Mark 7:4
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, brasen vessels, and of tables. 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, brasen vessels, and of tables.
Mark 7:4 describes the ceremonial washings required after coming from the marketplace before eating, together with ritual washings of cups, pots, bronze vessels and tables. These washings were not commanded by God but were human customs, oral traditions of the elders conceived by narrow minds and handed down as inherited rites. They were held and enforced by the scribes and Pharisees, reflecting the controlling teaching of the religious sects of that day, including the Sadducees and Essenes.
Although human, they were treated as more sacred and essential than God's law, with neglect counted as grave sin; human inventions were thus added to God's commandments, placed above them, and made of more consequence than purification of the soul. In character they were petty, senseless and unreasonable outward forms and minute particulars, a round of formality, legalism, superstition and externals amounting to lifeless formalism that taught the commandments of men as doctrine. The endless attention to minor observances buried God's law beneath added rules, distracted from its great principles and weightier matters, confused the sacred with the common, and replaced purity of heart and inward piety with pretense.
The verse reveals a time when genuine religion had become corrupted and moral power was disappearing, as maxims and traditions cherished from age to age were increased by additional inventions received with credulity in each succeeding age through misapplying the Bible to suit human ideas, multiplying outward ceremonies until the way was closed for righteousness and truth while wickedness triumphed. Those who controlled this teaching were unconverted and unsanctified, with self interwoven in all they did, without oneness with Christ or active fellowship, and jealous toward any supposed failure to keep the letter of the law. In its immediate setting, a deputation of Pharisees and scribes came for the express purpose of watching to find an accusation, because He had absented Himself from the Passover where they expected Him, and they seized on the disciples' failure to observe the washing diligently to provoke controversy against Him.
Adherence to this system involved unfair dealing toward Christ and escalated even to killing the Redeemer over a difference of opinion about these washings. The verse belongs to Christ's exposure of reliance on traditions and outward religious forms. To take sides with that tradition is to seek the counsel of formalism and to leave Christ, while those who remain with Christ refuse to go back to that system and refuse to teach it.