Handwashing

The Pharisaical practice of washing before meals is legally odd (as pointed out by Roger Booth, Jesus and the Laws of Purity ). The one explicit reference to the need for laymen to wash hands is Leviticus 15:11 doesn’t have to do with food or with victims of uncleanness. Leviticus 15:11 says that an man who is unclean because of a genital discharge communicates that uncleanness to anyone he touches, unless he rinses his hands first; but the Pharisees are not washing hands because they are themselves unclean and they are not worried about communicating impurity to others. Booth concludes that Leviticus 15:11 is an unlikely source of the Pharisaical practice found in the gospels.

Plus, the uncleanness they might have contracted inadvertently from jostling in the market would not be removed by a simple washing of the hands. They would in most instances have to bathe their entire body (or sometimes “flesh,” that is, genitals) and wash their clothes. Handwashing wouldn’t make them clean enough .

Plus, there is little indication that foods could become unclean by touching something unclean. The law of the peace offering states that “flesh that touches anything unclean shall not be eaten” and “the person who eats the flesh . . . in his uncleanness, that person shall be cut off from his people” (Leviticus 7:19-20), but that has to do with the flesh of the peace offering, not common food or meals. Leviticus 11 says that common food might be contaminated if the dead body of an animal falls into it, and especially if the deathness of the carcass spreads through the food by water (vv. 32-38). But there’s nothing in the law itself that suggests that someone who a) became unclean because of contact with a father of uncleanness and b) ate food contaminated by that contact himself became unclean.

Booth concludes that the Pharisaical practice is legally credible as an act of supererogation, and part of the Pharisaical program of extending the purity demands of the priesthood and sacrificial meals to all Israelites and all their meals.

This makes sense of Jesus’ rebuke, if we read it as a rebuke of a tradition that goes beyond the law of God. But that’s not Jesus’ rebuke. He uses the example of honoring parents to show that the Pharisees “invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition” (Matthew 15:6). Presumably Jesus has not completely changed the subject, and he thinks that handwashing invalidates the law of God as much as refusing to honor parents. But how?

Daniel Patte explains the logic of Jesus’ example of honoring parents this way: “When one submits to God’s command . . . , one honors one’s father, and simultaneously honors God . . . , the Father in heaven; thus one’s heart is close to God . . . and one can truly worship God . . . . By contrast, when one declares that something is dedicated to God, one honors God with one’s lips . . . , that is, though one’s declaration. Yet this is not truly honoring God, because one does not submit to God’s commandment but rather to a human teaching.

Jesus’ response thus includes these elements: a) a commandment (honor your father and mother); b) a Pharisaical practice that looks pious (dedication to God); c) an actual annulment of God’s commandment by adherence to Pharisaical tradition. The handwashing, though, exhibits only one of these elements: a Pharisaical practice that looks pious. One way to fill out Jesus’ teaching is to ask whether the analogy between the dishonor to parents and handwashing is closer than is apparent: Is there is implicit commandment relevant to handwashing and does the Pharsaical tradition annul this commandment in some fashion?

This is speculative, but the best I can think of: Meals are covenantal events. To eat together is to share more than food, but to share life and to make a mutual commitment to one another. By their hand-washing and other purity rules, the Pharisees are separating themselves from other Jews who should be their covenant partners and table-companions. Israel was founded as a table fellowship, the table fellowship of Passover. But by their practices, they not only go beyond the law but annul the intention of the law, which is to form Israel as a united covenant people. The bread, Jesus says later in the chapter, is given to the children (Matthew 15:26), but the Pharisees treat not Canaanites but other Jews as dogs who are unworthy to sit at table.