These are [the things] which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.
Verse 20. These – defile a man] Our Lord’s argument is very plain. What goes into the mouth descends into the stomach and other intestines; – part is retained for the nourishment of the body, and part is ejected, as being improper to afford nourishment. Nothing of this kind defiles the soul, because it does not enter into it; but the evil principles that are in it, producing evil thoughts, murders, &c., these defile the soul, because they have their seat and operation in it.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
20. These are the things whichdefile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a manThusdoes our Lord sum up this whole searching discourse.
Mt15:21-28. THE WOMANOF CANAAN AND HERDAUGHTER.
For the exposition, see on Mr7:24-30.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
These are the things which defile a man,…. These are filthy in themselves, and must pollute all in whom they are; they bring a defilement on the whole man, both body and soul, fasten guilt upon him, and expose him to everlasting punishment:
but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man: should a man neglect to wash his bands before eating a common meal, this need give him no uneasiness; he contracts no filth to his soul hereby, nor any guilt to his conscience; nor does he break any law of God; nor is he liable to any penalty for such an omission. This is a trifling matter, and merits no regard; but the things before mentioned are in their nature evil: they are contrary to the law of God; they are abominable in his sight; they render men loathsome and odious to the divine being; and expose them to shame and ruin; and it is only the blood of Christ can cleanse them from the pollution and guilt of them, and secure them from that punishment they deserve.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
And pollute the man. Instead of the verb pollute, the Greek term is κοινοῖ, make common; as Mark, a little before, ( Mar 7:2,) used the phrase, κοιναῖς χερσὶ, with common hands, for with unclean hands. (412) It is a Hebrew phrase; (413) for, since God had set apart the Jews on the condition that they should separate themselves from all the pollutions of the Gentiles, everything that was inconsistent with this holiness was called common, that is, profane.
(412) “ Les mains communes pour souillees et non lavees ; ” — “ common hands for polluted and not washed.”
(413) “ C’est une facon de parler propre aux Hebrieux;” — “it is a mode of speaking peculiar to the Hebrews.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
20. These are the things Not all the things, but plentiful specimens of them. There is a strong analogy between physical and moral defilement, which forms the basis of much of the emblems and types of the Scripture system. But it is the pushing this analogy to a superstitious extent which produced the tradition about unwashen hands which our Lord here so forcibly condemns.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
“These are the things which defile the man. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.”
It is such things that really defile a person. But eating with unwashed hands (while not a good idea hygienically) cannot defile the inner man. Thus Jesus is saying that the Pharisees are concentrating attention in the wrong place. They think of themselves as pure, and as all the problems being outside in the ‘world’. Thus they think that by ritual they will be able to keep themselves acceptable to God. But the truth is the opposite. The real problem with ‘uncleanness’ is that it is within our hearts because we are ‘evil’ (Mat 7:11; Mat 7:17-18; Mat 9:4; Mat 12:34), that is, are ungodlike, and ruled by passion and prejudice and false belief. It is true that we are to keep ourselves free from the taint of the world (1Jn 2:15-17) but in the end our main problem is with ourselves. Thus while we do need cleansing, it will not be accomplished with water. For in fact in the Old Testament water never ‘cleanses’. Unless conjoined with sacrifices water is only ever preparatory to cleansing and ‘bathing’ is regularly accompanied by the phrase ‘and will not be clean until the evening’. Thus the Pharisees had actually to twist a basic premise of Scripture in order to suit their purpose.
‘But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.’ As Matthew often does he sums up by referring back to what started the incident (see Mat 15:2). Compare Mat 12:45 with Mat 12:39; Mat 16:12 with Mat 16:6. He is not suggesting that the whole incident has been limited to this question, but that the initial question has been answered.
Note On Cleanness and Uncleanness.
It will be noted that Jesus is not here commenting on the Levitical laws of cleanness and uncleanness which are not in question. Nor is He oversetting them. He is concerned with a ritual which has grown up in the tradition, which is actually misrepresenting the significance of the genuine ritual. He considers therefore that the attitude of the Pharisees towards ritual is basically at fault. Thus He does not discuss which ritual is valid and which is not. Rather His answer gets to the root of the question as to what should be of prime importance in a person’s life with God. Given that a person wants to please God, and be pleasing to Him, His whole point is that the Pharisees’ concentration on the wrong things has led them totally astray. They have made ritual the arbiter of everything else, and in order to bolster their position have introduced false ritual. In their view it is right ritual that determines people’s standing with God. He on the other hand makes the attitude of the heart central. His point is that God looks not at the externals but at the heart (1Sa 16:7). The purpose of any ritual was, in fact, to make people have the right attitude of heart. While it accomplishes that, therefore, it may be retained. But the logic of that is that once the ritual failed in bringing about the right attitude of heart it should be dispensed with, which is why later that is what happened. Once people had in Jesus the Great Example (Heb 12:1-2), the lesser examples could fall away, and that would then include the wider ritual also.
