The Tradition of the Elders

15 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said,

⁹ Then a great clamor arose, and certain scribes of the Pharisees’ group stood up and contended, “We find nothing wrong with this man. What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?”^(A)

³⁰ The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”^(A)

²¹ Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, “Who is this who is speaking blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”^(A)

Jesus Heals a Paralytic

¹⁷ One day while he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem were sitting nearby, and the power of the Lord was with him to heal.^[a](A)

²² And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”^(A)

² “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’s seat;^(A)

²⁰ For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

The Tradition of the Elders

7 Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, ² they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. ³ (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands,^[a] thus observing the tradition of the elders,^{(A) 4} and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash,^[b] and there are also many other traditions that they observe: the washing of cups and pots and bronze kettles and beds.^[c])^{(B) 5} So 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?”^{(C) 6} He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

⁸ “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”^(E)

⁹ Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!^{(F) 10} For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’^{(G) 11} But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God^[d]),^{(H) 12} then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, ¹³ thus nullifying the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”

¹⁴ Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵ there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”^[e]

¹⁷ When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. ¹⁸ He said to them, “So, are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, ¹⁹ since it enters not the heart but the stomach and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) ²⁰ And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. ²¹ For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: sexual immorality, theft, murder, ²² adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, pride, folly. ²³ All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”