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MARK CHAPTER 7
Mar_7:1-13 The Pharisees finding fault with his disciples for
eating with unwashen hands, Christ reproveth them of
hypocrisy, and of making void the commandments of God
by the traditions of men.
Mar_7:14-23 He teacheth that a man is defiled, not by that which
entereth in, but by that which cometh out of him.
Mar_7:24-30 He healeth the daughter of a Syrophenician woman,
Mar_7:31-37 and a man that was deaf and had an impediment in his speech.
Ver. 1-13. See Poole on "Mat_15:1", and following verses to Mat_15:9. By the notion of traditions, our Saviour understandeth not such things as were delivered to them by God in his law, but such things as were delivered to them by the elders, that is, their rulers in the church in the former times; for, Mar_7:9, he opposeth traditions to God’s commandments, and said the latter were neglected by their zeal for the former: to give countenance to which traditions, as the papists would impose upon us to believe, that Christ communicated some things to his apostles, and they to the primitive churches, by word of mouth, which have been so transmitted from age to age; so the Jews pretended that God communicated his will in some things to Moses, which Moses did not publish to the people. And as the former pretend a power by Christ left to the church to determine rituals; so the Pharisees (their true predecessors) pretended a suchlike power. Amongst others, besides the divers washings mentioned by the apostle, Heb_9:10, amongst the carnal ordinances, imposed only until the time of reformation, they had invented many other washings, as sepimenta legis, hedges to the Divine law. They washed their hands often, when they came from market, or before they did eat, not for decency and neatness, but out of religion, lest they should have been defiled by touching any heathens, or any polluted things; and not their hands only, but their pots and cups, their beds and tables, and brazen vessels; as indeed there is no stop, when once men have passed the hedge of the Divine institution, of which popery is a plentiful instance, where it is hard to discern an ordinance of God in the rubbish of their superstitious traditions. And it is very observable, that superstitious men are always more fond of, and zealous for, the traditions of men in their worship, than keeping the commandments of God. It is with the papists more heinous to violate Lent than to violate the sabbath; for a priest to marry than to commit whoredom. This zeal in them ordinarily produces a neglect, or slight esteem, of the plain commandments of God. So it did in the Pharisees, Mar_7:9; upon which our Saviour calleth them hypocrites, Mar_7:6, and telleth them this worshipping of God was vain, sinful, and idle, and impertinent; there was in it a derogating from the authority of God, and arrogating of an undue authority to themselves, by their commands making those things necessary which are not so; and, as commonly it happeneth, when human inventions are over urged and multiplied, some are urged destructive of the Divine law, so it was with those Pharisees; so they had done as to the fifth commandment, of which we have spoken plentifully: See Poole "Mat_15:4", and following verses to Mat_15:6. Our Saviour goeth on, showing their ignorance and blindness, in imagining that any person could be defiled by eating with unwashen hands.