He shall be free. — The words, as the italics show, are not in the Greek, and if we follow the better reading, are not wanted to complete the sense. “Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me, he shall not honour (i.e., shall not support) his father or his mother.” The “honour” which the commandment enjoined was identified with the duty which was its first and most natural expression.
By your tradition. — As before, for the sake of. They had inverted the right relation of the two, and made the tradition an end, and not a means. St. Mark (Mark 7:9) gives what we cannot describe otherwise than as a touch of grave and earnest irony, in the truest and best sense of that word, “Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own traditions.”