Matthew 15:1–11

The Teaching of the Ancestors

15Then some Pharisees and teachers of the Law came from Jerusalem to Jesus and asked him, ²“Why is it that your disciples disobey the teaching handed down by our ancestors? They don’t wash their hands in the proper way before they eat!”

³Jesus answered, “And why do you disobey God’s command and follow your own teaching? ^4*For God said, ‘Respect your father and your mother,’ and ‘Whoever curses his father or his mother is to be put to death.’ ⁵But you teach that if a person has something he could use to help his father or mother, but says, ‘This belongs to God,’ ⁶he does not need to honour his father.^m In this way you disregard God’s command, in order to follow your own teaching. ⁷You hypocrites! How right Isaiah was when he prophesied about you!

^8*‘These people, says God, honour me with their words,

but their heart is really far away from me.

^9*It is no use for them to worship me,

because they teach human rules as though they were my laws!’ ”

The Things That Make a Person Unclean

¹⁰Then Jesus called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand! ¹¹It is not what goes into a person’s mouth that makes him ritually unclean; rather, what comes out of it makes him unclean.”