The Pulpit Commentary — Mark — Volume 1 — Section 319

(1) He charged them with hypocritical lip-service, saying, as though with withering scorn, "Ye hypocrites, ye honour me with lip-service, but without sincere heart- worship! " (2) with vanity or empty form in worshipping according to the command- ·ments which human tradition taught; and (3) our Lord, in stating the ground of the application which he makes of the p~ophet's words, brings home the charge, assertins that by th?se hum~n precepts they displaced the commandments of God; and then (4) he backs his assert10n by an example of most glaring and flagrant criminality as the ,natural result of such Pharisaic teaching. 8. Practical remarks on the preceding. We cannot fail to notice (1) the depth of meaning in the Divine Word; of this characteristic of Scripture we have here a notable illustf!1tio~. ~at I~a.ia.h spoke in his ~oral portraiture of his contemporaries, applied to their children s children many centuries after, as accurately and as exactly as if he had had the latter solely in view, or rather as if the distant ancestors and the remote posterity both sat together before this great spiritual limner. Such apt and felicitous delineation was not the result of human intuition or prophetical sagacity, but of Divine inspiration; it was the Spirit that gave the prophet such foresight, and thus testified the truth beforehand. The word "hypocrite" (2) originally meant one who answered in a dramatic dialogue, and thus an actor; and further, one who wore a mask as actors did. It denotes one who assumes a character which does not really belong to him, or acts a part that is unreal, or feigns virtues not possessed. The persons to whom the word is here applied approached God with their lips, while their heart was far distant from (70#• h-lxE', "holds far aloof from") him. They were acting the part of true worshippers, but were not so in reality; they were wearing a mask of profession, which they put on to concea.l their real character. They pretended to be honouring God, but the honour which they gave him did not proceed from the heart; it was only in outward seeming, or for external show. This worship (3) was confined to the utter- ances of their lips as the main instrument employed in such worship; but the under- standing and its faculties, the heart and its affections, were not engaged, and took no part in it. It was hollow-hearted and false-hearted; it was vain {µdnw, in vain, a word which may come from µ&,,,, to seek but without finding). It was meant as worship, no doubt, bnt it was fruitless, being worship that God could not accept. The vanity ( 4) of this worship, however, did not arise so much from the manner of it- heartless as that was, and spiritless as it was-but from the matter of it. All worship presumes certain doctrines and duties, and proceeds in accordance with these. Every time we open our lips in praise or prayer, or other act of worship, doctrines or duties of some sort are involved, implied, or referred to. But the doctrines which these Pharisaic formalists taught were the commandments of men; they had no higher source and no better origin. If we would worship God aright, we must worship according to the way and means which God himself has prescribed; if we teach acceptably, we must teach the doctrines which God directs. Not so the Pharisees: their doctrines were human commandments; their teaching, therefore, was often false, always fallible, often puerile, and not unfrequently pernicious. But worse still, their teachings were not merely negative, in so far as they did not teach what God commanded, but only what men invented; they were positively subversive of the commandment of God in any given case, and hence the word here is singular (/,,,,.o>d,.,); as our Lord himself affirms, when in ver. 8 he states the ground on which he applies to the Pharisees of his time the words spoken by Isaiah in relation to their ancestors. Ye give up or let go the commandment of God, bnt lwld fast the tradition of men in the matter of ceremonial washings and of many other things of like kind. Not only so; ye set asirie the com- mandme~t of God (not by, as in the Authorized Version, but)for the sake of your tradition {010: '"1" ,rap&.oo<r111 {,Jl,U.,, St. Matthew), or, as St. Mark more fully expresses it," in order that ye may keep your own tradition." Thus there is a climax; for, first, they let go or dismis, the commandment of God, while they hold with obstinate tenacity human tradition; then, secondly, they /P-t aside or displace, putting something else in its room, or reject with something akin to contempt, the commandment of God ; from omission they proceeded to commission &s usual, and all this in order to g'll,Q,f"d, observe, or maintain their own tradition. Isaiah had finely (,r~s) described them befo,·ehand, and now they finely («~s, the same word, but used ironically in this second instance, 11.nd not with the meaning of" entirely") act up to that description.  en. vn. 1-37.J 'l'IIE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. 31'1