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Mat_15:13. The correct interpretation is the ordinary one (being also that of Ewald and Keim), according to which φυτεία is taken as a figurative way of expressing the teaching. The fact of Jesus having attacked their teaching, in Mat_15:11, had given offence to the Pharisees. Consequently He now explains why it is that He does not spare such teaching: every doctrine, He says, that is not of God, that is merely human in its origin, will pass away and perish, as the result, that is, of the Messianic reformation which is in the course of developing itself. Nothing is said about the Pharisees personally (whom Chrysostom supposes to be included in what is said about the teaching) till Mat_15:14. This in answer to Fritzsche, Olshausen, de Wette, Hilgenfeld, Bleek, who find in the words a prediction of the extirpation of the Pharisees (“characters of this stamp will soon have played out their game,” de Wette). What is expressed figuratively by means of πᾶσα φυτεία , ἣν οὐκ ἐφύτευσεν ὁ πατήρ μου , is the same thing that, in Mat_15:9, is designated literally as διδασκαλίας ἐντάλματα ἀνθρώπων .
On φυτεία , planting (Plat. Theag. p. 121 C; Xen. Oec. vii. 20, xix. 1), i.e. in this instance: something planted, comp. Ignatius, ad Philad. III. ad Trall. xi, where, however, it is not used with regard to false teaching, but with reference to false teachers. In classic Greek the form is φύτευμα , or φυτόν .