Traditional Barriers Removed
TRADITIONAL BARRIERS REMOVED
MATTHEW 15:1-20
Jesus never allowed his willingness to avoid confrontation to get in the way of his integrity.
The breach with the scribal establishment in Galilee is followed by a breach with representatives of the same establishment in Jerusalem itself, who came (at the invitation, perhaps, of their Galilean colleagues) to assess this disturbing movement and its suspect Leader. “The tradition of the elders” (15:2) was the cumulative corpus of oral law by which the written law of the Old Testament was interpreted, supplemented and applied to the changing circumstances of Jewish life. While its intention was to safeguard the written law, its effect could be to nullify some of its fundamental principles. Jesus interpreted the written law differently—by appealing to the purpose for which this or that commandment was originally given (cf. 12:1ff.; 19:3ff.).
The Jerusalem deputation’s criticism that Jesus’ disciples ignored the ritual hand-washing before eating (cf. Luke 11:38) attracts the counter-criticism that the tradition of the elders, by ruling that the law concerning vows (Deuteronomy 23:21-23) took precedence over reverence to parents, neutralized the fifth commandment (Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16; cf. also Exodus 21:17; Leviticus 20:9). Property vowed to God, it was ruled, must not be used for other purposes, and if, after making such a vow, a man had nothing left for helping his parents in need, that was too bad. (The spirit of Jesus’ criticism was generally accepted among the rabbis by the end of the first century ad, when the judgment prevailed that, if a vow adversely affected relations between parents and children, it might be annulled.) Such frustration of the divine intention is said (15:8f.) to fulfill Isaiah’s denunciation of his contemporaries who paid lip-service to God but failed to render him heart-obedience (Isaiah 29:13). This contradiction between lip and heart calls forth the designation “hypocrites” (15:7; cf. 6:2ff.). Pharisees themselves recognized the presence of a hypocritical element in their fellowship, and the Gospels do not suggest that the designation applied to Pharisees as a whole (cf. 23:13ff.). 15:13 is reminiscent of the parable of the weeds (13:24-30); with 15:14 cf. Luke 6:39 (also Matthew 23:16-24).
But the teaching of 15:10-20 goes farther than a criticism of the oral law; it amounts to an abrogation of the written law, so far as concerns its food-regulations. According to Leviticus 11, various kinds of forbidden meat were “unclean” and “abominable”; Jesus rules that defilement is conveyed not by food but by moral evil in thought, word and deed (including infringements of the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth commandments). The defilement that matters is ethical, not ritual. But this teaching set at naught not only the Pharisaic ideals of purification but (in principle, at least) the whole basis of separation between Jew and Gentile.