XV. (1) SCRIBES AND PHARISEES, WHICH WERE OF JERUSALEM. — The presence of these actors on the scene is every way significant. They had been prominent in like accusations. It was by them that our Lord had been accused of blasphemy in forgiving sins (Matthew 9:3), of eating and drinking with publicans... [ Continue Reading ]
THEY WASH NOT THEIR HANDS WHEN THEY EAT BREAD. — St. Mark (Mark 7:3), writing for Gentiles, explains the nature of the tradition more fully. What the Pharisees insisted on was not cleanliness as such, but the avoidance of ceremonial pollution. They shrank not from dirt, but from defilement. If they... [ Continue Reading ]
BY YOUR TRADITION. — Better, _for the sake of your tradition._ Our Lord’s answer, it will be noted, is an indirect one, an _argumentum ad hominem._ He shows that their traditional casuistry was in direct opposition to the “commandment” of God, and the natural inference from that antagonism was that... [ Continue Reading ]
GOD COMMANDED, SAYING, HONOUR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER. — At first it might seem as if our Lord Himself, no less than the Pharisees, had taught men to think lightly of the commandment on which He now lays stress. He had called on men to forsake father and mother for the sake of the gospel (Matthew... [ Continue Reading ]
IT IS A GIFT. — St. Mark (Mark 7:11) gives the Hebrew term, Corban, which was literally applied to that which had been consecrated — theoretically to God, practically to the service or ornamentation of the Temple. In Matthew 27:6, the treasury of the Temple is itself called the Corban. The casuistry... [ Continue Reading ]
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 no... [ Continue Reading ]
YE HYPOCRITES. — See Note on Matthew 7:5.... [ Continue Reading ]
THIS PEOPLE DRAWETH NIGH UNTO ME. — The quotation is given substantially from the Greek version of Isaiah. We have already seen in Matthew 13:14 how the Pharisees were taught to see their own likeness in the language of the prophet. Now the mirror is held up once more, and they are seen to have been... [ Continue Reading ]
TEACHING FOR DOCTRINES THE COMMANDMENTS OF MEN. — Neither word is quite adequately rendered. The “doctrines” are not articles of faith, propositions to be believed, but precepts which were taught as binding. The “commandments” are single, special rules as contrasted with the divine “commandment,” wh... [ Continue Reading ]
HE CALLED THE MULTITUDE, AND SAID UNTO THEM. — The act was more startling and suggestive than appears on the surface. He did not appeal to the authority of great names or of a higher tribunal. He removed the case, as it were, to another court, which His opponents did not recognise, and turned from t... [ Continue Reading ]
NOT THAT WHICH GOETH INTO THE MOUTH. — Up to this time the question had been debated indirectly. The scribes had been convicted of unfitness to speak with authority on moral questions. Now a great broad principle is asserted, which not only cut at the root of Pharisaism, but, in its ultimate tendenc... [ Continue Reading ]
THEN CAME HIS DISCIPLES. — The sequence of events appears in Mark 7:17. The Pharisees drew back as in holy horror at the boldness with which the new Teacher set Himself, not only above their traditions, but above laws which they looked on as divine, and therefore permanent. The multitude heard in si... [ Continue Reading ]
EVERY PLANT, WHICH MY HEAVENLY FATHER HATH NOT PLANTED. — The disciples could hardly fail to connect the words with the parable which they had heard so lately. The system and the men that they had been taught to regard as pre-eminently religious were, after all, in their Master’s judgment, as the ta... [ Continue Reading ]
THEY BE BLIND LEADERS OF THE BLIND. — It would appear from Romans 2:19 that the phrase was one in common use to describe the ideal of the Rabbi’s calling. Now they heard it in a new form, which told them that their state was the very reverse of that ideal. And that which was worst in it was that the... [ Continue Reading ]
DECLARE UNTO US THIS PARABLE. — The answer shows that Peter’s question referred not to the proverb that immediately preceded, but to what seemed to him the strange, startling utterance of Matthew 15:11. It was significant that he could not as yet take in the thought that it was a truth to be receive... [ Continue Reading ]
ARE YE ALSO YET WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING? — The pronoun is emphatic: “Ye, My disciples, who have heard from My lips the spiritual nature of My kingdom, are _ye_ too, like the Pharisees, still such backward scholars?”... [ Continue Reading ]
IS CAST OUT INTO THE DRAUGHT. — The word is used in its old English meaning, as equivalent to drain, sewer, cesspool (see 2 Kings 10:27). St. Mark (Mark 7:19) adds the somewhat perplexing words, “purging all meats,” on which see Note on that verse. The principle implied is that a process purely phys... [ Continue Reading ]
EVIL THOUGHTS,... BLASPHEMIES. — The plural form points to the manifold variety of the forms of guilt under each several head. The order is in some measure an ascending one, beginning with the “thoughts,” or rather trains of thought, which are the first suggestions of evil, and ending in the “blasph... [ Continue Reading ]
