Catholic Commentary
Jesus Rebukes Human Tradition Over God's Commandment
6He answered them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.7They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’8“For you set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to the tradition of men—the washing of pitchers and cups, and you do many other such things.”9He said to them, “Full well do you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition.10For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother;’ and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death.’11But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is Corban,”’” that is to say, given to God,12“then you no longer allow him to do anything for his father or his mother,13making void the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down. You do many things like this.”
Mark 7:6–13 records Jesus criticizing the Pharisees for prioritizing human religious traditions over God's commandments, using the example of Corban vows that allowed people to withhold support from aging parents while claiming piety. Jesus argues that their elaborate system of rules has become a theatrical performance that actually invalidates God's Word rather than honoring it.
Religious practice becomes hypocrisy not when it fails to be perfect, but when it replaces God's word with its own authority.
Commentary
Mark 7:6 — "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites" Jesus begins not with his own authority but with the prophetic tradition the Pharisees themselves revere. The citation from Isaiah 29:13 (LXX) is devastatingly precise: the indictment is not that these men are insincere personally, but that the entire structure of their worship has come untethered from the heart. The word "hypocrites" (Gk. hypokritai) carries its theatrical sense — those who perform a role rather than live a reality. Jesus does not call them liars; he calls them actors. This is a sharper charge, because it means their entire religious world has become a stage-set rather than a living encounter with God.
Mark 7:7 — "Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men" The Isaiah quotation reaches its climax here. The phrase "commandments of men" is the engine of the indictment. Mark's Greek (entalmata anthrōpōn) echoes the Septuagint closely, and the contrast with "commandments of God" (entolē tou theou, v. 8) is deliberate and repeated throughout the passage. The problem is not human teaching per se but human teaching that displaces divine teaching and is accorded the binding force of divine revelation.
Mark 7:8 — "You set aside the commandment of God and hold tightly to the tradition of men" The verb "set aside" (aphiēmi) has a dismissive, releasing connotation — they let God's commandment fall away while clinging (krateō, to grip, seize) to human tradition. Mark's editorial insertion — "the washing of pitchers and cups, and you do many other such things" — grounds Jesus's critique in the specific dispute over hand-washing (vv. 1–5) and widens it. This is not one isolated abuse; it is a systemic pattern.
Mark 7:9 — "Full well do you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition" The phrase "full well" (kalōs) is bitterly ironic — the same word used for praiseworthy action. Jesus acknowledges the Pharisees are expert at what they do: they have perfected the art of voiding God's Word. The subordinate clause "that you may keep your tradition" is crucial — the human rule is not merely a mistake but functions as the purpose behind setting aside the divine command. This reveals a deeper disorder of the will, not just the intellect.
Verses 10–12 — The Corban Case Jesus now moves from general principle to specific evidence. He opens with Moses — the Pharisees' own supreme legislator — and cites two texts: the positive commandment to honor parents (Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16) and the corresponding death penalty for cursing them (Exodus 21:17; Leviticus 20:9). The gravity of parental honor in the Law could not be higher. Against this, Jesus sets the Corban practice. Corban (Heb. qorban, קָרְבָּן) means an offering dedicated to God; once pronounced over property or money, it was understood as irrevocably pledged to the Temple treasury. What Jesus exposes is the casuistic use of this vow: a man could declare his resources Corban while continuing to use them himself, effectively shielding his estate from his aging parents' claims — all while maintaining an outward posture of piety. The tradition even forbade him from reversing the vow to help his parents (v. 12). The result is a religious mechanism that weaponizes the language of consecration to God in order to escape the concrete demands of the commandment to love one's neighbor — specifically one's most immediate neighbor, one's own parent.
Mark 7:13 — "Making void the word of God by your tradition" The verb "making void" (akyrountes, from akuroō) is a legal term meaning to annul or invalidate a contract or ruling. Jesus charges the Pharisees with nothing less than legislatively invalidating the Word of God. Mark closes with "you do many things like this," again signaling that the Corban case is illustrative of a pattern, not an anomaly.
Typological and Spiritual Senses Typologically, the Corban dispute prefigures every moment in salvation history when religious structures calcify into self-perpetuating systems that serve their own maintenance rather than God's purposes. The prophetic type runs from Samuel's rebuke of Saul ("obedience is better than sacrifice," 1 Samuel 15:22) through Micah's insistence that justice, mercy, and humility outrank cultic observance (Micah 6:6–8). In the spiritual sense, the passage invites examination of the interior life: are our religious practices — however orthodox in form — genuinely ordered to love of God and neighbor, or have they become self-referential performances?
Catholic Commentary
Catholic tradition navigates this passage with particular care precisely because the Church herself teaches with authority, invokes tradition, and legislates through canon law. The passage cannot be read as a Reformation-style polemic against tradition as such; rather, it draws a distinction the Catholic magisterium has always maintained: between Sacred Tradition (the living transmission of the apostolic deposit, co-constitutive of revelation alongside Scripture; see Dei Verbum §9–10) and mere human custom or ecclesiastical legislation.
St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Matthew 51) notes that the Pharisees' error was not in having traditions but in making their traditions the measure of Scripture rather than letting Scripture measure tradition. The Council of Trent (Session IV) defined that Scripture and Tradition are received "with equal piety and reverence," but this specifically refers to apostolic Tradition — not every practice that accumulates over time in religious communities.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is explicit: "The Tradition here in question comes from the apostles and hands on what they received from Jesus' teaching and example" (CCC §83). Later ecclesiastical traditions, disciplines, and customs carry authority, but a lower and derivative authority — they can be reformed, and they must be reformed when they obscure rather than serve the Gospel. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 97, a. 1–2) affirms that human law can legitimately develop and change, and that unjust or counterproductive human laws do not bind the conscience with the same force as divine law.
The specific violation of the Fourth Commandment through Corban is addressed by the Catechism's treatment of parental honor (CCC §§2197–2200), which emphasizes that this commandment is foundational to social order. No religious practice — however sincere its original intent — may be used to circumvent the concrete obligations of justice and charity toward family. Pope Francis echoes this in Amoris Laetitia §196, warning against "a cold bureaucratic morality" in the face of real human need.
For Today
For contemporary Catholics, the temptation of Corban is not theoretical. Consider the person who fulfills every Sunday obligation, funds parish building campaigns, and serves on every committee — yet neglects elderly parents who need care, or treats employees unjustly, or withholds forgiveness from a sibling. The religious activity is real, but it has been unconsciously deployed as a substitute for the harder, less visible demands of the commandment.
More broadly, this passage invites every Catholic — and every Catholic institution — to undertake a periodic, honest audit: which of our practices genuinely nurture love of God and neighbor, and which have become ends in themselves? Liturgical rubrics, devotional customs, parish policies, even the language of institutional "mission" can drift into self-referential performance if not continually re-anchored in the Word of God. The remedy is not the abolition of tradition but what St. John Paul II called a "purification of memory" — the courageous willingness to distinguish what is of God from what is merely of us, and to reform the latter in service of the former. Begin with the examination of conscience: where in my religious life is God's word being quietly set aside?
Cross-References