CHAPTER VII. JESUS EXPOSES THE PERVERSION OF THE LAW BY THE PHARISEES. Ver. 1-23. Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables. Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands? He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do. And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death: but ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered and many such like things do ye. And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: there is : : nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear. And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also ? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats? And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man. A T the time of our Saviour's coming into the world, the teachers and guides of the Jewish nation had perverted the Law of Moses by means of their traditions. Through this method of expounding Scripture they had made the Word of God of none. effect; first, by considering the forms and ceremonies of the Jewish dispensation as an ultimate end, and effectual in themselves, without reference to the morality and true inward religion which they were designed to aid, and keep up: secondly, by obscuring and destroying the prophetic picture exhibited in them, whereby our Lord was to be recognized when he came as their promised Messiah. Hence their obstinate blindness to his miracles, and their persevering expectation of a temporal ruler and deliverer. The origin of these traditions is uncertain. They appear to have been the gradual accumulation of commentaries, originally, perhaps, useful and judicious, but, in time, mixed with bolder and more independent speculations, as the temptation to introduce them became greater, from the increased authority of traditional law. They bear a very close analogy to the traditions of the Romish Church. Many allusions are found in the Evangelists to the observance of this traditional religion, which constituted the Pharisaical claim to superior righteousness. Of those contained in the passage now read, the only one which requires explanation is the evasion of the duty of supporting a parent, by saying, that the means which you would otherwise employ for that purpose were corban, or a gift to God. It appears to have been a practice with those who were unwilling to support their parents, to dedicate their property-to make a sort of reversion of it-to the service of God; which, by the sanction of the traditional comments on their Law, left them free to use it for themselves whilst it remained in their own hands. Concerning the effect of the outward piety which tradition allowed to be substituted for inward holiness, it deserves to be noticed, that tradition was thereby not only a cause why the Messiah was not recognized; but presented a strong obstacle to the reception of the evangelical tenets. Of Christ's preaching, the very foundation doctrine was that of the atonement. Now to men, who, like the Pharisees, were accustomed, by laborious and exact external observances, to be in their own eyes, in the eyes of others, and, as they thought, in the sight of God, laying up in store enough, and more than enough of merit, and advancing, day by day, from superior to supreme holiness, nothing could be more mortifying and unacceptable than the doctrine of the atonement. To be told that all, even the best, required the sacrifice of the Son of God for the remission of sins; that their pardon was a gift, not a right; that, as sinners, not as righteous men, they were invited into the kingdom of their Messiah; was a view of that glorious period and personage from which they at once averted their eyes. Heavier burthens than those to which they already submitted they would have borne; but to be told that these burthens were worse than useless, was intolerable. JESUS CURES A SYROPHOENICIAN WOMAN'S DAUGHTER. Ver. 24-30. And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but he could not be hid. For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: the woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter. And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed. What is most observable in this miracle is, that the object of the Saviour's mercy was not only a Gentile, but one of the impious and impure race of Canaan.* The delay which he made before performing it, as well as his declarations and hints, were, probably, intended to direct the attention of the by-standers to this circumstance, and thereby to convey to them his first notice of the conversion of the Gentiles. Two points about the probable origin and nature of this woman's faith deserve to be noticed. The first is contained in the terms of her address to Jesus, which are omitted by St. Mark, but will be found in St. Matthew's narrative. Her words were, 'Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David.' Now this denotes that the woman was acquainted with the Jewish Scriptures-probably was a proselyte of the gate, or devout Gentile: and that, from these Scriptures, she, by candid and patient inquiry, had learnt enough to recognize in Jesus the promised Messiah. Possibly she may have discovered, what the Pharisees and scribes could not, the true meaning of David's words, 'The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.' may, even in the spirit of those words, have called on the son of David, as David's Lord and her Lord. She The faith, however, which was most striking in her case, and which was directed to a truth long hid from the apostles themselves, was that David's Lord and Son was to be a Saviour, not for the Jews only, but *See Bp. Horsley's Sermons, Serm. xxxvii. and xxxviii. + Chap. xv. 22. Luke xx. 41-44. |