The Thug in India who confessed to having killed three hundred and twenty people had no pangs of conscience for killing them, but was somewhat distressed on account of having killed a few of them after a hare had crossed his path or a bird whistled in a certain direction. Murder was no crime in his opinion, but the neglect of an omen from Bowany was a grave one. In Hindooism, which is ceremonial throughout, a man may be a most religious man, and yet very wicked. Many in our own country would unscrupulously commit great crimes, and yet be very careful to avoid eating flesh on Good Friday. It seems as if we only had a certain amount of power of attention in us, and, if it goes to little rules, there is none left for great principles.
A hypocritical regard for ceremonial.—A traveller in Russia tells the following of a lady who, leaving a party of companions in St. Petersburg, called a hack and directed the driver to take her home. Instead of following her directions, he drove her to a deserted part of the city, murdered her, and, taking her jewels, threw her body into the canal. As he returned to the city he was arrested. The murdered lady had with her a basket of pie; when asked why he did not eat that, the murderer replied, “It was Lent. How could I think of eating that—it may contain meat; and I am, thank God, a good Christian.” We sometimes express an abhorrence of insignificant things when our hearts are set on the vilest of sins.
Mar_7:10. Honouring parents.—We call the Chinese heathen, and yet they have some customs that would do credit to a Christian people. On every New Year morning each man and boy, from the emperor to the lowest peasant, pays a visit to his mother. He carries her a present, varying in value according to his station, thanks her for all she has done for him, and asks a continuance of her favour another year. They are taught to believe that mothers have an influence for good over their sons all through life.
Mar_7:15. A self-evident truth.—Christ does not stop to prove that these things come out of the heart. He asserts it, and asserts it because it is self-evident. When you see a thing coming forth, you are clear it was there first. One summer I noticed hornets continually flying from a number of decayed logs in my garden. I saw them constantly flying in and out, and I did not think myself at all unreasonable in concluding that there was a hornets’ nest there. And so, if we see the hornets of sin flying out of a man, we suppose at once there is sin within him.
Mar_7:20. Concupiscence.—A gentleman was once extolling loudly the virtue of honesty, saying what a dignity it imparted to our nature, and how it recommended us to the favour of God. “Sir,” replied his friend, “however excellent the virtue of honesty may be, I fear there are very few men in the world who really possess it.” “You surprise me,” said a stranger. “Ignorant as I am of your character,” was the reply, “I fancy it would be no difficult matter to prove even you to be a dishonest man.” “I defy you.” “Will you give me leave, then, to ask you a question or two, and promise not to be offended?” “Certainly.” “Have you never met with an opportunity of getting gains by unfair means? I don’t say, Have you taken advantage of it? but, Have you ever met with such an opportunity? I, for my part, have; and I believe everybody else has.” “Very probably I may.” “How did you feel your mind affected on such an occasion? Had you no secret desire, not the least inclination, to seize the advantage which offered? Tell me without any evasion, and consistently with the character you admire.” “I must acknowledge I have not always been absolutely free from every irregular inclination; but—” “Hold! sir, none of your salvos; you have confessed enough. If you had the desire, though you never proceeded to the act, you were dishonest in heart. This is what the Scriptures call concupiscence. It defiles the soul; it is a breach of that law which requireth truth in the inward parts, and, unless you are pardoned through the blood of Christ, it will be a just ground for your condemnation, when God shall judge the secrets of men.”
Mar_7:21. Origin of sin.—When a young man consulted John Newton touching the origin of evil, the divine replied that he was more anxious to get sin out of the world than to know how it came into the world. But really this saying is not so wise as it seems, for to know where sin takes its rise is of first consequence in attempting its extirpation. In the soul Christ declared that it took its origin, and in the soul Christ sought to deal with it, supplying a spiritual antidote for a spiritual plague.
Sin has its source in the heart.—At present there are two theories in the field to explain the origin of contagious diseases—the parasitic theory, and the theory of the innate character of diseases. The parasitic theory assumes that diseases are originated by microbes first diffused in the atmosphere, and then taken into the system by the air we breathe, the water we drink, the things we touch. The advocates of the innate character of diseases hold, on the contrary, that the disease is spontaneously developed in the patient; the first cause is in morbid changes which are purely chemical, changes produced in the actual substance of the tissues and secretions without any external intervention of microbes—the microbes, where they really exist, being only a secondary phenomenon, a complication, and not the scientific cause which actually determines the disease. Now, whatever may be the exact truth in this biological controversy, it is evident that the first cause of such disease must be sought in a defect of life, a feebleness, a certain untoward disposition and receptivity in the organism itself. The phylloxera devastates the French vineyards because the vines have been exhausted by excessive cultivation; tuberculosis fastens upon man because of obscure conditions of bodily weakness and susceptibility; vigorous plants and robust constitutions defying the foreign destructive bodies which may fill the air—extrinsic influence and excitement counting for little where the intrinsic tendency does not exist. Revelation assumes that the man morally occupies much the same position. Environment brings the opportunity for evil, the solicitation or provocation to evil, so far do evil communications corrupt good manners; but the first cause of all must be found in the heart itself, in its lack of right direction, sympathy, and force; in a word, the scientific cause of sin is the spiritual cause.
Evil thoughts.—A quaint preacher says, “Beware how ye tarry in the painting-chamber of the devil,” by which he warns the young Christian to be on his watch against the way in which Satan seduces the imagination. When evil thoughts and unholy desires intrude into the soul, it is like a fiery dart finding its way into a powder magazine. The only safety is to stamp it out at once. If we let the spark of fire smoulder on, soon all will be wrapped in flames.
The commencements of evil to be rejected.—It is true that no man can determine who shall knock at his door, but every man can determine who shall come in through his door. It is true that no man can say, “I will not have wrong thoughts”; such thoughts will come into a man’s mind without his permission; but it is within the power of every man to say whether or not he will entertain them. If, however, a man entertains evil thoughts, he cannot tell whether the conflagration will or will not spread. A man sits down upon a prairie upon an autumnal day, when everything is dry and parched, and sets fire to the leaves and grass, saying, “I will stamp it out; I merely want a little blaze here for my own use”; but when he attempts to stamp it out, the fire is quicker-footed than he. Though he rushes from side to side and does the best he can to extinguish it, it is not stamped out, but gains on him right and left, and by-and-by it opens its wings and flies all over the prairie, destroying insects, and beasts, and human beings, and property of every kind, travelling like a whirlwind.
Bias of the heart.—The bowl runs as the bias inclines it; the ship moves as the rudder steers it; and the mind thinks according to the predominancy of vice or virtue in it. The heart of man is like the spring of the clock, which causes the wheels to move right or wrong, well or ill. If the heart once set forward for God, all the members will follow after; all the parts, like dutiful handmaids, in their places, will wait on their mistress. The heart is the great workhouse where all sin is wrought before it is exposed to open view. It is the mint where evil thoughts are coined, before they are current in our words or actions. It is the forge where all our evil works as well as words are hammered out. There is no sin but is dressed in the withdrawing-room of the heart, before it appears on the stage of life. It is vain to go about a holy life till the heart be made holy. The pulse of the hand beats well or ill, according to the state of the heart. If the chinks of the ship are unstopped, it will be to no purpose to labour at the pump. When the water is foul at the bottom, no wonder that scum and filth appear at the top. There is no way to stop the issue of sin but by drying up the matter that feeds it.—G. Swinnock.
A bad heart:—A certain little boy in Kansas, only eleven years old, strove hard to be a Christian. Once he stood watching his sister paring the potatoes for dinner. Soon she pared an extra large one, which was very white and very nice on the outside, but when cut into pieces it shewed itself to be hollow and black inside with dry-rot. Instantly Willie exclaimed, “Why, Maggie, that potato isn’t a Christian!” “What do you mean?” asked Maggie. “Don’t you see it has a bad heart?” was the child’s reply. This little Kansas boy had learned enough of the religion of Jesus to know that, however fair the outside may be, the natural heart is corrupt.
Mar_7:22. Beware of covetousness, for, under the guise of being a mere harmless indulgence of natural feeling, it is really the imbibing a dangerous gas, which will eventually choke our spiritual life. Whilst we revel in the chambers of our covetous imagery, and paint the fond desires of our evil hearts in every detail, we accustom ourselves to the growth of sinful longings, we construct an easy gradient, down which we may pass from unholy wishes to wicked deeds. The serpent’s egg may become the venomous reptile.—Dr. Hardman.
Covetous men are condemned to dig in the mines for they know not whom. The spirit of covetousness, which leads to an overvalue and overlove of money, is independent of amount. A poor man may make an idol of his little, just as much as the rich man makes an idol of his much. The Duke of Marlborough, when he was in the last stage of life and very infirm, would walk from the public room, in Bath, to his lodgings on a cold, dark night to save a sixpence in chair hire. At his death he left more than a million and a half sterling, which was inherited by one of his greatest enemies.
