hands

153:3.3Then one of the Je­ru­sa­lem spies who had been ob­serv­ing Je­sus and his apos­tles, said: “We no­tice that nei­ther you nor your apos­tles wash your hands prop­erly be­fore you eat bread. You must well know that such a prac­tice as eat­ing with de­filed and un­washed hands is a trans­gres­sion of the law of the el­ders. Nei­ther do you prop­erly wash your drink­ing cups and eat­ing ves­sels. Why is it that you show such dis­re­spect for the tra­di­tions of the fa­thers and the laws of our el­ders?” And when Je­sus heard him speak, he an­swered: “Why is it that you transgress the com­mand­ments of God by the laws of your tra­di­tion? The com­mand­ment says, ‘Honor your fa­ther and your mother,’ and di­rects that you share with them your sub­stance if nec­es­sary; but you en­act a law of tra­di­tion which per­mits un­du­ti­ful chil­dren to say that the money where­with the par­ents might have been as­sisted has been ‘given to God.’ The law of the el­ders thus re­lieves such crafty chil­dren of their re­spon­si­bil­ity, not­with­stand­ing that the chil­dren sub­se­quently use all such monies for their own com­fort. Why is it that you in this way make void the com­mand­ment by your own tra­di­tion? Well did Isa­iah proph­esy of you hyp­ocrites, say­ing: ‘This peo­ple hon­ors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they wor­ship me, teach­ing as their doc­trines the pre­cepts of men.’

153:3.4“You can see how it is that you desert the com­mand­ment while you hold fast to the tra­di­tion of men. Al­to­gether will­ing are you to re­ject the word of God while you main­tain your own tra­di­tions. And in many other ways do you dare to set up your own teach­ings above the law and the proph­ets.”

153:3.5Je­sus then di­rected his re­marks to all pres­ent. He said: “But hear­ken to me, all of you. It is not that which en­ters into the mouth that spir­i­tu­ally de­files the man, but rather that which pro­ceeds out of the mouth and from the heart.” But even the apos­tles failed fully to grasp the mean­ing of his words, for Si­mon Pe­ter also asked him: “Lest some of your hear­ers be un­nec­es­sar­ily of­fended, would you ex­plain to us the mean­ing of these words?” And then said Je­sus to Pe­ter: “Are you also hard of un­der­stand­ing? Know you not that ev­ery plant which my heav­enly Fa­ther has not planted shall be rooted up? Turn now your at­ten­tion to those who would know the truth. You can­not com­pel men to love the truth. Many of these teach­ers are blind guides. And you know that, if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit. But hear­ken while I tell you the truth con­cern­ing those things which morally de­file and spir­i­tu­ally con­tam­i­nate men. I de­clare it is not that which en­ters the body by the mouth or gains ac­cess to the mind through the eyes and ears, that de­files the man. Man is only de­filed by that evil which may orig­i­nate within the heart, and which finds ex­pres­sion in the words and deeds of such un­holy per­sons. Do you not know it is from the heart that there come forth evil thoughts, wicked projects of mur­der, theft, and adul­ter­ies, to­gether with jeal­ousy, pride, anger, re­venge, rail­ings, and false wit­ness? And it is just such things that de­file men, and not that they eat bread with cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean hands.”

153:3.6The Phar­i­saic com­mis­sion­ers of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin were now al­most con­vinced that Je­sus must be ap­pre­hended on a charge of blas­phemy or on one of flout­ing the sa­cred law of the Jews; where­fore their ef­forts to in­volve him in the dis­cus­sion of, and pos­si­ble at­tack upon, some of the tra­di­tions of the el­ders, or so-called oral laws of the na­tion. No mat­ter how scarce wa­ter might be, these tra­di­tion­ally en­slaved Jews would never fail to go through with the re­quired cer­e­mo­nial wash­ing of the hands be­fore ev­ery meal. It was their be­lief that “it is bet­ter to die than to transgress the com­mand­ments of the el­ders.” The spies asked this ques­tion be­cause it had been re­ported that Je­sus had said, “Sal­va­tion is a mat­ter of clean hearts rather than of clean hands.” But such be­liefs, when they once be­come a part of one’s re­li­gion, are hard to get away from. Even many years af­ter this day the Apos­tle Pe­ter was still held in the bond­age of fear to many of these tra­di­tions about things clean and un­clean, only be­ing fi­nally de­liv­ered by ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an ex­traor­di­nary and vivid dream. All of this can the bet­ter be un­der­stood when it is re­called that these Jews looked upon eat­ing with un­washed hands in the same light as com­merce with a har­lot, and both were equally pun­ish­able by ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

