p. 401 | The Sabbath School

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 8, 1881

The Sabbath School.

LESSON FOR PACIFIC COAST—SEPT. 10. Rebuking the Pharisees for their Hypocrisy.—Matt. 15:1-29; Mark 7:1-31. LESSON COMMENTS.

"REPORTS of the popular readiness to accept Jesus as king, and of his resolute refusal to head such a political movement, which alone could meet their own wishes, had doubtless reached Jerusalem, and this, coupled with rumors of his innovations and independence as a religious reformer, had thoroughly alarmed the authorities at Jerusalem. Discarding invective, craft, or indirect approach, their deputies now came no longer to the disciples, but to himself, with specific complaints, which the freedom of eastern manners, permitting free access to private life, had enabled them to establish. The disciples had already given offence by plucking and rubbing ears of barley on the Sabbath, and thus, as it was held, reaping and threshing on the sacred day; but a still graver scandal in Pharisaic eyes had been detected in their sitting down to eat without ceremonially washing their hands. The law of Moses required purifications in such cases, but the Rabbis had perverted the spirit of Leviticus in this, as in other things, for they taught that food and drink could not be taken with a good conscience when there was the possibility of ceremonial defilement. If every conceivable precaution had not been taken, the person or the vessel used might have contracted impurity, which would thus be conveyed to the food, and through the food to the body, and by it to the soul. Hence it had long been a custom, and latterly a strict law, that before every meal not only the hands but even the dishes, couches, and tables should be scrupulously washed.

"The legal washing of the hands before eating was especially sacred to the Rabbinist; not to do so was a crime as great as to eat the flesh of swine. 'He who neglects hand-washing,' says the book of Sohar, 'deserves to be punished here and hereafter.' 'He is to be destroyed out of the world, for in hand-washing is contained the secret of the ten commandments.' 'He is guilty of death.' . . . It was a special mark of the Pharisees that 'they ate their daily bread with due purification,' and to neglect doing so was to be despised as unclean.

"It was laid down that the hands were first to be washed clean. The tips of the ten fingers were then joined and lifted up so that the water ran down to the elbows, then turned down so that it might run off to the ground. Fresh water was poured on them as they were lifted up, and twice again as they hung down. The washing itself was to be done by rubbing the fist of one hand in the hollow of the other. When the hands were washed before eating they must be held upwards; when after it, downwards, so that the water should not run beyond the knuckles. The vessel used must be held first in the right, then in the left hand; the water was to be poured first on the right, then on the left hand, and at every third time the words repeated 'Blessed art thou who hast given us the command to wash the hands.' It was keenly disputed whether the cup of blessing or the hand-washing should come first; whether the towel used should be laid on the table or on the couch; whether the table was to be cleared before the final washing or after it.

"This anxious trifling over the infinitely little was, however, only part of a system. If a Pharisee proposed to eat common food, it was enough that the hands were washed by water poured on them. Before eating Terumah—the holy tithes and the show-bread—they must be dipped completely in the water, and before the portions of the holy offering could be tasted, a bath must be taken. Hand-washing before prayer, or touching anything in the morning, was as rigidly observed, for evil spirits might have defied the hands in the night. To touch the mouth, nose, ear, eyes, or the one hand with the other, before the rite, was to incur the risk of disease in the part touched. The occasions that demanded the observance were countless: it must be done even after cutting the nails, or killing a flea. The more water used, the more piety. 'He who uses abundant water for hand-washing,' says Rabbi Chasda, 'will have abundant riches.' If one had not been out it was enough to pour water on the hands; but one coming in from without needed to plunge his hands into the water, for he knew not what uncleanness might have been near him while in the streets, and this plunging could not be done except in a spot where there were not less than sixty gallons of water.

"The same scrupulous, superstitious minuteness extended to possible defilements of all the household details of daily life. Dishes, hollow or flat, of whatever material, knives, tables, and couches, were constantly subjected to purifications, lest they should have contracted any Levitical defilement by being used by some one unclean.

"This ritual exaggeration was, apparently, a result of the jealousy between the democratic Pharisees and the lordly Sadducees. The latter attached supreme importance to the ceremonial sanctity of the officiating priests, to exalt themselves as the clerical aristocracy. The Pharisees, to humble them, laid the stress, as far as possible, on the vessels used, and the exactness of the act. In keeping with their endless washings in private, they demanded that all the vessels of the temple itself should be purified after each feast, lest some unclean person might have defiled them—a refinement which drew down on a Pharisee who was carying out even the golden candlestick itself to wash it, after a feast, the mocking gibe from a Sadducee, that he expected before long the Pharisees would give the sun a washing.

"To honor one's parents was one of the 'Ten Words' of Sinai, and no duty was held more sacred by a Jew unperverted by Rabbinical sophistry. It was not forgotten that it was the one commandment to which a promise of reward was attached. 'A child is bound to maintain his parents when old and helpless,' says one passage in the Talmud, 'even if he have to beg to do so.' But this, unfortunately, was not the uniform teaching of Christ's day. If one Rabbi had put filial duty before the right to vow for one's own advantage, others had taught that it was a duty to honor God before honoring human relationships—a smooth phrase for legalizing gifts to the church at the expense even of father and mother. The hierarchical party ignored all interests but their own, and subordinated natural duty to their own enrichment. Pharisaism, in its moral decay, had come to be a spiritual death, corrupting the springs of national life. A few years later, in the time of the great famine, in the year A. D. 45, under Claudius, the theocratic party so heartlessly cared for themselves, that while the people were perishing of hunger by hundreds, no remission of temple dues was permitted, and the passover alone saw forty-one attic bushels of wheat presented at the altar, to be presently removed for the use of the priests, though the issarion—a measure of three and a half pints—sold for four drachmas, a sum equal to about twenty-six shillings at the present value of money.

"Representatives of this smooth hypocrisy had now gathered round Jesus, and proceeded to inquire into his alleged unlawful acts. 'How comes it,' asked they, 'that a teacher who claims a higher sanctity than others can quietly permit his disciples to neglect a custom imposed by our wise forefathers, and so carefully observed by every pious Israelite? How is it that they do not wash their hands before eating?'

"'They neglect only a ceremony introduced by men,' retorted Jesus; 'but how comes it that you, who know the law, transgress commands which are not of man, but from God himself? How comes it that, for the sake of traditions invented by the Rabbis, you set aside the most explicit commands of God? He has, for example, said that we must honor our father and mother, and support and care for them in old age. He has declared it worthy of death for any one to deny his parents due reverence, or to treat them harshly or with neglect. But you have invented a doctrine which absolves children, in many cases, from this commandment. If any one, says your "tradition," is asked by his parents for a gift, or help, for their benefit, he has only to say that he has vowed that very part of his means to the temple, and they cannot press him further to contribute to their support. How cunningly have you thus circumvented God's law! How easy is it for any one to break it, and effect a zeal for religion in doing so!'"-Geike.