Avarice.—It was a true instinct which led Dante to picture avarice as an invincible foe. In his pilgrimage he passed safely by the leopard of pleasure; he feared, yet was not vanquished by, the lion of ambition; but the lean wolf of avarice drove him step by step back to the darkness. Such is the power of covetousness. It is a vice which renews its strength and is tenacious and remorseless.
Evil eye.—There are evidences of the prevalence in Ceylon of that most ancient of all superstitions, the belief in the “evil eye,” which exists in all countries in the universe from China to Peru. Is there any mysterious connexion between the prohibition to “covet” contained in the Decalogue and the horror of the “evil eye” so often alluded to in the Bible?—Sir J. E. Tennant.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Mat 15:1-2; Mar 7:1-6. “And the Pharisees and certain…
CHAPTER 34
BAPTIZE NOT ALWAYS A TOTAL SUBMERSION
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Mat 15:1-2; Mar 7:1-6. “And the Pharisees and certain ones, the scribes, having come from Jerusalem, are assembled before Him. And seeing certain ones of His disciples eating bread with defiled, that is, unwashed hands; for the Pharisees and all the Jews, unless they may wash their hands diligently, do not eat; holding the tradition of the elders; and from the forum, if they may not be baptized, they do not eat; there are many other things which they receive to hold, such as the baptism of pots and cups and brazen vessels and couches.” Here we have the regular Greek word baptizo, constantly used in the Christian ordinance in this case, setting forth the washing of their hands when they came from the forum before they ate. How do you know but they totally immersed their hands? Perhaps they did, and for aught we know they did not but that hypothesis is utterly irrelevant to the question at issue, as it says “they” are baptized — i.e., the whole person — whereas it is a well-known fact that those Pharisaic traditions only required the washing of hands, and that was all they did. But in that case it is said that they were baptized. In a similar manner and from the same reason — i.e., the Pharisaic traditions — they baptize “pots, cups, brazen vessels, and couches.” Of course, they did not immerse the beds on which they slept and the couches on which they ate; as they would have to do it every time they came from the forum, where they were likely to transact business with Gentiles, come in contact with unclean animals, and in various ways contract ceremonial defilement. We have no controversy on water baptism or anything else. We only want the truth, which will stand the white light of the Judgment. We advise all to satisfy your consciences on this subject and every other. These Scriptures certainly reveal the fact that baptizo, the constant Greek word for baptize, does not always mean a total submersion.
PHARISAICAL HYPOCRISY
“Then the Pharisees and scribes interrogated Him, Wherefore do not Thy disciples walk according to the traditions of the elders? But they eat bread with unwashed bands.” The Word of the Lord is alone authoritative. The Churches of the present day are burdened to death with human institutions, unheard of in the Bible, wearing out the people, bankrupting them financially and spiritually, consuming their time, which ought to be spent in saving souls, in which case the Lord would turn on them showers of blessings, making life a heaven instead of a tread-mill drudgery. “And responding, He said to them, Well did Isaiah prophesy concerning you hypocrites, as has been written, This people honoreth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. For leaving the mandate of God, you hold the traditions of men, the baptisms of cups and pots, and you do many other such things.” Here we see that our Savior denounces all of these empty Church rites and ceremonies, with which the clergy have burdened the people. God wants His people to be free as angels, unincumbered, to labor in His vineyard with the greatest possible efficiency, and fight the devil, not like soldiers, but heroes. Hypocrite means an actor on the theatrical stage, playing an assumed part. This was the awful trouble of the Jewish Church: they had run into hollow hypocrisy and dead formality, clinging to their Church institutions with the pertinacity of a drowning man, and at the same time spiritually dead, blinded by Satan, and led captive at his will. The Oriental Churches seemed to have lost sight of everything but their own traditional institutions, while the Americans are on their track at locomotive speed. We need all the holiness people in the world — i.e., those who take the Holy Bible as their only guide — to go on eagles’ wings to the ends of the earth, and preach the everlasting gospel, before the people are all caught fast in the meshes of ecclesiastical tradition, tied up in human institutions, and totally blinded to the simple, sweet Word of God; thus led away into playing religion, instead of getting it deep down in their hearts, till it goes through them like a cyclone of fire, revealing all the contents of their interior spirit, committing to the flames all the chaff of dead formality, which constitutes the essence of practical hypocrisy, so abominable in the sight of God, and so utterly withered by the preaching of Jesus.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 I. The Lord Jesus is not hid. The Old…
Mar 7:24
I. The Lord Jesus is not hid. The Old Testament contained one promise which like a thread of gold ran through the whole; a promise that was oft repeated, which was embraced by all believers, the blessings of which were grandly unfolded as time rolled on; and which, in the fulness of time was accomplished. It was the Messiah. The Dayspring from on high has visited us. The Sun of Righteousness has arisen with healing in His wings, and therefore the Lord Jesus is not hid. He is plainly seen by those who have eyes to see, and plainly heard by those who have ears to hear, although He is in the highest heavens.
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II. The Lord Jesus ought not to be hid. Who shall declare how wicked is the attempt to hide the Lord Jesus, who said, "I am the light of the world." Do any attempt it? Yes, many have done so. The Scribes and Pharisees saw clearly enough that He was the Christ; yet they tried to hide Him by saying that He wrought miracles by the power of Beelzebub. This our Lord declared, but nothing else, is the unpardonable sin. The Jews wished Christ to be hid, when they quenched His costly life on Calvary; they wished His words to be hid when they beat the Apostles, and commanded them not to speak in His Name. The Church of Rome has endeavoured to hide Christ under a mass of superstition, and to prevent the people from seeing Christ in the Gospel by ministering to them in an unknown tongue, and by forbidding the people to read the Scriptures. Christ ought not to be hid.
III. Christ cannot be hid. All things prepare for the coronation of Christ. All things, consciously or unconsciously, are being attuned for the glory of Christ. This is God’s mighty purpose which all events are unfolding. All things are for Christ and Christ in all things. He cannot be hid. For Christ the vast machinery of providence is kept in beneficent action; all persons, all things, all events, are under His beneficent rule. Over all men’s conscience His purpose must prevail, His cause roll on. "He must reign."
J. Fleming, Penny Pulpit, No. 577, new series.
Reference: Mar 7:24.—G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 330.
Mar 7:24-30
The Syrophenician’s Daughter.
Notice:—
I. The Girl Herself. She was "grievously vexed with a devil." Her case was very sad and strange. All the gods, helpers and physicians, in Tyre and Sidon could not set this girl free. For anything man’s skill could do she was beyond all hope and remedy. The sun shines on no sadder sight than a young soul that is the willing slave of Satan. Well may the Church of Christ weep over that soul, as the Syrophenician mother wept over her darling child, whom Satan was claiming as his slave.
II. The Girl’s Mother. She was probably a widow, as no mention is made of the girl’s father. The girl would thus be all the world to her mother. On earth there is no stronger love than a mother’s for her suffering child. This mother was drawn by a secret influence to Jesus Christ. No wonder that she was allured to Him, for He was the Maker of home, the Lover of children, the Exalter of woman, and the Friend of all mankind.
III. The Girl’s Saviour. We are surprised at first that Jesus did not hear her on the spot, for He was very ready to be moved by such cases. For once the disciples seemed kinder than the Master; they wished Him to grant the mother’s request there and then. But he was wiser and more merciful than they, and therefore He delayed. God’s delays are always full of meaning. He brought out this woman’s faith and humility, and taught all men that the feast of His love is for Gentile and Jew alike.
IV. The Cure. Look on the girl before she was healed—a perfect picture of wretchedness; such is the soul in sin. Look on the girl after Christ had done His work in her. She lies upon the bed in peace, and her gratitude overflows. Such is the soul in a state of grace. This girl’s cure was perfect; she was made whole. To be whole, and to be holy, mean the same thing; the two words come from the same root. Christ’s salvation brings true health to the soul. Then Christ cured her, though she was at a distance from Him. Christ has healed many who could not give day and date. Dr. Livingstone tells that he once asked a chief how old he was. All the people around him burst into loud laughter. "The idea," they said, "of a man remembering when he was born!" But they knew that they had been born, though they knew not when. If you have the true signs of the new birth, never trouble yourself about anything else.
J. Wells, Bible Children, p. 213.
Reference: Mar 7:24-30.—H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man, p. 156.
Mar 7:28-29
Lowly-minded Perseverance in Prayer.
I. Consider the example of faith we have set us here. Though Apostles were rejected entreating in her behalf, yet this woman "cries unto" our Lord, because He alone could save her. And though she had heard them say He was not sent to those of her race, yet she repeats her entreaty, as confident He could help whom He would; she did not say "Pray for me," or "Entreat for me," but "Help me," as believing the help was in Himself to bestow. But our Lord was pleased to try her yet further and more sharply. He answered, and said, "It is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it unto dogs." Thus, when He did answer her, His words to her were at first more discouraging than silence. He calls the Jews now not sheep only but children, and her nation dogs. He no longer refers to the will of another, "I am not sent," but withholds what she asks, as though it were not in His own judgment meet that it should be granted. But the woman, so far from being disheartened, makes for herself a fresh plea from those very words of His "Yes, Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs." She acknowledges herself a dog, and the Jews children, nay masters; but on this very ground she claims to partake a little of the blessed privileges of His presence and healing, so fully enjoyed, though so little valued by those whom she is not reluctant to call children, nay, even masters.