153:3.7Thus did the Mas­ter elect to dis­cuss and ex­pose the folly of the whole rab­binic sys­tem of rules and reg­u­la­tions which was rep­re­sented by the oral law—the tra­di­tions of the el­ders, all of which were re­garded as more sa­cred and more bind­ing upon the Jews than even the teach­ings of the Scrip­tures. And Je­sus spoke out with less re­serve be­cause he knew the hour had come when he could do noth­ing more to pre­vent an open rup­ture of re­la­tions with these re­li­gious lead­ers.

148:7.1The sec­ond Sab­bath be­fore the de­par­ture of the apos­tles and the new corps of evan­ge­lists on the sec­ond preach­ing tour of Gal­i­lee, Je­sus spoke in the Ca­per­naum syn­a­gogue on the “Joys of Righ­teous Liv­ing.” When Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, a large group of those who were maimed, halt, sick, and af­flicted crowded up around him, seek­ing heal­ing. Also in this group were the apos­tles, many of the new evan­ge­lists, and the Phar­i­saic spies from Je­ru­sa­lem. Ev­ery­where that Je­sus went (ex­cept when in the hills about the Fa­ther’s busi­ness) the six Je­ru­sa­lem spies were sure to fol­low.

148:7.2The leader of the spy­ing Phar­isees, as Je­sus stood talk­ing to the peo­ple, in­duced a man with a with­ered hand to ap­proach him and ask if it would be law­ful to be healed on the Sab­bath day or should he seek help on an­other day. When Je­sus saw the man, heard his words, and per­ceived that he had been sent by the Phar­isees, he said: “Come for­ward while I ask you a ques­tion. If you had a sheep and it should fall into a pit on the Sab­bath day, would you reach down, lay hold on it, and lift it out? Is it law­ful to do such things on the Sab­bath day?” And the man an­swered: “Yes, Mas­ter, it would be law­ful thus to do well on the Sab­bath day.” Then said Je­sus, speak­ing to all of them: “I know where­fore you have sent this man into my pres­ence. You would find cause for of­fense in me if you could tempt me to show mercy on the Sab­bath day. In si­lence you all agreed that it was law­ful to lift the un­for­tu­nate sheep out of the pit, even on the Sab­bath, and I call you to wit­ness that it is law­ful to ex­hibit lov­ing-kind­ness on the Sab­bath day not only to an­i­mals but also to men. How much more valu­able is a man than a sheep! I pro­claim that it is law­ful to do good to men on the Sab­bath day.” And as they all stood be­fore him in si­lence, Je­sus, ad­dress­ing the man with the with­ered hand, said: “Stand up here by my side that all may see you. And now that you may know that it is my Fa­ther’s will that you do good on the Sab­bath day, if you have the faith to be healed, I bid you stretch out your hand.”

148:7.3And as this man stretched forth his with­ered hand, it was made whole. The peo­ple were minded to turn upon the Phar­isees, but Je­sus bade them be calm, say­ing: “I have just told you that it is law­ful to do good on the Sab­bath, to save life, but I did not in­struct you to do harm and give way to the de­sire to kill.” The an­gered Phar­isees went away, and not­with­stand­ing it was the Sab­bath day, they has­tened forth­with to Tiberias and took coun­sel with Herod, do­ing ev­ery­thing in their power to arouse his prej­u­dice in or­der to se­cure the Hero­di­ans as al­lies against Je­sus. But Herod re­fused to take ac­tion against Je­sus, ad­vis­ing that they carry their com­plaints to Je­ru­sa­lem.

148:7.4This is the first case of a mir­a­cle to be wrought by Je­sus in re­sponse to the chal­lenge of his en­e­mies. And the Mas­ter per­formed this so-called mir­a­cle, not as a dem­on­stra­tion of his heal­ing power, but as an ef­fec­tive protest against mak­ing the Sab­bath rest of re­li­gion a ver­i­ta­ble bond­age of mean­ing­less re­stric­tions upon all man­kind. This man re­turned to his work as a stone ma­son, prov­ing to be one of those whose heal­ing was fol­lowed by a life of thanks­giv­ing and righ­teous­ness.