The Scribes and Pharisees had introduced the new ritual of the washing of hands because they had the wrong idea about the ritual. Nowhere had the old ritual suggested that men were constantly being defiled day by day, as a result of general contacts. It had dealt with uncleanness arising from specific known cases. Nor had it suggested that that uncleanness could be removed by bathing in water. Bathing in water was in fact preparatory to other methods of dealing with uncleanness. It removed external dirt from the flesh (compare 1Pe 3:21) so that men could then wait on God. There was in fact no instant way of removing ritual uncleanness. Such removal always required the passage of time.
The purpose of the laws of cleanness and uncleanness was in order to bring out the wholesomeness and perfection of the living God. At the other end of the spectrum was the sphere of death and unwholesomeness. Within the spectrum were different levels of uncleanness which related to death and blood, and different levels of unwholesomeness. Its purpose was in order to encourage people to live wholesome lives, and to avoid what was unwholesome. Thus clean creatures lived in the right sphere and avoided the dust of death. Unclean creatures lived in unwholesome spheres and were connected with the dust of death. Skin disease was a living death and must not come within the camp. Sexual excretions were a giving out of life, thus rendering a person closer to death, or in the case of blood were a direct giving out of life. Eating animals whose blood had not been offered to God was to partake of death. To touch what was dead resulted in being contaminated by death. And so on. But in most cases, once an unclean situation had been remedied, being restored simply mainly required the passage of a certain length of time in isolation after washing in water, sometimes connected with other ritual.
Jesus did not criticise these ideas. To Him wholesome living was important. It was a very different matter when He considered the ideas of the Scribes and Pharisees. They contributed not to wholesomeness but to superstition and prejudice, and suggested that water could wash away uncleanness. However, there is no doubt that His treatment of their misrepresentation brought out the non-necessity for the laws of uncleanness (as Mar 7:19 b discerns) once His own death and resurrection had produced a better example for men to look to. People who could look to the crucified and risen Christ no longer needed examples of wholesomeness and unwholesomeness. In that they had all the lessons that they needed. Thus in Acts 10 God revealed to Peter that the laws of uncleanness need no longer apply.
End of note.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Mat 15:20. These are the things which defile a man Thus our Lord defended his disciples by a beautiful chain of reasoning, wherein he has shewn the true nature of actions, and loaded with perpetual infamy those Jewish teachers and all their posterity who should imitate them; the main strokes of whose characters are, that by their frivolous superstitions they weaken and sometimes destroy the eternal and immutable rules of righteousness. It may be proper just to observe, that St. Matthew represents these evil things as proceeding out of the mouth, Mat 15:18 not so much by way of contrast to meats which enter by the mouth into the man, as because some of them are committed with the faculty of speech, such as false-witness and blasphemy; and others of them are helped forwards by its assistance; as adultery, deceit, &c.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.
Ver. 20. These are the things which defile a man ] Make him a loathsome leper in God’s sight, his heart being a filthy dunghill of all abominable vices, his life a long chain of sinful actions, a very continued web of wickedness. And whereas repentance is the soul’s vomit, and confession the spunge that wipes out all the blots and blurs of our lives, that cunning manslayer holds the lips close that the heart may not disburden itself by so wholesome evacuation, and doth what he can to hinder the birth of repentance, that fair and happy daughter of an ugly and odious mother, sin. a
a
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Mat 15:20 . mphatic final reassertion of the doctrine.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Mat 15:20. , do not defile the man) In the very appellation of man, is contained (latet) an argument: for the spiritual nature, which is the superior part in man, is not reached by outward filth.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
which: 1Co 3:16, 1Co 3:17, 1Co 6:9-11, 1Co 6:18-20, Eph 5:3-6, Rev 21:8, Rev 21:27
but: Mat 15:2, Mat 23:25, Mat 23:26, Mar 7:3, Mar 7:4, Luk 11:38-40
Reciprocal: Lev 11:8 – they are unclean Num 19:22 – the soul Ecc 9:3 – also Jer 4:14 – wash Mat 23:28 – but 1Co 6:13 – Meats for Jam 1:14 – when
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
5:20
Certainly no man can entertain an interest in murder and the other things named in Mat 15:19 and not be defiled. They affect his character while the soil passing from the hands into the mouth has no relation to that.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.
[With unwashen hands.] He saith not with unclean hands, but unwashen; because, as we said before, they were bound to wash, although they were not conscious that their hands were unclean. In Mark it is with common or defiled hands; Mar 7:2; which seem to be called by the Talmudists impure hands, merely because not washed. Judge from that which is said in the tract Challah; “A cake is owing out of that dough which they knead with the juice of fruits: and it is eaten with unclean hands.”
Fuente: Lightfoot Commentary Gospels
Mat 15:20. These are the things which defile the man. Ceremonial impurity is insignificant compared with moral impurity. Yet Christians now are as slow to learn this as the disciples were.