ARAMAIC WORD STUDY –  WASHING HANDS – SHUG  ‘AIDA  שׁוג אידא  

Matthew 15:2: “Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.”

In  Matthew 15 the Pharisees accused Jesus of violating the Tradition of the Fathers by not instructing His disciples to wash their hands before eating bread.  This had nothing to do with good hygiene.   The Tradition of the Fathers, as found in the present day Talmud, took the Scriptures like Deuteronomy 18:10-12 declaring that consulting familiar spirits, necromancy, enchanting and witchcraft were an abomination to God and twisted them around to make it actually permissible as found in Sanhedrin 65a-b.  

They actually cited the very Scriptural passage and reversed it presenting the idea that it was ok to call up demons or spirits to come to your aid with sorcery as this is not idolatry since the demons were not being worshipped.  Yeah, I know, bad Talmud and I agree.  Not only that Jesus also agreed this was not good and in fact a violation of the law of Moses.  This is what Jesus was blasting the Pharisees about in Matthew 15.  The Tradition of the Fathers/Talmud teaches that at night the demons will overcome a person when sleeping and when he awakes the demonic spirit moves into one’s hands and the tips of his fingers (really, I’m not making this up).  It was taught that the demons live in water and loved water (remember the pigs that Jesus sent the demons into and they ran off a cliff into water?). 

So the sages taught that you needed to pour water over your hands three times to wash the demons away, especially before eating you wanted to wash any remnants of the demons away before you pass the demon to your bread and then ingest the demons.  This may sound crazy, but remember they had no concept of microbes in those days so when a person got sick after eating they just assumed a demon got into him. The Pharisees explained every ill as something demonic which today we know as simply a virus or a microbe. Thus their Tradition of the Fathers observed that a person who washed his hands before eating did not come down with an illness so they assumed remnants of the demons were in your hands and you needed to sprinkle water over your hands and since the demons prefer water over a physical body you will, in fact, wash out the demons.  Actually, if we were to insert the word demon for microbes and viruses, you could understand how a primitive culture would come to associate the effects of microbes to demons.  I honestly do not know of any Jew who buys into this, but it was really popular among the Pharisees in Jesus’s day.

So in Matthew 15, Jesus is blasting the Pharisees for twisting the commandments of God around to the point where they were breaking the commandments and then accusing Jesus of breaking the Tradition of the Fathers which was violating the commandments.  Jesus really had His hands full. 

We sort of chuckle over the ignorance of the first-century man while we play with a cheap aluminum cross we keep in our pockets because we believe it will somehow protect us. We pay our tithe believing such outward acts will make us prosperous, we attend church every Sunday because we just want to be sure we have enough points to make it into heaven.

If you think about it you will find that we can be just as foolish as the people of the first century who thought washing your hands would wash away demons.