Thematic Bible: He justifies his disciples in eating without washing their hands (at capernaum)


Thematic Bible



Then Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying, "Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? They do not wash their hands when they take their food." He replied, "And why do you transgress the command of God with your traditions? read more.
God enjoined, Honour your father and mother, and, He who curses his father or mother is to suffer death. But you say, whoever tells his father or mother, 'This money might have been at your service but it is dedicated to God,' need not honour his father or mother. So you have repealed the law of God to suit your own tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah made a grand prophecy about you when he said, This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me: vain is their worship of me, for the doctrines they teach are but human precepts." Then he called the crowd and said to them, "Listen, understand this: it is not what enters a man's mouth that defiles him, what defiles a man is what comes out of his mouth." Then the disciples came up and said to him, "Do you know that the Pharisees have taken offence at what they hear you say?" He replied, "Any plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind, and if one blind man leads another, both of them will fall into a pit." Peter answered, "Explain this parable to us at anyrate." He said, "And are you totally ignorant? Do you not see how all that enters the mouth passes into the belly and is then thrown out into the drain, while what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart ??and that is what defiles a man. For out of the heart come evil designs, murder, adultery, sexual vice, stealing, false witness, and slander. That is what defiles a man; a man is not defiled by eating with hands unwashed!"

Now the Pharisees gathered to meet him, with some scribes who had come from Jerusalem. They noticed that some of his disciples ate their food with 'common' (that is, unwashed) hands. (The Pharisees and all the Jews decline to eat till they wash their hands up to the wrist, in obedience to the tradition of the elders; read more.
they decline to eat what comes from the market till they have washed it; and they have a number of other traditions to keep about washing cups and jugs and basins [and beds].) Then the Pharisees and scribes put this question to him, "Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders? Why do they take their food with 'common' hands?" He said to them, "Isaiah made a grand prophecy about you hypocrites ??as it is written, This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me: vain is their worship of me, for the doctrines they teach are but human precepts. You drop what God commands and hold to human tradition. Yes, forsooth," he added, "you set aside what God commands, so as to maintain your own tradition. Thus, Moses said, Honour your father and mother, and, He who curses his father or mother is to suffer death. But you say that if a man tells his father or mother, 'This money might have been at your service, but it is Korban' (that is, dedicated to God), he is exempt, so you hold, from doing anything for his father or mother. That is repealing the word of God in the interests of the tradition which you keep up. And you do many things like that." Then he called the crowd to him again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand this: nothing outside a man can defile him by entering him; it is what comes from him that defiles him. If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen to this." Now when he went indoors away from the crowd, his disciples asked him the meaning of this parabolic saying. He said to them, "So you do not understand, either? Do you not see how nothing outside a man can defile him by entering him? It does not enter his heart but his belly and passes from that into the drain" (thus he pronounced all food clean). "No," he said, "it is what comes from a man, that is what defiles him. From within, from the heart of man, the designs of evil come: sexual vice, stealing, murder, adultery, lust, malice, deceit, sensuality, envying, slander, arrogance, recklessness, all these evils issue from within and they defile a man."