What Does Matthew 15:2 Mean?
Why do your disciples step across the handing-down of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.THE KEY
The accusation joins two movements: tradition is something handed over, and transgression is a step beyond its boundary.
THE MEANING
An ordinary act, eating without washing hands, becomes a test of whether the disciples honor what has been handed down. The verse reveals how a received practice can become the boundary by which a person is judged. Its pressure lands wherever custom is treated as the measure of faithfulness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A practice does not become God’s command simply because it has been handed down and used to judge a visible act.
THE ROOT
παράδοσιν
paradosin
GROWS FROM
δίδωμι
didōmi
To give; in παραδίδωμι (paradidōmi), to hand over or deliver.
“handing-down” in this verse is paradosin. Παράδοσις (paradosis) means a handing over: a teaching or practice received and passed along. The word names how the practice travels, not whether its source makes it authoritative.
ALSO GROWS
paradidōmi: To hand over; deliver.
παραδίδωμι
This verb makes the act of transmission visible: what is called tradition has been passed from one person to another.
dosis: A giving; a gift.
δόσις
This related word keeps the root’s basic act of giving in view; the verse’s tradition is something given over, not authority guaranteed by its age.
παραβαίνουσιν
parabainousin
GROWS FROM
βαίνω
bainō
To step or go; with παρά (para, beside), the compound pictures stepping beside or beyond.
“step across” in this verse is parabainousin. The Greek verb pictures a step in relation to a boundary, while “transgress” gives that movement a legal and moral shade. Beside the word for what has been handed down, it shows how the accusation treats a received practice as a line the disciples have crossed.
ALSO GROWS
anabainō: To go up; ascend.
ἀναβαίνω
This compound uses the same root for stepping or going, with a prefix that gives the movement an upward direction.
katabainō: To go down; descend.
καταβαίνω
The same root can describe ordinary movement in the opposite direction; here παρά gives the step its sense of crossing beside a boundary.
THE PATTERN
A received practice gains its authority from what it carries forward, not merely from being passed down.
For letting go of the commandment of God, you hold the handing down of men, like the immersions of pitchers and cups. And many things like these you do.So then, brothers, stand firm and grip the handed-over things you were taught, whether through word or through our letter.You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor shave anything away from it, that you may guard the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.THE THREAD
But he answered and said to them, Why do you also step across the commandment of God through your handing-down?The verse repeats the same Greek verb for “transgress” and the same noun for “tradition,” then shifts the boundary from the elders’ practice to God’s command. The shared wording turns the question back on the standard being used to judge.
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