For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’
These men from Jerusalem, who should have been better, were worse. They accused Christ's disciples of breaking tradition by eating with unwashed hands, a decent custom the Pharisees had turned into a religious duty. That this was the worst charge they could bring shows how inoffensively His disciples lived.
AI summary
Commenting on Matthew 15:1-9
For God commanded, saying,.... That he might not be thought to suggest this without any foundation, he gives them an instance, wherein a command of God was transgressed, by the observance of their tradition: the command he refers to, stands in Exo 20:12 and is this; Honour thy father and mother.
Verse 4. For God commanded, etc. That is, in the fifth commandment, . To honour is to obey, to reverence, to speak kindly to, to speak and think well of. To curse is to disobey, to treat with irreverence, to swear at, to speak ill of, to think evil of in the heart, to meditate or do any evil to a parent. All this is included in the original word.