In replying Jesus did not explain or justify His disciples' conduct. Instead He addressed the issue of the source of religious authority (vv. 6-13) and the issue of the nature of defilement (vv. 14-23).
7:6-7 Jesus boldly called His critics hypocrites. They professed to honor God with their behavior, but they really did not honor Him in their hearts. What Isaiah said about the hypocrites in his day fit these critics exactly. They stressed precepts to the exclusion of principles.
7:8-9 Jesus contrasted the commands of God and the traditions of men. The rabbis had built a fence around the law by erecting their dos and don'ts to keep the Israelites from breaking the law. However rather than protecting it their legalistic requirements distorted and even contradicted the law. This is always the problem that accompanies attempting to legislate obedience to God's Word. Legalism means making laws that God has not made and treating them as equally authoritative as God's Word. The Pharisees had even abandoned God's commandments in favor of their oral traditions that came from men.
7:10-13 Jesus cited an example of how his critics used human traditions to set aside divine imperatives. They professed to honor Moses through whom God commanded the Israelites to honor their parents and threatened disobedience with death (Exod. 20:12, 16). Honoring parents manifests itself in financial support and practical care if necessary. Mark interpreted the word "corban,"a gift devoted to God, for his Gentile readers. This word is Greek, but it transliterates a Hebrew word that the Jews used when they dedicated something to God. Jewish tradition permitted people to declare something they owned as dedicated to God. This did not mean that they had to give it to the priests or even give up the use of it themselves. However it freed them from giving it to someone else, even a needy parent.
Jesus claimed the authority to reorder social relationships. He said a son's responsibility to provide for his parents superseded the legal option of corban.173
Note that Jesus equated what Moses said (v. 10) with the Word of God (v. 13). He also attributed Mosaic authorship to the Torah, something many liberal modern critics of the Bible deny. Jesus' enemies failed to recognize the difference between inspired and uninspired instruction. The "you"in verse 11 is in the emphatic first position in the Greek text indicating a strong contrast between God's view and the critics'. They had not only rejected God's Word (v. 9), but they had even invalidated it, that is, robbed it of its authority (v. 12). Mark added Jesus' words that this was only one example of how these Pharisees and scribes had voided the authority of what God had revealed by their traditions (v. 13).
