Mark 7:1 Commentary and Bible Study

The Lord has come up to Capernaum from Jerusalem, and the Pharisees and the scribes – this seems to be an official delegation – have come to watch him, to find fault, perhaps to gather evidence against him. Their Jerusalem origin is noted. They are assembling material with which to accuse him, to try to build a case against him. They saw some of the disciples eat bread without having washed their hands in the manner that was customary for the Jews. Without a ceremonial hand wash you would be ceremonially unclean. This is how they had come to think, in absurd and preposterous ways. A lot of these detailed customs were quite late. They started to come in after the seventy years of captivity in Babylon. The remnant of Jews returned to Jerusalem and Judah, and from that time on, they began to pick up all kinds of additional customs. Of course their leaders, the rabbis and the priests, felt that these ceremonies explained and carried out the requirements of the law, but they didn't. They were human inventions of all kinds of things, and you read here about the cleansing of pots and of cups and of brass vessels, and even of couches. The great complexity of extra ceremonial was added by human invention, and the Pharisees were very concerned about this. ‘How can Jesus of Nazareth possibly be a prophet, in spite of his miracles, when he does not teach our traditions? They slandered him and spoke against him: ‘How can he possibly be an authentic prophet from God or even the Messiah, as some claim, if his disciples do not keep the rules of the elders, the extra biblical ceremonies and traditions acquired in more recent centuries?’ ‘And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault.’ They seemed to have assigned members of their delegation even to watch the disciples. Did they observe the law and the requirements of the Jewish leaders? This passage explains the difference between outward righteousness – which is what those Jewish leaders were aiming at – and purity of heart which comes only through God’s work within us. There is all the difference in the world between what sadly Judaism had become – a matter of ritual – and a real relationship with God.