Mark 7
The defilement controversy is the chapter's theological center: the Pharisees challenge the disciples' eating with unwashed hands, Jesus responds with the Isaiah 29:13 indictment (these people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me), the Corban example exposing how tradition nullifies the command to honor parents, and the radical teaching that nothing outside a person can defile but only what comes out — the heart's production of evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, slander, arrogance. Mark's parenthetical — in saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean — is the retrospective theological application that will take the early church years to grasp. Two Gentile healings follow, both in the region outside Jewish territory. The Syrophoenician woman's persistence through apparent rejection (the children's bread cannot be tossed to the dogs) produces the most brilliant reply in the Gospels — even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs — which Jesus commends as a sufficient reply and heals her daughter at a distance. The deaf man in the Decapolis receives the most physically elaborate healing in Mark: fingers in ears, spit, touch on the tongue, looking up to heaven with a deep sigh, and the Aramaic Ephphatha — be opened. He speaks plainly, and the Gentile crowd declares in the language of Genesis 1 and Isaiah 35: he has done everything well — he even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.
Mark 7:4
When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles — the marketplace contact with Gentiles or non-observant Jews could create ritual impurity; the washing upon return is the decontamination ritual. The many other traditions suggest that the handwashing controversy is the representative case of a broader system of purity regulation that the Pharisees applied to everyday domestic life.
Mark 7:1
The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus — the Jerusalem delegation returns, as in chapter 3 when Jerusalem scribes made the Beelzebul accusation. The centralization of the opposition from the capital city communicates the escalating institutional response to Jesus' Galilean ministry. Gathering around Jesus is the posture of interrogation and surveillance, not learning — these are not students seeking wisdom but evaluators seeking grounds for accusation.
Mark 7:2
And saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed — the observation that triggers the controversy is dietary-ritual: the disciples are eating without washing their hands in the prescribed manner. The that is, unwashed is Mark's explanatory aside, communicating that he is writing for a Gentile audience unfamiliar with Jewish purity practices. The offense is not hygienic (unsanitary hands) but ritual: the Pharisaic tradition required handwashing before meals as an extension of the priestly purity requirements into everyday life.