II. And now we may see, partly, why it was our Lord continued so long to refuse her. He knew she would say this; and it was His gracious will to give her occasion to exercise and show forth this faith and humility. Else, if it had been His purpose from the first to deny her, He would have refused her still, for He was not a mere man that He should repent and change His mind, so that it was not in sternness He kept silence, but in order to unfold the concealed treasure of her humility and faith; and also that we might draw from her history a full assurance that, however severe and repeated the discouragements we may meet with in prayer, and in our endeavours after holiness, we have but to persevere in faith with humility, and we shall obtain in the end an abundance of blessings, the more ample the longer our faith is tried.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. vii., p. 28.
References: Mar 7:24-30.—Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 65. Mar 7:27, Mar 7:28.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii., No. 1309. Mar 7:28.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vi., p. 50. Mar 7:28, Mar 7:29.—J. Keble, Sermons from Lent to Passiontide, p. 140. Mar 7:31-37.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 83; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 347.; H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man, p. 161; W. Hanna, Our Lord’s Life on Earth, p. 237.
Mar 7:32-35
I. The friends brought their suffering friend to ask for him the Lord’s healing hand. He did not refuse their prayer. He gave them what they asked. But He sighed as He gave it—sighed, no doubt, with a sense of heaviness and pain, even while He cheered their spirits by granting the boon they asked for. They felt no doubt in asking. They thought they knew quite well that it would be a great blessing to their friend to be restored. The Lord knew more than they did, and He sighed while He granted their prayer. Can we not apply this thought to ourselves? We often wish for things and pray for things for ourselves and our friends, nothing doubting that this or that which we ask will be a great boon and blessing to us or to them. Sometimes the request is denied, and we are apt to be disappointed and perhaps repining. Sometimes the prayer is granted. May we not think that sometimes the merciful Lord sighs as He grants it, knowing what we little know, that perhaps it will turn out not for our good but for our hurt that we should have what we have asked? foreseeing that it will bring us perhaps into temptations and dangers, which otherwise we might escape.
II. But the particular prayer offered in the case before us seems to suggest still more particular reflections. The sufferer in this case was deaf and well-nigh speechless. The Lord gave him back both his hearing and his voice, and sighed to give them. Was a man sure to be better and please God better and die more happily because his restored power of hearing brought all this multitude of new things to his thoughts and knowledge? And, again, his loosened tongue, was it so sure that the gift of voice so long withheld would bring him nothing but good? Was it certain that the loosened tongue would always be employed in uttering good and wholesome words, and that a sacred watch would be set over the door of his lips, now at last made vocal with articulate sounds? No doubt it was in the anticipation of a future which man could not foresee that the Lord sighed even in the midst of His act of mercy, and gave the boon desired, but with fear and heaviness and distress of mind. The narrative may well set us on thinking how it may be with ourselves—whether, thinking of our own way of living and acting, our possession of all these precious senses and powers has really been and is a blessing to us, so that the Lord may be thought to have given them to us in love and mercy, or whether we should rather think that He sighed in giving them.
G. Moberly, Plain Sermons at Brightstone, p. 134.
Mar 7:32-37
The Deaf and Dumb.
I. Our Lord healed the deaf and dumb man miraculously, by means at which we cannot guess, which we cannot even conceive. But the healing signified at least two things—that the man could be healed, and that the man ought to be healed; that his bodily defect—the retribution of no sin of his own—was contrary to the will of that Father in heaven who willeth not that one little one should perish. But Jesus sighed likewise. There was in Him a sorrow, a compassion, most human and most Divine. It may have been that there was something too of a Divine weariness—I dare not say impatience, seeing how patient He was then, and how patient He has been since for more than eighteen hundred years—of the folly and ignorance of man, who brings on himself and on his descendants these and a hundred other preventable miseries, simply because he will not study and obey the physical laws of the universe; simply because he will not see that those laws which concern the welfare of his body are as surely the will of God as those which concern the welfare of his soul; and that therefore it is not merely his interest but his solemn duty to study and to obey them, lest he bear the punishment of his own neglect and disobedience.
II. Christ had indeed some good seed in his field. He had taught men by His miracles, as He had taught them by His parables, to whom nature belonged, and whose laws nature obeyed. And the cessation of miracles after the time of Christ and His Apostles had taught, or ought to have taught, mankind a further lesson—the lesson that henceforth they were to carry on for themselves, by the faculties which God had given them, that work of healing and deliverance which He had begun. Miracles like prophecies, were to vanish away; but charity—charity which devotes itself to the welfare of the human race—was to abide for ever. Christ, as I said, had some good seed; but an enemy—we know not whence or when, certainly within the three first centuries of the Church—came and sowed tares among that wheat. Then began men to believe that man’s body was the property of Satan, and his soul only the property of God. No wonder if in such a temper of mind the physical amelioration of the human race stood still. How could it be otherwise, while men refused to see in facts the acted will of God, and sought, not in God’s universe, but in the dreams of their own brain, for glimpses of that Divine and wonderful order by which the Eternal Father and the Eternal Son are working together for ever through the Eternal Spirit for the welfare of the universe?
C. Kingsley, Westminster Sermons, p. 48.
Mar 7:33
I. Our Lord seems to have taken this man apart. He may have intended the multitude to follow with their eyes that which He was about, that the might that there was in the action, the might that underlay the deed, should be dwelt upon, and so should sink more surely into their spirits. As we too follow the Redeemer, may we not feel that in our lives He has taken us apart from the multitude? We have had moments—awful precious moments they were—when something of God’s mercy has made us feel that God and we exist alone, in this mighty universe, something that has shut out the crowd, drowned the noise, stopped the wheels of the world, taken us into a kind of sacred solitude, and made us feel in deepest earnestness, "I live, God lives; my God and my Lord." While God can have compassion upon numbers, while we can understand the Lord Jesus lifting up His eyes and seeing the multitudes being moved with compassion, yet that same Blessed One is also the Good Shepherd who leaveth the heavenly Jerusalem, leaves the ninety-and-nine perfect of God’s hundred beings, and going to seek and to save the one that is lost.
II. And yet, mark the sadness of the Divine Healer. He looked to heaven and He sighed. That sigh must be part of the perfect revelation of the Father. In that sigh, as in all else, there is a portion, a fragment, of God’s love to us. May it not be that He was bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows at the very moment that He was healing them and having compassion upon them? And in this we learn the truth, that there is no self-sacrifice, there is no errand of mercy, there is no ministry of love, there is no work of goodness, there is no great deed of kindness, which does not involve painstaking and the giving up of self. Any alleviation of human woe must be at a cost. Imagine what lay upon His heart; imagine to the purest, holiest manhood what it was to come in contact with the man with the unclean spirit. And in all the ministries of our sorrowing and enfeebled humanity you may be sure that there are none that are Christlike that are not touched with the shadows of the Cross.
T. J. Rowsell, Penny Pulpit, new series, No. 343.
Mar 7:33-34
The Pattern of Service.
I. We have here set forth the foundation and condition of all true work for God in our Lord’s heavenward look. We are fully warranted in supposing that that wistful gaze to heaven means, and may be taken to symbolise, our Lord’s conscious direction of thought and spirit to God as He wrought His work of mercy. The heavenward look is (1) the renewal of our own vision of the calm verities in which we trust, the recourse for ourselves to the realities which we desire that others should see; (2) the heavenward look draws new strength from the source of all our might; (3) it will guard us from the temptations which surround all our service, and the distractions which lay waste our lives.
II. We have here pity for the evils we would remove set forth by the Lord’s sigh. Mark how in us, as in our Lord, the sigh of compassion is connected with the look to heaven. It follows upon that gaze. The evils are more real, more terrible, by their startling contrast with the unshadowed light which lives above cloud-racks and mists. Habitual communion with God is the root of the truest and purest compassion. It at once supplies a standard by which to measure the greatness of man’s godlessness, and therefore of his gloom, and a motive for laying the pain of these upon our hearts, as if they were our own.
III. We have here loving contact with those whom we would help set forth in the Lord’s touch. Wherever men would help their fellows, this is a prime requisite—that the would-be helper should come down to the level of those whom he desires to aid. Such contact with men will win their hearts, as well as soften ours. It will make them willing to hear, as well as us wise to speak. Let us preach the Lord’s touch as the source of all cleansing. Let us imitate it in our lives, that "if any will not hear the word, they may without the word be won."
IV. We have here the true healing power, and the consciousness of wielding it set forth in the Lord’s authoritative word. The reflection of Christ’s triumphant consciousness of power should irradiate our spirits as we do His work, like the gleam from gazing on God’s glory which shone on the lawgiver’s stern face while He talked with men. We have everything to assure us that we cannot fail. The tearful sowing in the stormy winter’s day has been done by the Son of man. For us there remains the joy of harvest—hot and hard work indeed, but gladsome too.
