Matthew 15:2

“Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.”

The challenge of the deputation was immediately concerning what they saw as His most important failure, that of maintaining ritual purity among His disciples in accordance with the rules laid down by the Elders (leading men of old) of the past. Their charge was not against Him as such, which suggests that He usually (although not always - Luke 11:38) scrupulously sought to follow the principles that they saw as necessary. He did not want to cause offence unnecessarily. The charge here was that He was lax in not ensuring that His disciples did the same, and must therefore take responsibility for it.

This was not describing a hygienic washing of hands to remove dirt, but a formal ceremony of pouring water over the hands in a certain way which was thought to remove ritual defilement resulting from contact with defiled people or things, and was repeated throughout the meal. The belief was apparently that ritual ‘uncleanness' obtained through contact with an ‘unclean' world (which did not ritually purify itself) could be passed on to the food, which when eaten then made the inside of a man ‘unclean'. This was not Scriptural teaching. It took Scriptural teaching to extremes. The closest the Scriptures came to this was that eating an animal that ‘died of itself' rather than being properly slaughtered resulted in uncleanness. But there it was temporary uncleanness. The Pharisees saw the world as permanently unclean and feared partaking of that uncleanness when they ate. They overlooked the fact that Scripture had been concerned by its laws of uncleanness to inculcate wholesomeness of living to a fairly unsophisticated people, and to indicate that all that was in one way or another connected with death was unwholesome. They had instead turned the world into a permanently ritually unclean place.

Note on the Washing of Hands.

‘They do not wash their hands.' This lay at the centre of the argument. It was not, of course, a question of whether to wash the hands before meals for hygienic purposes (although it undoubtedly aided hygiene), but was rather a question of ritual washing to remove ‘religious defilement', that is, what resulted from 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 rather than being excited about this new interest in God which was being aroused by Jesus, and the new sense of sin which was bringing men to repentance and morally and spiritually changing their lives, they had come to drag Jesus down into the pool of detailed ritualism.

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' and ‘uncleanness' (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 similar defilement was seen, although not to the same extent, as being connected with ‘sinners'. A ‘sinner' was someone who did not tithe rightly or who did not follow the strict purification requirements of the Pharisees, or someone whose occupation resulted in regular uncleanness (e.g. a tanner). Thus while such people may mainly have observed 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 thus to be defiled. So their views necessarily excluded them from close contact with the majority of people.

According to them 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 afterwards to make himself clean in accordance with the teachings of the Pharisees. But the idea had been added that that uncleanness could then be passed on to the food that they ate and thus become internal. In order to avoid this therefore they needed to follow out the procedures for ritual washing before they ate each part of their meals. It was a world of religious isolation.

It should be carefully observed that this argument is not about the strict Levitical requirements with respect to cleanness. The Levitical requirements were mainly involved in a rather complicated way with the avoidance of anything tainted by death (or blood). God was the living God, and the wholesome way was the way of life. So 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. These too had to be specially cleansed. And of course, if there was any doubt at all they had to be cleansed. In some cases, such as contact specifically with death, the cleansing took seven days, for others it only lasted until the evening, but these ideas were not primarily what the argument was about. Both sets of people, disciples and Pharisees, conformed with these requirements. There was no dispute about that. It was the question of daily ritual washings of the hands that was in question here, and whether a man could become ‘unclean' as a result of the food that he ate, and of whether such things 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, and the way that that could be passed on, it was necessary to wash both before every meal and in between courses. And this involved a very 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 (a good principle). Then the hands might be held with the fingers pointed upwards and water was poured over them and had 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 ‘your disciples' may not necessarily 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).

‘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 were remembered by rote and passed on, and would subsequently be 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. The question was not necessarily of being morally right as we shall see, but of being religiously right. There were over six hundred of these ‘instructions'. Some were very helpful, but others were at the best pedantic and at the worst ridiculous. (So by citing some of these instructions we can make the Rabbis appear very wise, for they said some very sensible things, or totally foolish because they had often allowed themselves to stray into saying things that seemed right at the time but were in fact rather inane, as can so easily happen to regulations when pressed too far).

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. And sadly it was often a manipulation of the Law in order to enable them 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 therefore been in vain.

End of note.