he shall not honor his father or mother.’ You have made the commandment of God void because of your tradition.
Parallel Translations
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he shall not honor his father or mother.’ You have made the commandment of God void because of your tradition.
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and so shall he not honoure his father or his mother. And thus haue ye made that the commaundment of God is with out effecte through youre tradicions.
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Though hee honour not his father, or his mother, shalbe free: thus haue ye made the commandement of God of no aucthoritie by your tradition.
Cross-references (10)
Passages linked to Matthew 15:6 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- 1 Timothy 5:8 But if anyone doesn’t provide for his own, and especially his own household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.
- Jeremiah 8:8 “ ‘How do you say, “We are wise, and Yahweh’s law is with us?” But, behold, the false pen of the scribes has made that a lie.
- Psalms 119:126 It is time to act, Yahweh, for they break your law.
- Mark 7:13 making void the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down. You do many things like this.”
- Psalms 119:139 My zeal wears me out, because my enemies ignore your words.
- Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you may be no priest to me. Because you have forgotten your God’s law, I will also forget your children.
- Malachi 2:7-9 For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of Yahweh of Armies. But you have turned away from the path. You have caused many to stumble in the law. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi,” says Yahweh of Armies. “Therefore I have also made you contemptible and wicked before all the people, according to the way you have not kept my ways, but have had respect for persons in the law.
- Romans 3:31 Do we then nullify the law through faith? May it never be! No, we establish the law.
- 1 Timothy 5:3-4 Honor widows who are widows indeed. But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let them learn first to show piety toward their own family and to repay their parents, for this is acceptable in the sight of God.
- 1 Timothy 5:16 If any man or woman who believes has widows, let them relieve them, and don’t let the assembly be burdened, that it might relieve those who are widows indeed.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (10 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain You made it of no power and authority as…
You made it of no power and authority as much as lay in you: for otherwise the commandments of God stand fast in the Church of God, in despite of the world and Satan.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 6 And honour not his father or his mother,…
6 And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.
Ver. 6. And honour not his father and his mother] Supple, insons erit. Our Saviour contents himself to relate the first words only of the tradition, as lawyers use to do the first words of the statute or canon they quote or argue upon.
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Thus have you made the commandment of none effect] {a} Ye have sought to shoulder God out of his throne, to divest and spoil him of his rule and authority, to ungod him, as it were, by making his commandment void and invalid. And do not Papists as much as all this, while they teach that a monk may not leave his cloister to relieve his father, but must rather see and suffer him to die for hunger in the streets. Lyra hath these very words, Filius per professionem factam in religione, excusatur a subveniendo parentibus. This Lyra was a famous English Jew, but an arrant Papist, as for the most part all were then, for he flourished A.D. 1320.
{a} ηκυρωσατε, of α and κυρος, rule, authority.
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.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain And he shall not honour; that is, assist his…
And he shall not honour; that is, assist his father or his mother. It is doubtful whether these may not be the words of the Pharisees; but they rather seem the words of our Saviour Christ, especially seeing that in St. Mark, Christ himself adds: And, farther, you suffer him not to do any thing for his father or mother, making void the word of God by your tradition. (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).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain And honour not his father or his mother, he…
And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free--that is, It is true, father--mother--that by giving to thee this, which I now present, thou mightest be profited by me; but I have gifted it to pious uses, and therefore, at whatever cost to thee, I am not now at liberty to alienate any portion of it. "And," it is added in Mark (Mar 7:12), "ye suffer him no more to do aught for his father or his mother." To dedicate property to God is indeed lawful and laudable, but not at the expense of filial duty.
Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect--cancelled or nullified it "by your tradition."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 6. He shall be free — These words, let…
6. He shall be free — These words, let it be observed, are printed in italics. This means that they are not in the original Greek, but are inserted by the English translators on their own authority, in order to make sense. But it may be doubted whether they are properly inserted here. The whole sentence preceding this phrase may be thus rendered: “Whosoever shall say… It is a gift, etc., he may not honour his father or his mother.”
It is plain our Lord here holds that the fifth commandment requires of the child the duty, when needed, of providing a necessary support for the parent in his age. So the Jewish writer Philo says: “What the children have belongs to the parents.” So Solomon had declared before our Saviour.
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Pro_28:24 : “Whoso robbeth or withdraweth from father or mother, is the companion of the destroyer.” When we think how liable the Jewish child might be in a fit of anger to utter this corban or vow to starve his parent, it can be realized how likely the custom was to destroy the dutiful conduct of children to the parent. And yet these men thought it a terrible offence to God to eat without washing the hands! This reminds one of the strictness with which Romish priests compel their followers to eat no meat on Friday, but indulge them with comparative ease in thefts, falsehoods, or intemperance. Indeed, the Romish trust in tradition, derived from the fathers of the dark and ignorant ages, in depreciation of the Scriptures, is precisely the same crime over again that was committed by the Jewish doctors of our Lord’s day.
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 6. he shall be free] These words do not…
6. he shall be free] These words do not occur in the original, either here or in the parallel passage in Mark. It is as if the indignation of Jesus did not allow him to utter the words of acquittal. The silence is more eloquent than the utterance.
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 (6) He shall be free.—The words, as the italics…
(6) He shall be free.—The words, as the italics show, are not in the Greek, and if we follow the better reading, are not wanted to complete the sense. “Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me, he shall not honour (i.e., shall not support) his father or his mother.” The “honour” which the commandment enjoined was identified with the duty which was its first and most natural expression.
By your tradition.—As before, for the sake of. They had inverted the right relation of the two, and made the tradition an end, and not a means. St. Mark (Mar_7:9) gives what we cannot describe otherwise than as a touch of grave and earnest irony, in the truest and best sense of that word, “Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own traditions.”
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 And honour not his father or his mother, he…
And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. The last clause is not in the Greek; it is supplied by our translators, as it was in Coverdale"s version, to complete the apodosis. There are various methods of translating the passage. Retaining kai at the beginning of the sentence, some make these words the continuation of the gloss, "Whosoever shall say," etc., the apodosis being found in the sentence following. Others conceive an aposiopesis after "be profited by me," as if Christ refrained from pronouncing the hypocritical and indeed blasphemous words which completed the gloss. In this case the apodosis follows in ver. 6, kai , then such a one will not honour (timha ei , not timhsh), etc. The words are best taken as put into the Pharisees" mouth in the sense, "The man under those circumstances shall not honour," etc.; he is free from the obligation of helping his parents. The form of the sentence (ou mh with the future verb) is prohibitory rather than predictive, and implies, "he is forbidden to honour." Christ thus sharply emphasizes the contradiction between God"s Law and man"s perversion thereof. St. Mark has, "Ye no longer suffer him to do aught for his father." Thus; kai in the apodosis, removing the full stop before it in the Authorized Version. This is our Lord"s own saying. Made...of none effect. Evacuated its real force and spirit. By; owing to, for the sake of, as St. Mark says, "that ye may keep your tradition." Our translators often mistake the meaning of the preposition dia with the accusative, which never signifies "by means of.
The evil influence of man-made rules.
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"Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition." Sincerely enough, and with a view to helping the people to apply the revealed principles of truth and duty, the national teachers had begun to supply commentaries on, and applications of, the Holy Scriptures. These became ever more and more elaborate; controversies were excited by them, and an authority was claimed for the minute, man-made rule rather than for the comprehensive and searching principle. One part of our Lord"s mission was to liberate men from the painful and worryful pressure of these man-made rules, and recover for man the genuine unalloyed moral force on moral beings of God"s commands. It was sometimes necessary for him to be severe in dealing with the claims made on behalf of traditions. We can but little conceive how religion was affected, in our Lord"s time, by a mere ritual that was so comprehensive, so minute, and yet so ridiculous, that it must have made men hate the very name of religion.
I MAN-MADE RELIGIOUS RULES ARE ATTRACTIVE TO MEN. It may be said, to all men. It can with confidence be said, to some men. There are, in every age and society, persons who prefer to have their religion done for them; who cannot, and will not, bear the burden of personal responsibility. They ask to have their conduct arranged by rules. And there have always been those who were willing to meet their requests, and to claim authority for so doing. It is a seemingly easy way in which to get through the difficult business of religion, if only it could be made satisfactory; but that it can never be. In all ages, and today, the man-made rules are sure to "make the Word of God of none effect." They are sure to push God out of those direct and personal relations which he bears to each one.
II MAN-MADE RELIGIOUS RULES ARE RUINOUS FOR MEN. If they could keep them as mere helps and guides, all would be well. But that is just what man has never been able to do. Man-made rules are always pushing out of their place, and into a place which does not properly belong to them. The following points may be worked out and illustrated.
1. Man-made rules shift the basis of authority in religion from God to man, from the true authority to an altogether false one.
2. Man-made rules exaggerate the place of self in religion. For the authority of man is only the authority of idealized self.
3. Man-made rules substitute a religion of hand (conduct) for the religion of the heart. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 6. Ye have void the word of God by…
6. Ye have void the word of God by your tradition. Modern Pharisaism does the same. Church tradition leads to dogmas that set aside God's commands. The corruption of the simplicity of early Christianity is due to following human tradition.
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.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 15:6 cancel: Because of a greater commitment to their…
15:6 cancel: Because of a greater commitment to their traditions, the Pharisees in effect rendered God’s law nonbinding, turning their piety into sinful disregard for the word of God.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.