Is Jesus here saying parents are neglecting what God said (to kill their disobedient children) and he calls such parents hypocrites?
Matthew 15 (NIV)
1 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’[** you do not have permission to see this link **] 5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. 7 You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
8 “‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
9 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.”
No, he’s just calling them hypocrites because they cherry pick what to believe. He mocks them. There are major parallels in society today. Homophobes cherry pick the bit from Leviticus about homosexuality while ignoring virtually everything else Mosaic Law teaches. Quite a lot of it is strange to us today, admittedly, but rules are rules, right? In any event, Jesus supposedly came to fulfill the Law and Christians use this as an excuse to ignore all the weird bits of Mosaic Law, but I guess that doesn’t extend to “no man shall lie with another man as with a woman”.
Like I said: “no”. Jesus himself broke down a lot of barriers that existed in his day that the strictly religious, like the Pharisees in this case, would have been aghast at. Some of the things he did went against Mosaic Law, hence, you cannot take him at his literal word here. He hung out with prostitutes and lepers (I don’t think people today really appreciate how bad hanging out with lepers was back then), he did work on the Sabbath (although it was good deeds), he told his detractors to render under Caesar that which was Caesars, etc etc.
His interpretation was not the same as the interpretation of the Pharisees. We can quibble over the fine details all day long. I shouldn’t have said Jesus went against Mosaic Law, but his interpretation of it was different from the Pharisees who had all kinds of addendums and traditions that are not in the OT. Washing your hands is one of them. When they accuse Jesus’ disciples of not washing their hands he tells the Pharisees: why do you break God’s laws for the sake of your traditions (the conventions they follow that aren’t specifically part of Mosaic Law)? He says that God’s law says that children are to honor their parents and then if they don’t they are to be stoned, but he goes further than that with what he says. He then points out (ver. 5-6) that the Pharisees say that (i.e., their “traditions”) if a child pays to the Temple (money to the “devotion of God”, verse 5) money that could have been used to help their parents in their old age that they are following the Pharisees’ traditions, but this act of giving money to the Temple has put the children in violation of God’s law because now the children don’t have the financial means to honor their parents, ie. take care of them in their old age.
It is for this that Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites and that’s the whole point. The point is not to stone children. The point is that the Pharisees teach ways of following God’s law that are actually in violation of that law! Stoning children is just something Jesus uses to make his point.
Sure, technically, Mosaic Law may call for the stoning of children, but Jesus shows again and again throughout the Gospels that he is interested in the intent of the Law and not the ways it is observed by the Pharisees in his time.
Now you are being more clear! Thnx!
But pardon my boldness… The God did say to stone the disobedient children, as you have acknowledge. What was the intent of the law here? I think the intent was clear: they don’t deserve to live.
Would you at least agree that Jesus used a very bad example to make his point?
If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his town, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid. (Deut 21:18- 21)
“It is for this that Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites and that’s the whole point. The point is not to stone children. The point is that the Pharisees teach ways of following God’s law that are actually in violation of that law! Stoning children is just something Jesus uses to make his point.”
so the law is just to make a point and not do the law which jesus’ god commanded jesus and his jewish brethren to do?
so both of them are hypocrites.
“money that could have been used to help their parents in their old age that they are following the Pharisees’ traditions, but this act of giving money to the Temple has put the children in violation of God’s law because now the children don’t have the financial means to honor their parents, ie. take care of them in their old age.”
but it seems to me that the child would be born under a tradition which violates gods law . what if the child knows that it violates gods law and still gives the money to the temple? wouldn’t jesus’ “point” mean that such child needs to be stoned?
if they grow up to be unaware of what the law says then it isn’t their fault. they are born under a tradition . if it isn’t thier fault then why jesus has to bring along deu 21:18?
Adam Beaven said
so both of them are hypocrites.
if they grow up to be unaware of what the law says then it isn’t their fault. they are born under a tradition . if it isn’t thier fault then why jesus has to bring along deu 21:18?
Jesus never says he’s against that part of the Law and I never said he was. All I said was that he used the prohibition against dishonoring one’s parents as an example of how the Pharisees made the people violate the Law without, perhaps, realizing they were.
I’m no expert on the Torah, but haven’t the Jews been re-interpreting their Law and modernizing it for centuries? Look up the midrash and mishnah for what I mean. I don’t know how those things work so I won’t go into any discussion. The point though is that the Pharisees were obviously, for good or bad, developing their own beliefs based on the Torah and this lead to rabbinic Judaism which is what we have today when we think of “Judaism”.
Jesus obviously had a problem with how to Pharisees of his time were interpreting the Law and changing/adding to it and he saw them as hypocrites for their changes. Were the Pharisees really as hypocritical as they’re made out to be in the Gospels? I think that’s an excellent question, but a topic for another time.
” Were the Pharisees really as hypocritical as they’re made out to be in the Gospels?”
THIS is exactly the question i was thinking of when i first read this discussion. i also asked myself if the pharisees were reinterpreting thier holy books just as the christians do today.
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