Mark 7:1–13

The Tradition of the Elders

⁷Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, ²they 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,^w thus observing the tradition of the elders,^{* 4}and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash,^x and there are also many other traditions that they observe: the washing of cups and pots and bronze kettles and beds.^y)^{* 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?”^{* 6}He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;^*

⁷in vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

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

⁹Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!^{* 10}For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’^{* 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^z),^{* 12}then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, ¹³thus nullifying the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”