A. Maclaren, The Secret of Power, p. 26.
Peculiarities in the Miracle of Decapolis.
I. It cannot have been without meaning, though it may have been without any efficaciousness to the healing of disease, that Christ employed the outward signs used in this miracle. Some purpose must have been subserved, forasmuch as we may be sure that there was never anything useless or superfluous in the actions of our Lord. And the reason why Christ thus touched the defective organs, before uttering the word which was to speak them into health, may be found, as is generally allowed, in the circumstances of the man on whom the miracle was about to be wrought. This man, you will observe, does not seem to have come to Christ of his own accord; it is expressly stated, "And they bring unto Him one that was deaf," etc. The whole was done by the relatives or friends of the afflicted individual; for anything that appears to the contrary, he himself may have had no knowledge of Jesus. Our Lord took him aside from the multitude, because His attention was likely to be distracted by the crowd, and Christ wished to fix it on Himself as the Author of his cure. The man was deaf, so that no question could be put to him, and he had an impediment in his speech which would have prevented his replying. But he could see and he could feel what Christ did; and therefore our Lord supplied the place of speech, by touching the tongue and putting His finger into the ears,—for this was virtually saying that He was about to act on those organs,—and by looking up to heaven, for this was informing the deaf man that the healing power must come from above.
II. Consider next whether the possession of miraculous power did not operate upon Christ in a manner unlike that in which it would, most probably, operate on ourselves. When He did good, He manifested no feeling of pleasure. On the contrary, you might have thought it a pain to Him to relieve misery; for the narrative tells us that, at the instant of giving utterance to the omnipotent word, He showed signs as of a burdened and disquieted spirit; "He sighed"—not, He smiled—not, He rejoiced; but "He sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened." It is no undue inference from the circumstance of Christ’s sighing at the instant of working the miracle before us, when we take it as evidence of a depression of spirit which would not give way before even that most happy-making thing, the making others happy. Of all the incidental proofs of our Lord’s having been "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," there is, perhaps, none of a more touching or plaintive character than is thus furnished by our text.
H. Melvill, Sermons on Less Prominent Facts, vol. i., p. 208.
Mar 7:34
I. The general study of this story would furnish several very excellent and edifying lessons suggested by our Lord’s action in working this miracle upon the shore of Decapolis. (1) We might note the wide reach of the Master’s zeal. Jesus had just come from Tyre and Sidon, clear across in a heathen land; He was now in the midst of some Greek settlements, on the eastern shore of the Sea of Tiberius. We see how He appears thus going upon a foreign mission. (2) We might dwell upon the need of friendly offices in apparently hopeless cases. (3) We might also mention the manipulations of our Saviour as illustrating the ingenuity of real sympathy. (4) We observe our Lord’s respect for everyone’s private reserves of experience. "And He took him aside from the multitude privately." (5) We notice the naturalness of all great services of good. At the supremely majestic moments of His life our Lord became simpler in utterance and behaviour than at any other time. He fell back on the sweet and pathetic speech of His mother-tongue.
II. The singular peculiarity of this story, however, is what might be made the subject of more extended remark. Three things meet us in their turn. (1) Why did our Lord sigh when He was looking up to heaven. Everyone is aware of the pleasure it gives to bring cure to a chronic weakness, or give a hope in the place of humiliation. Somehow our Saviour seems depressed, and we look for a reason. But in the narrative there is furnished not even so much as a hint for our help. (2) We are left in this case to conjecture. And in a general way, perhaps, it would be enough to say, that there was something like an ejaculatory prayer in this sigh of Jesus’ soul; but more likely there was in it the outbreaking of sad and weary sympathy with the suffering of a fallen race like ours. It may be He sighed (a) because there was so much trouble in the world everywhere; (b) because there were many who made such poor work in dealing with their trouble; (c) because He could not altogether alleviate the trouble He found; (d) because the trouble He met always had its origin and aggravation in sin; (e) because so few persons were willing to forsake their sins which made the trouble. (3) Christians need more sighs. They are a royal priesthood, and they have an office of intercession to exercise. There was a day when Jehovah sent an angel with an inkhorn by his side through Jerusalem, to set a mark upon the foreheads of those who, in their sad hearts, kept up a great masterful, pitiful yearning for sinners’ conversion, and a cry against the abominations of sin.
C. S. Robinson, Sermons on Neglected Texts, p. 281.
I. This is not the only record of the sighs and tears and troubled heart of Jesus. We are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews that in the days of His flesh He offered up supplications with strong crying and tears. By the grave of Lazarus, when He saw Mary weeping, and the Jews also weeping, He groaned in the spirit, "and the silent tears streamed down His face." He wept aloud over the hypocrisy and crime of Jerusalem. Truly, He was a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."
II. But on two of the occasions on which we are told that Jesus sighed and wept, He was immediately about to dispel the cause of the misery. He sighed because He was not thinking only of the individual case. That He had power to remedy; but how many myriads were there of the bereaved whom He could not thus console? of the deaf and dumb who in this world could never hear and never speak? Even in the individual cases there was, to His quick sympathy, cause enough to sigh for the wreck caused by the sin of man and the malice of Satan, in deforming the beauty of God’s fair creation. His sigh for these was not the sigh of powerlessness—it was the sigh of sympathy. But more than this, He was thinking of all the world, looking down to the very depths of its drear abyss of sorrow. His act of healing could be but a drop in the ocean.
III. In that poor afflicted man our Lord saw but one more sign of that vast crack and flaw which sin causes in everything which God has made. (1) Jesus had seen, laid stark upon the bier, the widow’s only son. He had seen the little maid of Jairus lying pale and cold. He had seen Mary weeping for Lazarus dead. And as He looked out upon a world of death, can you wonder if, looking up to heaven, He sighed? (2) This, alas! was not all, and was not the worst. Sickness may be cured and pain assuaged; and Time lays his healing hand on the wounds of death. But the ravages of sin! there is mischief and unmingled mischief there. Can you wonder if, as Jesus looked on the world of sin, He looked up to heaven and sighed? (3) Our Lord saw all the sorrow; He did not ignore it; He sighed for it; He wept for it; He prayed for it; but not for one moment did He despair for it; nay, He worked to lighten it, leaving us thereby, as in all things, an example that we should follow His steps.
F. W. Farrar, Ephphatha: Sermons, p. 1.
Sorrow in Healing.
Our Lord sighed, we cannot doubt,—
I. At the thought of that destructive agency of which He had before Him one example. Here was one whom Satan had bound. Here was an illustration of that reign of sin unto death to which the whole world bears witness. This deaf-and-dumb man reminded Christ of the corruption that had passed over God’s pure creation; and therefore, looking up to heaven, He sighed.
II. But there was more than this, as we all feel at once, in that sigh. That outward bondage was but the token of an inward thraldom. Whether healed or not in this life, no bodily infirmity can have more than a temporary duration. Death must end it. But not so that spiritual corruption of which the other was but a sign. That inward ear which is stopped against God’s summons, that voice of the heart which refuses to utter His praise—these things are of eternal consequence. And while bodily infirmities and disorders are occasional and partial in their occurrences, spiritual disease is universal. It overspreads every heart. Christ’s thoughts at that moment were directed to the sins of the whole world, feeling them as a sore burden laid upon His soul, and made by man’s obstinacy too heavy even for Him to bear.
III. He sighed therefore, we may say, further, from a sense of the disproportion in actual extent between the ruin and the redemption. The ruin universal. All the world guilty before God. Every soul of man corrupted by estrangement from God. And yet the great multitude refusing to be redeemed. And again, through the simple negligence and cold-heartedness of the professed Church of Christ, to how few, comparatively speaking, does the message of life come at all! Generation after generation, since the word was first spoken which bade the Church go forth into all the world, and evangelise the whole creation, has fallen asleep utterly ignorant of that holy name, for lack sometimes of a sender and sometimes of a messenger. And this even until now; and even without remorse, without shame, without any vigorous or at least adequate efforts to repair the wrong. Might not He who foresaw these things sigh within Himself as He plucked one brand from the burning? Might He not sorrowfully contrast the price paid with the possession purchased—the multitude of the redeemed with the fewness of the saved?
C. J. Vaughan, Harrow Sermons, p. 279.
I. Our Lord may have sighed (1) As He contemplated the afflicted one before Him. (2) As He viewed the desolation and disaster which moral evil had been the means of spreading in the world. (3) The sigh may have been the result of that feeling of sadness which comes over our hearts even in moments when all things suggest joy. These feelings are more reasonable than we suppose. The tears that steal forth unbidden at the wedding feast, the sigh which love heaves over the cradled treasure of the nursery, are not empty exhibitions of a feeble hysteria. They have their roots in sober truth. It is the shadow of the future which calls forth that sadness. Life’s experiences tell us that, notwithstanding all that hope has prophesied, there have been failures and mishaps—that many a golden morning has been followed by a stormy afternoon and a dark and disastrous eventide. It is the thought, though only half realised, of the shipwrecks of life which prompts the sigh and compels the unbidden tear. Thus it was, I think, with Christ. He knew, as we and all men know, that the boon He was about to bestow might prove no real blessing.
II. Yet Christ did not withhold the boon. If there crossed His mind all the evil, the rancour, derision, and scandal which the unfettered tongue might occasion, He did not on that account stay the hand of His benevolence. Freely, ungrudgingly, were His miracles of love performed, though it is too much to suppose that the recipients of His mercy always made good use of their restored senses or newly won faculties. Though the boon may be used for evil, Christ does not withold it.
III. There is a remedy for the evils that accompany our freedom. Christ, while He teaches us that the remedy is not to be sought in depriving man of the gift, points by His conduct where the real remedy is to be sought. It is by conferring an additional and guiding gift; not by withholding one boon, but by bestowing another, does He suggest to us the true course of conduct. There is another "Ephphatha." He speaks "Be opened," and the tongue is loosed; but the ear is unstopped also. The tongue is set free to speak, and it may be the instrument of untold harm; but the ear is open, and there is a voice which speaks truths in tones of unearthly sweetness, and that voice the sufferer can now hear. While therefore He bestows the faculty of speech, He bestows the opportunity of hearing those glad and soul-elevating principles of righteousness and forgiveness and love which will fill the loosened tongue with joy, and put a new song of praise in that silent mouth. The Ephphatha of gift and the Ephphatha of new opportunities for good go hand in hand.
Bishop Boyd-Carpenter, Sermon Preached May 28th, 1876.
From the text we learn—
I. The duty of compassion. The world has, in all ages, deeply needed, and in this age still deeply needs, the lesson of pity. We profess and call ourselves Christians; have we yet learnt the simplest and earliest element in the sigh of the Saviour, the divineness of mercy, of compassion, and of love?
II. Yet we must learn the lesson not of compassion only, but of energy therewith. Compassion which ends in compassion may be nothing more than the luxury of egotism; but the sigh of Jesus was but an instant’s episode in a life of toil. If His sigh binds us to pity all sin and sorrow, it binds us no less to bend every effort of our lives towards the end that sin may cease and be forgiven, and sorrow flee away. (1) The world is full of sorrow. The sigh of Christ pledges us, as our first duty, not to add to that sorrow, either actively or passively, either directly or indirectly, by our pride or self-indulgence, by cruelty or malice, for our gain or our gratification, by taking unfair advantages, or by speaking false, bitter, and unwholesome words. (2) The world is full of disease. The sigh of Christ pledges us not only to be gentle and sympathetic and helpful to all who are afflicted, but also to strive by pureness and kindness, by high example and sound knowledge, to improve the conditions which shall make life sweet and healthy, cheerful and genial, vigorous and pure. (3) The world is full of sin. The sigh of Jesus pledges us ourselves to keep innocency, and do the thing that is right; not to set examples which lead to sin; to lead men, both by our life and doctrine, to that Saviour who died for sin, and who can alone forgive it, and cleanse us from its guilt and power.
III. A lesson of hope (1) For ourselves; the perfect confidence with which each one of us may throw ourselves upon Christ’s love; the infinite conviction with which we may each of us say, "Christ died for me." (2) For all the world. Who was it that sighed and said, "Ephphatha, Be opened"? Ah, it takes the fourfold Gospel to answer that question! It was He whom St. Matthew set forth as the Divine Messiah who fulfilled the past; and St. Mark as the Son of God, filling with power and awfulness the present; and St. Luke as the Seeker and Saviour, to all ages, of the lost; and St. John in the spiritual Gospel as the Incarnate Word. God is everywhere; and the footsteps of Him who sighed for the miseries of man have illuminated even that unknown land which every man must enter.
F. W. Farrar, Ephphatha: Sermons, p. 229.
There is one trait, and only one, in which, though it may be our necessity, and perhaps our privilege, yet it can scarcely be called our duty, to be like our great Master. And yet that trait is almost the largest in our Saviour’s character—sadness of spirit; and the reason why we are not to copy our Saviour’s sadness is evident: it is twofold. One, because He Himself is happy now, and the duty of being like Him as He is, is greater than the duty of being like Him as He was; so that we are most copying Christ when we are exceedingly happy. And the other reason is, that those sorrows of Jesus were the very materials out of which He was making the Church’s joy. Therefore to imitate them would be as if a man should think to copy a rainbow by painting a shower. For when we are sad, we are so far frustrating the sadnesses of Jesus. In all our Saviour’s sorrows—I do not enter now into the mysteries of Gethsemane and Calvary—but in all the sorrows of our Saviour’s life among men, there are two features characteristic, beautiful, and instructive. (1) Our Saviour’s recorded sadnesses were all for others. (2) His sorrow was never an idle sentiment. The sigh of Jesus when He healed the deaf-and-dumb man at Decapolis was—
I. The Sigh of Earnestness. Because it says that, "looking up to heaven, He sighed." Some connect the two words, and account that the sigh is a part of the prayer, an expression of the intensity of the working of our Lord’s heart when He was supplicating to the Father.
II. The Sigh of Beneficence. He who never gave us anything but what was bought by His own suffering—so that every pleasure is a spoil, purchased by His blood—did now by the sigh, and under the feeling that He sighed, indicate that He purchased the privilege to restore to that poor man the senses he had lost.
III. The Sigh of Brotherhood. The scene before Him would be to His mind but a representation of thousands of thousands. His comprehensive thought, starting from that point, would travel on, till it embraced, in one dark union, all the miseries with which this earth is filled.
IV. The Sigh of Holiness. Do you suppose our Saviour’s mind could think of all the physical evil, and not go on to the deeper moral causes from which it sprang? Doubtless, in those closed ears and that chained tongue, He read, too plainly written, the fall—the distance—the degradation—the corruption—the universal defilement of our world. He sighed. That is the way in which perfect holiness looked on the sins of the universe.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 1874, p. 198.
References: Mar 7:34.—H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 109; W. F. Hook, Sermons on the Miracles, vol. ii., p. 49; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. viii., p. 152; C. Kingsley, Town and Country Sermons, p. 358. Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 394. Mar 7:36.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. v., p. 314. Mar 7:36, Mar 7:37.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 76.
Mar 7:37
Low Estimate of the Church’s Work.
Let us compare the danger, to which we are open, of taking a low estimate of the Church with the popular view once taken of the ministry of our Blessed Lord.
I. There were few, when He was alive on earth, who came to Him in the spirit of Nicodemus, seeking truth. The greater number followed, like the multitude at Capernaum, not because they saw His miracle, but because they ate of the loaves and were filled. Two of the disciples owned how they were mortified at the loss of their political expectations from Jesus. Can we suppose that there was a more spiritual mind in those who cheered Him on this road with such applause as this, "He hath done all things well: He maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak"?
II. Then, as to our own danger, what the miracles of Christ and His beneficence were to the witnesses of His ministry, the indirect but manifest effects of Christianity in the world are to us. Let us take the case of public charities in this and other Christian countries. Who would not point to them as evidence of the power of the Gospel? And yet, are these public charities a gauge of religion? Men give largely, or admire those who do so, under a vague impression that benevolence is equivalent to God. (2) Again, education is one of the most obvious benefits arising from the influence of Christianity in this age. But, great and precious as are the benefits conferred by education, let no one imagine that the best of schools atones for an ill-appointed Church.
III. There is a high and admirable sense in which the description of Christ in the text may be read. "He hath done all things well"—so the redeemed in heaven will say of Him. "He hath done all things well," and not according to the right and wrong of this world, but well according to the judgment of eternity—well, insomuch as the work answered perfectly to the design, the end to the beginning. When did He say that His work was finished? Was it when crowds followed Him whom He had fed in their hunger or healed in their sicknesses or raised from the dead? No; but at the moment when His admirers forsook Him, and left Him in the hands of His enemies. When the world stood only near Him that they might gaze on His misery, when He disappointed all popular expectations and was despised and rejected of men, then, in the hearing of God, when His voice alone of all His bodily powers survived His agony, He said of His work, "It is finished."
C. W. Furse, Sermons at Richmond, p. 121.
The Gift of Hearing.
I. It is Christ who enables any one of us to hear any of the common sounds that enter into our ears as we walk out on an August day. If you have heard the singing of the birds or the running of the stream or the voices of children, recollect it was Christ who caused you to hear them. He fills the earth and air with all melodies, and He gives to men the power of taking them in. By giving back hearing to this man who had lost it, He declared this: He said, I am the Giver of hearing, the power comes from Me. Think how wonderful that is.
II. There is another kind of deafness besides that which cannot take in sounds. We may hear sounds, and yet the words that are within the sounds may never reach us. They may float about us, and seem as if they were coming unto us. And then we may feel just the same as if they had never been uttered. As far as we are concerned, we might as well have been a hundred miles away. But if they are words of health and life—words that come from the good God—words that are to make us right and true men—words that are to make all that is past fresh and new to us, and what is going on around us good and not evil, and what is to be hereafter through all ages blessed,—it is a very sad thing, is it not, that they should be all lost upon us? But must it be so? Shall it be so with any of us? What, when it is written, "He maketh the deaf to hear"! When we can say, Lord, Thou hast sent us these words; they are Thine! Once more say, Ephphatha; Be opened! to, me and to all who have not received the good news of Thy New Testament into their hearts.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons in Country Churches, p. 10.
I. Our Lord, it is remarked, took this man aside, as in the eighth chapter He is represented as taking the blind man by the hand, and leading him out of the village, before He restored his sight, probably for this reason in both cases—that both patients might be moved out of the noise and bustle of the wondering crowd, and thus the lesson of the heavenly power and goodness of Him who healed them might sink more quietly and deeply into their hearts. Unlike the pictures of those workers of mere wonders which men’s fancies have devised, the Lord is ever represented as anxious in His great works for this, almost above all things—that the healing of their bodies might be, for the cured, the outward and visible sign of His power to heal their souls. And He knew that for this purpose each character required its own peculiar treatment; sometimes the patient’s temptation was to lose the sobering and hallowing impression in the midst of much talk, while he professed to be showing forth the mercy he had received among his friends and acquaintances; sometimes (as in the case of the demoniac in the country of the Gadarenes, whose dwelling had before been in the tombs) the best help to the patient’s holiness was to be found in the society of his friends, and in no solitary brooding over his state, but in telling to all how great things the Lord had done for him.
II. In the instance before us, the Lord’s solicitude for the sufferer and regard for the peculiarities of his case seems, it has been remarked, to be shown even in the form in which He sets about the miracle. The man could not hear, and therefore the Lord spoke to him by signs; He put His fingers into his ears, and touched his tongue, and looked up to heaven, to let him more readily understand the blessing which was intended, and the source from which it was to come. He sighed, too, as He wept afterwards at the grave of Lazarus, thinking in both cases how vast was the amount of spiritual evil that remained to be vanquished, and how easy it was, comparatively, to cure men’s bodily diseases, or even to raise them bodily after death to life again; how difficult to regenerate their souls. This mixture of anxiety to effect a spiritual along with a bodily cure is one great source of deep interest in our Lord’s miracles. He is not, as we have said, the mere wonder-worker, manifesting His Divine commission by a supernatnral power that awes us into conviction. His power is not more remarkable than His love—a love which begins with the body, but is not at rest till it has laboured for the soul. And hence that curiosity is very natural which has led men to ask whether they cannot learn something as to the ultimate spiritual fate of those who were blessed to be thus the objects of His solicitude. But God has not thought fit to gratify this curiosity, and we may be content to leave the subjects of it in the hands of Him who so evidently cared for them, and who does all things well, both for our bodies and our souls.
A. C. Tait, Lessons for School Life, p. 183.
References: Mar 7:37.—H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. ii., p. 104; C. Girdlestone, A Course of Sermons, vol. ii., p. 273; J. C. Hare, Sermons in Herstmonceux Church, p. 245; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. v., p. 32; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 14th series, p. 5. Mar 7:37.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 114. Mar 8:1, Mar 8:2.—J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity, Part I., p. 254. Mar 8:1-8.—Outline Sermons to Children, p. 146. Mar 8:1-9.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 13; J. C. Harrison, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvii., p. 321; H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man, p. 165. Mar 8:1-26.—W. Hanna, Our Lord’s Life on Earth, p. 237. Mar 8:2.—J. Keble, Sermons on Various Occasions, p. 189. Mar 8:2, Mar 8:3.—G. Huntington, Sermons for Holy Seasons, p. 47; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 225; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 41.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Subdivision 2. (Mar 7:1-37; Mar 8:1-9.)
Subdivision 2. (Mar 7:1-37; Mar 8:1-9.)
The Opposition of Traditionalism and the Service of Love.
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The next subdivision runs still, for the most part, side by side with Matthew. Luke omits it all. We have here in the first place the opposition of traditionalism to the ways of God, and therefore to the true service of man; whereas faith directly connects us with God, discerns and owns His way and is confirmed by Him, as with the Syro-phoenician woman. The healing of the deaf man following this is peculiar to Mark; and in this man’s condition spiritually seems more fully imaged to us, with no ear to hear, and therefore speech failing. Here the Lord is specially oppressed by the condition, and His "Ephphatha" is uttered with a sigh. Then in another wilderness scene the divine mercy satisfies once more the poor with bread, which as a figure has been plainly interpreted for us; and with this the present subject ends.
1. The growth of traditionalism is not hard to trace. Truth itself from the source of truth, where ministered by man; necessarily accredits the one who brings it. So far this is well, or it would not be necessary; but how often it follows, and at no long interval, that the teacher comes to accredit the truth which first accredited him. We have gained confidence in the man, and begin to accept with less careful examination whatever comes to us from such a source. The interpreter begins to displace the Word that he interprets. For the next generation this is an easier process, and the rule of the rabbi is soon begun. There is soon (formally or informally) a body of doctrine growing up, which although confessedly human and theoretically fallible, is accepted for truth and attaches to itself the masses. Henceforth he who will learn from God has to break through a steadily increasing barrier to the end he would attain.
Traditional teaching is ever tending downwards. If it has a creed this will be a conservative element, no doubt, but a dead support at best, not a living principle. Being human, it will have gaps through which error will come in; if not error of its own; which will readily unite with further error. Immediate recourse to God is shut off by it, and the profit of His word "for correction, for reproof" is, at least, limited.
In Israel the scribes arose as a reaction from that departure from the law which had been the nation’s ruin. They came forward as its defenders and vindicators, and in order to this its investigators and interpreters. Their zeal for its observance urged them to "make a hedge about it" of their own rules, which, while making it ever a heavier yoke, came naturally by degrees to displace what they were intended to enforce. The human came inevitably into conflict with the divine. As additions to it, they broke the law necessarily from the beginning; and the end could not but be still worse than the beginning.
But worse even than their conflicting ordinances was their total mistake as to the nature of the law itself, and of the disease for which it was the appointed remedy. With all their laborious enquiries as to it, they interpreted it superficially, and had no knowledge of its true working. They had not learned the lesson of experience as the apostle declares it, that "that which was ordained to life" he "found to be unto death." They tried therefore to remedy the failure under it by additional ordinances, instead of turning to that Saviour of whom the prophets with one voice testified. Their remedy was law, not grace; letter and not spirit. They would heal man’s deep-seated disease from the outside, and if they suppressed the external signs, only aggravated to a fatal issue the internal disorder.
(1) Mark emphasizes beyond Matthew the religious scrupulosity which dealt with the outside, the ceremonial washings (or "baptisms") of hands, cups, vessels, couches; tedious in proportion to its vain unprofitableness. God, by Isaiah, had characterized it long since as mere externalism without heart, human commandments claiming divine authority: so essentially hollow that the Lord denounces it as hypocrisy.
(2) In fact, what God had commanded was set aside by it; and the breach of the "first commandment with promise" was only an example of many like things which they did.
(3) With such it was even vain to argue. The Lord turns, therefore, to the multitude to show them the simple underlying principle which justified to the conscience what He said. Nature had provided for the cleansing of impurities as to the body. Moral, spiritual defilement is, alas, from what comes out of the man; from the heart, and is native there. But how then shall the heart be cleansed?
2. For this they are not ready. He turns from them towards the Gentiles as hiding Himself from their unbelief, to find in one herself a Gentile, a conscious need of Him from which He could not hide Himself, and a discernment of faith which Israel’s doctors lacked. This Syro-phoenician, content to take her true place as a dog before Him, could find her title in His grace to divine bounty, discerning what was impenetrable to the men of law. This faith on His part He recognizes and rejoices in. The power of Satan is quelled, and the soul satisfied.
3. But Israel had no ear to hear the Voice that spake to them: and this is indeed man’s condition naturally, a condition symbolized in this deaf man brought to Christ, and who has a corresponding impediment in his speech: for the speech can only be right where the ear is open. The Lord is oppressed in spirit with this condition. He puts the finger which had touched the leper into his ears: for does not spiritual leprosy underlie such deafness spiritually? and in the cleansing of the leper the ear is the first part anointed. In this type the meaning is quite clear. The soul under the power of sin is deaf to the voice of God - has lost even the power of hearing aright. That which cleanses the leper alone gives the ear to hear.
The Lord touches the tongue also; and then; lifting up His eyes to heaven, sighs and says, Ephphatha! "be opened." Immediately, his ears are opened, and the bond of his tongue loosed. He is here in Decapolis, a part of the land mainly Gentile and heathen, but the fame of this miracle goes far and wide.