166:1.2By the time Je­sus ar­rived at this break­fast, most of the Phar­isees, with two or three lawyers, were al­ready there and seated at the ta­ble. The Mas­ter im­me­di­ately took his seat at the left of Na­than­iel with­out go­ing to the wa­ter basins to wash his hands. Many of the Phar­isees, es­pe­cially those fa­vor­able to Je­sus’ teach­ings, knew that he washed his hands only for pur­poses of clean­li­ness, that he ab­horred these purely cer­e­mo­nial per­for­mances; so they were not sur­prised at his com­ing di­rectly to the ta­ble with­out hav­ing twice washed his hands. But Na­than­iel was shocked by this fail­ure of the Mas­ter to com­ply with the strict re­quire­ments of Phar­i­saic prac­tice. Nei­ther did Je­sus wash his hands, as did the Phar­isees, af­ter each course of food nor at the end of the meal.

167:1.3Soon they were all seated and en­joy­ing the vis­it­ing among them­selves since the ma­jor­ity of those pres­ent were dis­ci­ples of Je­sus or else were friendly to the gospel. Only his en­e­mies took no­tice of the fact that he did not ob­serve the cer­e­mo­nial wash­ing of his hands be­fore he sat down to eat. Ab­ner washed his hands at the be­gin­ning of the meal but not dur­ing the serv­ing.

179:3.1Af­ter drink­ing the first cup of the Pass­over, it was the Jew­ish cus­tom for the host to arise from the ta­ble and wash his hands. Later on in the meal and af­ter the sec­ond cup, all of the guests like­wise rose up and washed their hands. Since the apos­tles knew that their Mas­ter never ob­served these rites of cer­e­mo­nial hand wash­ing, they were very cu­ri­ous to know what he in­tended to do when, af­ter they had par­taken of this first cup, he arose from the ta­ble and silently made his way over to near the door, where the wa­ter pitch­ers, basins, and tow­els had been placed. And their cu­rios­ity grew into as­ton­ish­ment as they saw the Mas­ter re­move his outer gar­ment, gird him­self with a towel, and be­gin to pour wa­ter into one of the foot basins. Imag­ine the amaze­ment of these twelve men, who had so re­cently re­fused to wash one an­other’s feet, and who had en­gaged in such un­seemly dis­putes about po­si­tions of honor at the ta­ble, when they saw him make his way around the un­oc­cu­pied end of the ta­ble to the low­est seat of the feast, where Si­mon Pe­ter re­clined, and, kneel­ing down in the at­ti­tude of a ser­vant, make ready to wash Si­mon’s feet. As the Mas­ter knelt, all twelve arose as one man to their feet; even the traitorous Ju­das so far for­got his in­famy for a mo­ment as to arise with his fel­low apos­tles in this ex­pres­sion of sur­prise, re­spect, and ut­ter amaze­ment.

62:4.4The Pri­mates were more hu­man and less an­i­mal than their mid-mam­mal pre­de­ces­sors. The skele­tal pro­por­tions of this new species were very sim­i­lar to those of the prim­i­tive hu­man races. The hu­man type of hand and foot had fully de­vel­oped, and these crea­tures could walk and even run as well as any of their later-day hu­man de­scen­dants. They largely aban­doned tree life, though con­tin­u­ing to re­sort to the tree­tops as a safety mea­sure at night, for like their ear­lier an­ces­tors, they were greatly sub­ject to fear. The in­creased use of their hands did much to de­velop in­her­ent brain power, but they did not yet pos­sess minds that could re­ally be called hu­man.

66:5.22These guard­i­ans of health also sought to in­tro­duce hand­shak­ing in sub­sti­tu­tion for saliva ex­change or blood drink­ing as a seal of per­sonal friend­ship and as a to­ken of group loy­alty. But when out from un­der the com­pelling pres­sure of the teach­ings of their su­pe­rior lead­ers, these prim­i­tive peo­ples were not slow in re­vert­ing to their for­mer health-de­stroy­ing and dis­ease-breed­ing prac­tices of ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion.