Mark 7:2-4

‘And had seen that some of his disciples ate their bread with defiled, that is, unwashed hands. For the Pharisees and all the Judaisers do not eat unless they ceremonially wash with the fist, holding the traditions of the elders. And when they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they douse (or ‘purify') themselves. And there are many other things which they have received to hold, drenchings of cups and pots and brass vessels.'

The first thing that caught the attention of these ‘pious men' was that some of Jesus' disciples were not observing the correct ritual with regard to cleanliness of the hands. And because they considered that to lie at the heart of being righteous it offended them deeply. It made them ‘hot under the collar'. For someone who failed to fulfil the correct ritual would almost certainly end up ritually unclean.

The initial point to note here is that this criticism of ‘some of His disciples' brings out that Jesus Himself did observe these religious requirements. He did not set at nought these people's cherished beliefs. Nor were they directly accusing Him of such a failure. Outwardly they had no case against Him Himself, as they acknowledged.

But what did stir Him to the attack was the fact that these great men of the Law, who were responsible for the teaching of the Jews, were laying more store on their own ritual requirements than on what mattered far more, fairness, human sympathy and obedience to God's word and certain other aspects of the Books of Moses, and were intent on making their own requirements the basis for any future kingdom.

And He was also well aware that they had not come to give guidance in a positive way, but in order to attack and undermine His ministry. They were not saying, ‘let us come together and discuss how best the Kingly Rule of God can be established', but rather ‘you are guilty of going about it the wrong way and are therefore fit only to be condemned'.

‘With unwashed hands.' This lay at the centre of the argument for it was not of course a question of whether to wash the hands before meals for hygienic purposes (although it undoubtedly aided hygiene), but rather was a question of ritual washing to remove ‘religious defilement', that is, the contact with what was ritually doubtful and ceremonially unclean. Indeed they laid great stress on these requirements. But in fact this particular ritual washing described here was an addition to the Law, for it was nowhere commanded in the Old Testament.

So these men were not excited about this new interest in God which was being aroused, and the new sense of sin which was bringing men to repentance and morally and spiritually changing their lives, they were simply out to maintain the status quo, and were there to drag people back into a pool of ritualism.

Mark then briefly pointed out to his Gentile readers some of the other similar requirements of the Pharisees to do with the washing of pots and cooking and drinking vessels.

Of what then did such defilement consist? To the Pharisees all Gentiles were unclean for a start, for they did not observe any of the rules of ‘cleanness' (Leviticus 11-15) and were not careful about contact with dead things. Furthermore anything touched by them also became unclean (hollow vessels only if touched on the inside). And what was true of Gentiles was also, although not to the same extent, true of ‘sinners'. A ‘sinner' was someone who did not tithe rightly or follow the strict purification requirements of the Pharisees. While they may mainly observe the requirements of the Books of Moses, they did not do so in the terms laid down by the Pharisees. To come in contact with either of these two groups, Gentiles and ‘sinners' was to be defiled. The Scribal views thus excluded them from close contact with the majority of people.

According to their ideas if a man went to the marketplace he may well accidentally be ‘contaminated' by contact with such people (although he would make every effort to avoid them) and would therefore need to make himself clean in accordance with the teachings of the Pharisees. In order to do so he would need to follow out the procedures for ritual washing before he ate his meal. It was a world of religious isolation.

It should be carefully observed that this argument is not about the Levitical requirements with respect to cleanness. There anyone who touched a dead body became unclean, as did anyone who touched a woman after child birth or a skin-diseased person, or a woman during her period, or a leper, or an unclean animal. And anyone who touched anyone who had touched any of these was unclean, and so on. If such an unclean person had touched cups, or pots (measures) or brass vessels these utensils too might have become unclean depending on where they were touched by something or someone unclean. These too had to be specially cleansed. And of course, if there was any doubt at all about whether they were clean, they had to be cleansed. In some cases, such as contact with death, the cleansing took seven days, for others it only lasted until the evening, but this is not what the argument is about. Both sets of people conformed with these requirements. There was no dispute about that. It was the question of ritual washings of the hands and of cooking utensils that was in question here, and of whether this should be central to the teaching concerning the Kingly Rule of God.

The Pharisees believed that because of the possibility of unknown contamination by persons who were ritually unclean or by some other unclean source it was necessary to wash both before every meal and in between courses. And this involved a complicated process. The water for washing had to be taken from large stone jars which had been kept ‘clean' so that the water itself was kept ‘clean'. Such water could be used for no other purpose. First all dirt had to be removed. Then the hands might be held with the fingers pointed upwards and water was poured over them, having to run down to at least the wrist. Then while the hands were wet each had to be cleansed, seemingly with ‘the fist' of the other, probably by the joint action of rubbing the palm over the fist. But the water was now unclean so the hands were then held downwards and water poured over them again so that it began at the wrists and ran off the end of the fingers. That was one way of doing it.

Alternately this might all be done by dipping the hands up to the wrist in a vessel containing clean water, again apparently rubbing on ‘the fist'. Then the hands were clean.

And if you went on a journey you had to ensure that you had the means to do this. This was what the Pharisees required, and this was what these accused disciples had failed to do (the phrase ‘some of the disciples' may not mean that the twelve were included. ‘Disciples' can mean the twelve, but it can also include the wider group. It is not a strictly defined number).

‘By the fist.' (pugme). Various alternative renderings are suggested, ‘up to the elbow' - ‘diligently' (so a Syriac version) - ‘often' (pukna) as in some MSS, but rubbing the palm on the fist seems quite natural and we can therefore accept ‘by the fist'. The alternatives are clearly to avoid the difficulty when looking at it generally.

‘The Pharisees and the Judaisers.' The Pharisees and ‘the Jews', those who followed Pharisaic teaching on the matter and saw themselves as true Jews, and saw those who did not agree with them as not being true Jews. Any of the common people who did not do this were seen as ‘sinners'.

‘The traditions of the elders.' These included past decisions of Scribes, some made long before the time of Christ, on the teaching in the first five books of the Bible (‘The Torah or Law'). These formed the oral law and had been remembered by rote and passed on, and were subsequently recorded (as considerably expanded later) in the Mishnah in the second century AD. They covered many aspects of life in great detail and had to be assiduously learned by the pious Jew to ensure he always did the ‘right' thing. Not necessarily morally right as we shall see, but religiously right. There were over six hundred of these ‘instructions'.

But what began as a helpful interpretation of Scripture had slowly developed into a hotchpotch of regulations which so interpreted the Law as to make it seemingly attainable, although only with great effort, and crowded out consideration of more important matters. It was a manipulation of the Law so that they would be able to ‘keep the covenant' faithfully, and establish their own righteousness to their own satisfaction.

Paul had been like this. He pointed out that he had striven to attain ‘the righteousness of the Law' and had seen himself as almost there, as blameless (Philippians 3:6). And then he had come across the commandment, “You shall not covet” and had looked in his heart and had discovered that he was still guilty (Romans 7:7), and that all his carefully built up righteousness had come crashing down. He had recognised that all his careful observances of ritual law had not made his heart and will pure, and that all his efforts had been in vain.