He responded, “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors me with their lips,but their hearts are far from me.
Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
v. 2. They observed that some of his
disciples ate their meals with unclean, that is, unwashed, hands.
v. 3. (For the Pharisees and, in fact, all
Jews, do not eat without carefully washing their hands, keeping the tradition
of the elders.
According to the Jewish experts in such
matters, the evidence of the Talmud (a written recension of the oral tradition.)
is that in the time of Jesus ritual washing of hands before meals was
obligatory only on the priests. An occasional 'pietist' might try to live, so
far as outward purity was concerned, as if he were a priest, but the ordinary
layman - including the Pharisee and the scribe - was not concerned with such
questions of religious defilement unless he was about to enter the temple
and-make a sacrifice. For this reason, the story as it stands can hardly be
historical.
It is agreed by everyone that, about A.D.
100, or a little later, ritual washing did begin to become obligatory on all;
such a change will not have been completely sudden, so may it not be that there
was already a strong move in this direction in the time of Jesus? If so, it
would certainly have found its chief supporters among scribes and Pharisees,
and they might well have expected a religious leader such as Jesus to exact the
highest standards from his followers. If that suggestion can be accepted, it
may preserve the historicity of the story itself, though it cannot save St
Mark's generalizing aside that the Pharisees, and all the Jews practised such
ritual washing, for the Talmudic evidence makes clear that, as a group, they
did not.
“The elders” (vv. 3 and 5):
Greek,
presbyteron, literally 'older men' or 'men of fairly advanced years', a word
used by the Greeks in many senses, mostly honorific, among them 'ancestors' or
'forefathers'; that may be the meaning here and the phrase would then mean:
'the ancient tradition of our race'. But probably the reference here is more
specific, to the 'honored Jewish teachers of the Law whose judgments were
handed down and were considered binding by the scribes and Pharisees.
v. 4. And on coming from the marketplace
they do not eat without purifying themselves. And there are many other things
that they have traditionally observed, the purification of cups and jugs and
kettles [and beds].)
A. Buchler has discovered some evidence
that Jews of the Diaspora who were constantly surrounded by Gentile 'impurity'
may have had quite strict rules about handwashing earlier than the Jews of Palestine;
in that case, St Mark may have assumed that customs common among the Jews known
to him were also current in Palestine.
The subject of vv. 1-13 is the propriety or
impropriety of obeying the Jewish oral tradition. Jesus' teaching on this
subject is not affected if St Mark in his comments, or even in his setting of
the scene, is not altogether accurate about some of the details of the
tradition.
v. 6. He responded, “Well did Isaiah
prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors me with
their lips,but their hearts are far from me;
v. 7. In vain do they worship me, teaching
as doctrines human precepts.’
v. 8. You disregard God’s commandment but
cling to human tradition.”
“Well did Isaiah, etc”.:
The meaning is
brought out in Moffatt's translation: “Yes, it was about you hypocrites indeed
that Isaiah prophesied”. The quotation is from Isa. 29:13 and, with some
modifications, follows the LXX version. It may well have been one of the texts
used by Greek-speaking Christians in their polemic against the Jews (cf. Col.
2:20ff. and Titus 1:14), and perhaps that was how St Mark came to hear of it
and insert it here. But even if the quotation is St Mark's, v. 8 may well
contain a word of Jesus. The style and attitude are entirely his (cf. Matt.
23:23); though, as suggested above, the words would be more devastating in a
context proving that the Pharisees actually disregarded the written Law in the
interests of their oral tradition.
v. 14. He summoned the crowd again and said
to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand."
In Mark a crowd is always waiting in the
wings, as it were, to be summoned on to the stage when needed.
v. 21. From within people, from their
hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,
v. 22. adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.
“Evil thoughts”:
“Designs of evil” not
merely evil thoughts but evil devising which issue in degraded acts and vices
which are now enumerated.
“Envy”:
Literally “the evil eye”; in Jewish
context ‘envy’ would probably be the correct translation, but if the list is of
Gentile provenance, a reference to the malevolent glance which casts a spell
cannot be ruled out.
