‘And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honour me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men.' You desert the commandment of God and hold fast the tradition of men.” '
Jesus then cited the words of Isaiah which indicated how hypocritical men were. With their lips they gave great honour to God, but in their hearts they were far from Him. For rather than assiduously following His genuine requirements, they only did so in terms of their own interpretations, many of which were simply the teachings of men. Thus they were ignoring the commandment of God, and were holding fast to man's traditions.
So Jesus' reply was that they were asking for observances that were not required by Scripture, rather than looking to what would please God most. By concentrating on trivia which they had themselves invented they were missing the main point. He was never in any doubt about their attitude and opposition. And while He was willing to conform to their practises Himself He was grieved that they cared more about ritual activity than about the things that mattered most, justice, compassion and mercy. As He declared here, they were exactly the type that Isaiah had prophesied about (Isaiah 29:13). They spoke in a hushed voice about God and gave a great show of being concerned about His Law, but they then altered it to suit themselves, and laid great emphasis on those interpretations of their own, while ignoring its most basic demands. They deserted God's commandment, which was pure and simple, (and yet demanding, and speaking to many occasions at the same time, as He Himself in His teaching was revealing), and instead expanded it and changed it to fit in with their own preconceptions, giving it their own limited significance and emphasis, and as a result ignoring the greater matters because they were too busy with minor details (Matthew 23:23-26). We can see more of what He means by studying Matthew 5, where He takes what was said by ‘men of old', and demonstrates what they should have said.
The decisions of the Rabbis, growing in complication and often subtly twisting words and meanings, had come to mean more to them than the word of God. Thus He pointed out to them that with all their show of piety their worship was in vain. For in many of them their hearts were so tied up with rules and regulations of their own devising, that they left no room for open-heartedness and compassion. Paul had described it exactly in Romans 7. He too had been so taken up with keeping the Law that he had failed to recognise the covetousness of his own heart. And when it had suddenly come home to him he had been appalled, especially when he had recognised that he could not get rid of it.
Then Jesus went on to illustrate it by example. This issue was of vital importance. The vital question was, what was to be the authority that man recognised as totally binding? Both would agree that the Law of God as contained in the Bible was binding as being from God. There was no argument about that. The question then was, was the interpretation of that Law which was made by the Rabbis, which not only explained but also reinterpreted and thus altered that Law, equally binding? The Pharisees said ‘yes', although they even disagreed among themselves whose interpretation was the most binding, thus demonstrating that they did not see all as binding, for there were different schools of thought. But Jesus said ‘no', that they were the traditions of men not of God, and had to be judged accordingly. What mattered more was to love God and obey the inner heart of the Law.
‘Hypocrites.' Those whose lives are an outward show, a play-acting, making out that they are what they are not, whether consciously or unconsciously. (The word was used of play-actors).
The quotation from Isaiah is very similar to LXX apart from the last section. But that is an interpretation of the Hebrew text. Assuming Jesus was speaking in Aramaic this might be Mark's way of translating, based on his knowledge of the LXX text (the text being used by his readers) but deliberately altering it to take into account the Hebrew rendering where he felt it necessary in order to give the true sense of Jesus' words. Or it may have been quoted from a text of which we are at present unaware. The discoveries at Qumran have revealed that there were then Hebrew texts more in line with the LXX than with the Massoretic text. Either way he was satisfied that it brought home the true significance of what the Scripture was saying.