4. The crowds follow Him; and the miracle of the loaves is repeated on their behalf. Here again we are in the track of Matthew’s Gospel, and the difference between the two accounts is very slight. The healing of the multitudes, however, which Matthew records, is omitted here, and their glorifying the God of Israel. Instead of five loaves among five thousand men; as on the former occasion, with twelve baskets of fragments taken up (see p. 157, notes), we have now seven loaves with seven baskets, and four thousand men: the numbers of perfection and of the world at large. They remind us of the perfect sufficiency of divine blessing for all human need, and of all men without restriction being in God’s desire participants in it. This fittingly closes what we have had before us.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Eating with Unwashed Hands. the Syrophoenician Woman. Healing of…
Eating with Unwashed Hands. the Syrophoenician Woman. Healing of a Deaf Man
1-23. Eating with unwashed hands (Mat_15:1). See on Mt.
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3, 4. A note added by St. Mark for the benefit of his Gentile readers, who would not be familiar with Jewish customs. St. Matthew's Jewish readers needed no such explanation.
3. Wash their hands oft] lit. 'wash their hands with the fist.' The Jewish custom was to wash the hands up to the wrist, and that is probably the meaning here, although it is hard to extract it from the present (perhaps corrupt) Gk. text. Wetstein thinks that 'a fist' is the minimum quantity of water (¼ of a hin, or pint), which was allowed for washing the hands. 'A quarter of a hin of water is the quantity appointed for one man's hands.' The AV, amending the text, reads, 'Except they wash their hands oft.' RV gives 'diligently,' a possible conjecture.
4. Except they wash] lit. 'baptise themselves.' The Jews carefully distinguished 'washing' the hands, i.e. pouring water over them, from 'baptising' or dipping them. In Mar_7:3 pouring water over them is meant; but here, after a visit to the market-place, in which all kinds of defilement would be met with, dipping them is regarded as necessary. Dipping the hands was performed before meals, washing at meal-times. Washing of cups, etc.] The details are too intricate to be given here. In some cases the articles were washed, in others only sprinkled. The 'cup' is the Lat. sextarius = 1 pint. And of tables] rather, 'of beds,' or, couches for reclining at dinner.
11. Corban] see on Mat_15:5.
19. Purging all meats] RV 'This he said, making all meats clean': see on Mat_15:1-20.
24-30. The Syrophœnician woman (Mat_15:21). See on Mt.
31-37. The deaf man with an impediment in his speech (peculiar to Mk). This miracle is selected by Mk for its unusual character. Usually our Lord healed instantaneously, here by stages: usually by a word, here by material means. The reason for the difference of treatment must be sought in the spiritual state of the sufferer. The miracle was done privately that the man, in the absence of the multitude, might be able to concentrate his attention. Jesus made use of the language of signs, because the man was deaf. He put his fingers in His ears, indicating that He would pierce through the obstruction. He touched His tongue, indicating that He would remove the impediment in his speech. Having thus produced faith in the man, He worked the miracle, Edersheim thinks that our Lord used this elaborate process because the man was a Gentile, and, therefore, was with more difficulty brought to believe and to understand.
31. Tyre] see on Mat_15:21.
33. Spit] RV 'spat': see Joh_9:6. 'He spat on his tongue, using a means of healing accepted in popular opinion of Jew and Gentile. The use of saliva for cures is universally recognised by the rabbis' (Edersheim).
34. Sighed] moved by the afflictions of humanity. Ephphatha] Here, as often, St. Mark, following St. Peter, preserves the actual Aramaic expression of our Lord: cp. Mar_5:41.
The ceremony of 'opening the ears,' i.e. touching them with saliva and saying ʾEphphatha, Be opened,' was introduced into the Baptismal service probably in the 4th cent.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On v1 J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [LXV. Jesus Disregards…
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [LXV. Jesus Disregards Tradition].
P A R T S I X T H. FROM THE THIRD PASSOVER UNTIL OUR LORD'S ARRIVAL AT BETHANY. (Time: One Year Less One Week.)
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LXV. JESUS FAILS TO ATTEND THE THIRD PASSOVER. SCRIBES REPROACH HIM FOR DISREGARDING TRADITION. (Galilee, probably Capernaum, Spring A. D. 29.) aMATT. XV. 1-20; bMARK VII. 1-23; dJOHN VII. 1.
d1 And after these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Judæa, because the Jews sought to kill him. [John told us in his last chapter that the passover was near at hand. He here makes a general statement which shows that Jesus did not attend this passover. The reason for his absence is given at Joh_5:18.] a1 Then there come to Jesus from Jerusalem b1 And there are gathered together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, who had come from Jerusalem, 2 and had seen that some of his disciples ate their bread with defiled, that is, with unwashen, hands. [Evidently several days intervened between the address of Joh_6:22-40. and the events recorded here, for the Pharisees and scribes would not be likely to leave Jerusalem until after the passover. Isa_29:13], asaying, bas it is written, This people [394] honoreth me with their lips, But their heart is far from me. 7 But in vain do they worship me, Teaching i as their doctrines the precepts of men. 8 Ye leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men. 9 And he said unto them, Full well do ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your tradition. [These Pharisees coming from Jerusalem could find nothing wherein Jesus or his disciples transgressed the law, so they eagerly grasped this transgression of the tradition as affording ground for an accusation. Jesus does not deny their charge, but justifies his disciples by attacking the whole traditional system, basing his attack upon a pointed prophecy which condemns it. It is hard for us to learn and apply the distinction between serving God as God wishes to be served, and serving him according to our own wishes and notions.] a4 For God bMoses said [that is, God said it through Moses], Honor thy father and thy mother; and, He that speaketh evil of father or mother, let him die the death [see Exo_20:12, Deu_5:16, Exo_21:17, Lev_20:9]: 11 but ye say, If a man { aWhosoever shall say to his father or his mother, That wherewith thou mightest have been profited by me bis Corban, that is to say, Given to God; a6 he shall not honor his father. b12 ye no longer suffer him to do ought for his father or his mother; aAnd ye have made b13 making void the word of God by abecause of your tradition. bwhich ye have delivered: and many such like things ye do. [Leaving for a moment the main question concerning uncleanness and washing, Jesus makes good his indictment against their tradition by giving an example of the mischievous way in which it set aside God's commandments. The law required the honoring of parents, and for any one to cast off his parents in their old age, thus subjecting them to beggary or starvation, was to do more than to speak evil of them. Such conduct was practically to curse them, and to incur the death penalty for so doing. But at this point the Pharisees interfered with their tradition, which taught that [395] a son could say of that part of his estate by which his parents might be profited, It is a gift; that is, a gift to God, and by thus dedicating that part to God, he would free himself from his obligation to his parents. Thus tradition undid the law. God's law leads to pure and acceptable worship, while human additions and amendments make worship vain, if not abominable. There is probably not one such addition or amendment which does not to a greater or less degree make some commandment void.] 14 And he called to him the multitude again, and said unto them [Having been accused by the scribes and Pharisees of a breach of their tradition, Jesus points out to them generally the iniquity of tradition, for it lay within their power as leaders to remedy the whole system of things. Having done this, he turns to the multitude and answers before them as to the offense with which he is specifically charged. Thus he gives to the leaders general principles, and to the common people the single instance], Hear me all of you, and understand: a11 Not that which entereth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth a man. b15 there is nothing from without a man, that going into him can defile him: but the things which proceed out of the man are those that defile the man. 17 And when he was entered into the house from the multitude, a12 Then came the disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, when they heard this saying? [The entire speech offended them. He charged them with hypocrisy. He showed that their tradition, which they reverenced as a revelation from God, led them into sin, and he disturbed their self-complacency by showing that the ceremonial cleanness, which was founded on tradition, and in which they prided themselves, was worthless in comparison with the moral cleanness required by God's law, which they had ignored. It grieved the disciples to see Jesus offend these reverend gentlemen from Jerusalem. Like many modern disciples their respect for men counteracted their zeal for truth.] 13 But he answered and said, Every [396] plant which my heavenly Father hath planted not, shall be up rooted up. [God had planted the law with its doctrine: he had planted the Hebrew religion as given by Moses. He had not planted the tradition of the elders; so it, and the religion founded upon it, was doomed to be rooted up.] 14 Let them alone: they are blind guides. And if the blind guide the blind, both shall fall into a pit. [This proverbial expression is found in the Sermon on the Mount. See Psa_37:1, Psa_37:2). The words of Jesus are full of encouragement to those who adhere to the simple teachings of God; for they show that God guarantees that every error shall be uprooted, and that every teacher of error or false religion shall participate in the judgment which uproots, and shall fall into the pit of ruin; and his disciples, no matter how numerous, shall share his fate. In this particular instance, the destruction of Jerusalem was the pit. The Jewish leaders led their disciples into it, and God uprooted their system of tradition, that the pure gospel might be sowed in the room which they occupied.] 15 And Peter answered and said unto him, Declare unto us the parable. [The word "parable" is used here in its looser sense to indicate an obscure saying.] bhis disciples asked of him the parable. [They asked what he meant by the words contained in the Mat_15:11. 18 And he saith { asaid, bunto them, aAre ye even yet bso without understanding also? [It was to be expected that the multitude, swayed by the teaching of the Pharisees, would be slow to grasp what Jesus said about uncleanness; but the disciples, having been so long taught of him, and having felt free to eat with unwashed hands, should have been more quick of understanding.] Perceive ye not, that whatsoever from without goeth into the man, i it cannot defile him; 19 because it goeth not into his heart, but apasseth into the bhis belly, and goeth out into aand is cast out into the [397] draught? bThis he said, making all meats clean. 20 And he said, a18 But the things which proceed out of the mouth come forth out of the heart; and they defile the man. bThat which proceedeth out of the man, that defileth the man. 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, acome forth bproceed, aevil thoughts, bfornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, 22; covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye [an envious eye] afalse witness, railings: brailing, pride, foolishness: 23 all these evil things proceed from within, and a20 these are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashen hands, defileth not the man. [Thus Jesus sets forth the simple doctrine that a man's moral and spiritual state is not dependent upon the symbolic cleanness of his physical diet, much less is it dependent on ceremonial observances in regard to things eaten, or the dishes from which they are eaten. Of course, Jesus did not mean at this time to abrogate the Mosaic law of legal uncleanness. These uncleannesses worked no spiritual defilement, but were merely typical of such; for the food in no way touched or affected the mind or soul, the fountains of spiritual life, but only the corporeal organs, which have no moral susceptibility. The Pharisees had erred in confusing legal and spiritual defilement, and had added error to error by multiplying the causes of defilement in their tradition. By thus showing that legal defilement was merely symbolic, Jesus classed it with all the other symbolism which was to be done away with when the gospel reality was fully ushered in ( Col_2:16, Col_2:17). In saying, therefore, that Jesus made all meats clean, Mark does not mean that Jesus then and there repealed the law. The declaration of such repeal came later ( Act_10:14, Act_10:15). He means that he there drew those distinctions and laid down those principles which supplanted the Mosaic law when the kingdom of God was ushered in on the day of Pentecost. Here was the fountain whence Paul drew all his teaching concerning things clean and unclean.] [398]
* It was a whole year.--J. W. McG.