INTO THE COASTS OF TYRE AND SIDON. — St. Mark (Mark 7:31) says (in the best MSS.) our Lord passed, after the miracle, “through Sidon,” and so we have the one recorded exception to that self-imposed law of His ministry which kept Him within the limits of the land of Israel. To the disciples it might... [ Continue Reading ]
A WOMAN OF CANAAN. — The terms Canaanite and Canaan, which in the earlier books of the Old Testament were often applied in a wider sense to all the original inhabitants of what was afterwards the land of Israel (Genesis 10:18; Genesis 12:6; Judges 1:10), were used more specifically of Phœnicia and i... [ Continue Reading ]
HE ANSWERED HER NOT A WORD. — Two alternative views present themselves as to our Lord’s action in this matter. That which has found favour with nearly all ancient and most modern interpreters assumes that from the first He had purposed to comply with her request, and spoke as He did only to test and... [ Continue Reading ]
I AM NOT SENT (better, _I was not sent_) BUT UNTO THE LOST SHEEP OF THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL. — This, then, was what had restrained Him. Those wandering sheep, without a shepherd, were the appointed objects of His care. Were He to go beyond that limit in a single case, it might be followed by a thousand,... [ Continue Reading ]
THEN CAME SHE AND WORSHIPPED HIM. — The word implies the act of prostrate homage. She had apparently stood apart during the conversation between the Prophet and His disciples, and now came again, renewing her passionate entreaty.... [ Continue Reading ]
TO CAST IT TO DOGS. — The word used was diminutive in its form, and as such pointed not to the wild, unclean beasts that haunt the streets of an Eastern city (Psalms 59:6), but to the tamer animals that were bred in the house, and kept as pets. The history of Tobias and his dog, in the Apocrypha, fu... [ Continue Reading ]
TRUTH, LORD: YET THE DOGS EAT OF THE CRUMBS. — The insertion of the conjunction “for” in the Greek gives it a force which it is hard to reproduce in English, “Yet grant what I ask, for the dogs under the table...” The woman catches at the form which had softened the usual word of scorn, and presses... [ Continue Reading ]
O WOMAN, GREAT IS THY FAITH. — The answer of the woman changed the conditions of the problem, and therefore, we may reverently add, changed the purpose which depended on them. Here again, as in the case of the centurion, our Lord found a faith greater than He had met with in Israel. The woman was, i... [ Continue Reading ]
JESUS DEPARTED FROM THENCE. — As St. Mark (in the better MSS.) gives the narrative, His journey led Him actually through Sidon. It was the one instance in which He visited a distinctly heathen city, and walked by the shore of the Great Sea, and looked out towards the isles of Chittim, the isles of t... [ Continue Reading ]
BLIND, DUMB. — St. Mark (Mark 7:31) relates one memorable instance of a work of healing in this connection. Here we get a great aggregate of miracles, unrecorded in detail, working on the minds of the multitude, and leading them to repeated utterances of praise in the form of a doxology — they “glor... [ Continue Reading ]
I HAVE COMPASSION ON THE MULTITUDE. — The obvious resemblance between the details of this narrative and that of the feeding of the Five Thousand has led the schools of critics, who do not regard either as the record of a fact, to treat this as only another version of the same incident, or rather, fr... [ Continue Reading ]
HIS DISCIPLES SAY UNTO HIM. — Here, on the assumption that we are dealing with a true record, a difficulty of another kind meets us. How was it, we ask, that the disciples, with the memory of the former miracle still fresh in their recollection, should answer as before with the same child-like perpl... [ Continue Reading ]
SEVEN, AND A FEW LITTLE FISHES. — The resemblance of the answer to that which had been given before is, at least, interesting as showing what was the provision habitually made by the travelling company of preachers for the supply of their daily wants. The few barley loaves and dried fishes, this was... [ Continue Reading ]
HE COMMANDED THE MULTITUDE TO SIT DOWN ON THE GROUND. — Probably, with the same orderly precision as before, by hundreds and by fifties, the women and children, as we learn from Matthew 15:38, being in this instance also grouped together apart from the men.... [ Continue Reading ]
SEVEN BASKETS FULL. — The nature of the baskets has been explained above. As it is hardly likely that these could have been carried by the disciples on their journey, we must think of them as having been probably brought by some of the multitude to hold their provisions. The fact that the disciples... [ Continue Reading ]
INTO THE COASTS OF MAGDALA. — The better MSS. give the reading Magadan. The narrative implies that it was on the western shore of the lake, and it is probably to be identified with the modern village of _El Mejdel,_ about three miles above _Tabarieh_ (Tiberias). The name would seem to be an altered... [ Continue Reading ]