Mark 7 Bible study: From within

Mark stops the story to explain. Some of Jesus's disciples were "eating bread with defiled, that is unwashed, hands" (7:2), and Mark adds, in parentheses in the WEB, "For the Pharisees and all the Jews don’t eat unless they wash their hands and forearms, holding to the tradition of the elders" (7:3), and "there are many other things which they have received to hold to: washings of cups, pitchers, bronze vessels, and couches" (7:4). Then the Pharisees and the scribes ask, "Why don’t your disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with unwashed hands?" (7:5) (tap tradition). Here is what almost everyone misses: the tradition of the elders is Mark's phrase (7:3) and theirs (7:5), and Jesus never uses it. He calls it "the tradition of men" (7:8) and "your tradition" (7:9, 7:13), and he sets it against "the commandment of God" (7:8, 7:9) and "the word of God" (7:13). These notes add nothing to Mark's own explanation of the washings.

Exodus 20:12→leads toMark 7:9-13

"Honor your father and your mother" (20:12). Jesus quoted it against a tradition under which a man who called his help "Corban", "that is to say, given to God" (Mark 7:11), was no longer allowed "to do anything for his father or his mother" (Mark 7:12): "For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother;’" (Mark 7:10), and he said they were "making void the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down" (Mark 7:13). In Matthew he says, "For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’" (Matthew 15:4).

κοινόωkoinoosay koy-NO-o

Strong's: "to make (or consider) profane (ceremonially)". Thayer, in its biblical use: "to make (levitically) unclean, render unhallowed, defile, profane". Jesus says it to the whole multitude: "There is nothing from outside of the man that going into him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of the man are those that defile the man" (7:15). He says it again to his disciples (7:18, 7:20), and ends, "All these evil things come from within and defile the man" (7:23). Mark's Greek has the verb five times, all in these four verses. Strong's gives it as formed from koinos, the word behind defiled in "defiled, that is unwashed, hands" (7:2).