Mark 7:3

except they wash their hands oft Oft, literally, with the fist. "When they washed their hands, they washed the fist unto the jointing of the arm. The hands are polluted, and made clean unto the jointing of the arm." Lightfoot Hor. Heb. upon St Mark. When water was poured on the hands, they had to be lifted, yet so that the water should neither run up above the wrist, nor back again upon the hand; best, therefore, by doubling the fingers into a fist. The Israelites, who, like other Oriental nations, fed with their fingers, washed their hands before meals, for the sake of cleanliness. But these customary washings were distinct from the ceremonial ablutions; in the former water was poured upon the hands;in the latter the hands were plunged in water. When, therefore, some of the Pharisees remarked that our Lord's disciples ate with "unwashen hands," it is not to be understood literally that they did not at all wash their hands, but that they did not wash them ceremoniallyaccording to their own practice. And this was expected of them only as the disciples of a religious teacher; for these refinements were not practised by the class of people from which the disciples were chiefly drawn.

eat not "The Jews of later times related with intense admiration how the Rabbi Akiba, when imprisoned and furnished with only sufficient water to maintain life, preferred to die of starvation rather than eat without the proper washings." Buxtorf, Syn. Jud.;quoted in Farrar's Life of Christ, i. p. 443; Geikie, ii. 203 205.

the tradition of the elders The Rabbinical rules about ablutions occupy a large portion of one section of the Talmud.