Mark 7:8-13

“…. You leave the commandments of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honour your father and your mother’; and ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”‘ (that is, given to God) – then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

God revealed his commandments through Moses, but Jewish religion had traditions added by their ‘lamas’, the Pharisees.

Jesus points out the expert hypocrisy of the Pharisees. He does so by showing that their tradition of making a Corban vow to give money for the enrichment of the temple actually forces a man to disobey God’s command to honour one’s parents!

Mark 7:6-8

And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

  You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”

Yeshu said, “You want men to hold fast to all the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ that you have invented. Your rituals are not real worship of God, but are like play-acting.”

Mark 7:1-5

Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands, holding to the traditions of the elders, and when they come from the market-place, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”.

See how these representatives of the religious authorities were quick to criticize the disciples as an excuse for finding fault with Yeshu himself. How could he let them be so unholy!

They insisted that in order to be godly, people (even those who seemed like nomads to them) should keep all the multiple details of their own invented traditions.