[FFG 393-398]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Chapter 7
Chapter 7
1. The Opposition of the Pharisees. (Mar 7:1-23. Mat 15:1-20)
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2. Grace shown to the Syrophenician Woman. (Mar 7:24-30. Mat 15:21-28)
3. The healing of the deaf man. (Mar 7:31-37. Mat 15:29-31.)
1. The Opposition of the Pharisees. Mar 7:1-23
This paragraph is of much importance. The scope of the analysis forbids a full annotation, but we refer the reader to the exposition of Mat 15:1-20, the parallel passage. The Servant in His divine wisdom uncovers the hypocrisy which lies underneath the traditions of the elders. He shows that the Pharisees had rejected the commandment of God for the sake of men-made inventions and traditions. Their ritualistic service founded upon tradition was dishonoring to God and His Word. Such ritualism springing from tradition must always be. He condemns religiousness, which knows nothing of heart obedience and holiness of life. And this outward, human, man-made religion, which boasts of being something and doing something, He condemns. Then He shows that man’s defilement does not consist in what enters into him, but the things which come out of him. He shows what man is within (Mar 7:21-23). No, mere religiousness cannot take away this defilement. Thus He uncovers the hypocrisy of an outward religion and the true state of the heart of man. The product of the natural heart of man, though it may delight in religious observances, is nothing but vileness.
2. Grace shown to the Syrophenician Woman. Mar 7:24-30
While the omniscient Lord in the form of the Servant showed what the heart of man is, He now also uncovers His own heart in showing Grace to one, who belonged to the Gentiles. In the borders of Tyre and Sidon the blessed Servant sought quietness and entered a house; but He could not be hid. Note again that Mark mentions this exclusively, because it brings out His character as Servant. He also informs us that she was a Gentile, a Syrophenician, belonging to the enemies of God’s people, Israel. But Mark leaves out Matthew’s statement, that she appealed to Him as “Son of David.” Matthew’s Gospel is the proper place for that. What evidences all along we find of the inspiration of these records. She had no claim on His Mercy and Power, for she was under the curse. Her daughter had a demon. And though she had no claim on His power and no promise, she believed in His love. She takes the place He gave to her and the daughter was restored. What a manifestation of Grace! And how it must have cheered the Servant’s heart! In that moment His omniscient eye must have beheld the multitudes of Gentiles, who, after His death on the Cross, as lost sinners with no promise, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, would believe in His love.
3. The healing of the deaf man. Mar 7:31-37
A comparison with Matthew shows that the account here is peculiar to Mark’s Gospel. In Mat 15:29-31 we find the dumb man mentioned among others whom He healed. He represents Israel. Altogether deaf, unable to hear God’s voice, which spoke through the One who had come and an impediment in speech. They attempted to speak of God and praise God. And such is man’s natural state. And such He came to heal. Israel might have had the ear opened by Him, the Servant, whose ear was always open, and Israel might have the tongue loosed, to praise His Name. He heals the afflicted one. And how the Servant looked to heaven and groaned. What must He have felt!
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Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 Concerning Ceremonial Washings.
Concerning Ceremonial Washings.
The Pharisees find fault:
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v. 1. Then came together unto Him the Pharisees and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem.
v. 2. And when they saw some of His disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault.
v. 3. For the Pharisees and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.
v. 4. And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables.
v. 5. Then the Pharisees and scribes asked Him, Why walk not Thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands?
An instance of typical pharisaic pedantry, of deliberate, unwarranted faultfinding. Jesus had returned to Capernaum for a few days after the exciting and wearying experiences of a strenuous week. Here He finds a company of His enemies assembled; the contrast between the Lord’s popularity during the last few days and the hostility of the Jewish religious leaders is brought out very strongly. It may be. that this delegation of Pharisees and scribes was the same one that was dogging Christ’s footsteps since the casting out of devils, chapter 3:22; or the authorities may have sent down even more learned and disputatious men than at first, as they were learning to respect the clear arguments and the sharp tongue of the Galilean Rabbi. The purpose of their coming was frankly not to hear the Word of Life, but to provoke disputes. Their opportunity came very soon. They saw some of Christ’s disciples eat with common, with unwashed hands. This was their cue for an attack upon Jesus. Note: Not the question of sanitation caused them concern, but one which they considered affecting the standing of a believing Jew in the sight of God. Mark explains the difficulty on account of his Roman readers. It was the custom of the Pharisees and of all the strict Jews that observed the traditions of the elders religiously to perform certain washings, especially before partaking of food. The original purpose of this precept had undoubtedly been to promote sanitary conditions among the Jews, a fact which often shielded them against epidemics," But the Pharisees and elders at the time of Jesus emphasized such outward observances to the detriment and exclusion of the more important things, the factors of real religion. They washed their hands most diligently before eating, with their fists, to insure thoroughness or to prevent the soiling of one hand from the palm of the other. They were careful, at the same time, to have the washing extend at least to the wrist, according to others to the elbow. It must be vigorous and thorough, and be done just so, otherwise a person became guilty of not clinging firmly to the tradition of the elders, a most heinous offense in the sight of the orthodox Pharisee. When coming back from market especially, where they might unknowingly have touched something unclean, the strict Jews were most inexorable and oppressive in their demands for cleanliness, a thorough washing of the hands and arms, if not of the whole body, being a prime requisite at that time. This care had become so excessive that it extended to the dishes and the furniture of the house as a matter of Levitical purification. They had received, and adhered most firmly to, the tradition regarding the washing of drinking-cups, of wooden and brazen vessels, and even of couches or sofas. The word used here for utensils of brass is really a Latin word, meaning a Roman measure equal to about 1 ½ pints. Earthen vessels are not mentioned, since they had to be broken if defiled, Lev 15:12. Thus the whole life of the Jews, down to the most minute performances of every-day life, was governed by such laws and precepts. Having explained the Jewish custom, Mark returns to his story. The Pharisees attack Jesus, finding fault both with His disciples and therefore with Him for transgressing the traditions of the elders, which were thus represented as just as sacred and inviolable as the commandments of God.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1–2 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Jesus rebukes the Pharisees and scribes.
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gathered around him
"gathered around Jesus"
translationWords
Pharisee
scribe
Jerusalem
Jesus
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1–2 7:1-23 This account has no direct connection with what…
7:1-23 This account has no direct connection with what precedes it. It assumes only a context such as “Once in the ministry of Jesus.” After setting the scene (7:1-4), Mark introduces the Pharisees’ question (7:5), followed by Jesus’ response (7:6-23). The first part of Jesus’ response (7:6-13) centers around two Old Testament passages and a twofold attack on the Pharisees’ traditions (7:6-8, 9-13). In the second part (7:14-23), Jesus teaches about what does and does not truly defile.
7:1 Readers already know that the Pharisees and teachers of religious law were hostile to Jesus (see 2:16, 24; 3:6, 22).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.