Solomon's prayer before the altar is one of the elevated speeches of prayer; here Solomon's words recall the most expressive lines of the psalms composed by his father.

Solomon lists dramatic situations and sorrowful events during which the people will come to the temple. Is it accidental that on the day of celebration Solomon speaks mainly about disasters and troubling circumstances, while joyful events, to which the temple is also called to bear witness, remain somewhere in the background? Has it been revealed to Solomon that the temple too will be destroyed and that the people will have to endure many disasters? Or is he unable, even on a joyful day, not to grieve over the sin that enslaves the world?

And yet Solomon turns to the Lord with hope, not doubting that He will hear and come to help. But Solomon asks not only for his own people: he calls on the Lord also to hear the prayer of the foreigner who comes to the temple. Solomon believes that not only the Israelites will come to the temple to worship the Lord, and he wants all peoples to know His Name.

Solomon spoke his prayer not only in his own name, but also on behalf of the whole people. On that day before the temple there took place a wondrous prayerful unity of the whole people standing before the Lord.

Jesus turns the dispute about tradition, about handed-down practice, in a completely unexpected direction. The washings mentioned in the text were one of those expanded interpretations of the norms and rules of ritual purity, of which many appeared in the Second Temple period. A cleansing washing, even of the hands alone after returning from the marketplace, was one of these newly established rules.

There was a desire here for a kind of "super-purity": anything could happen in the marketplace, all kinds of people are encountered there, and there is enough uncleanness of every sort. So it was better, just in case, to perform a washing, even a partial one, even only of the hands, before sitting down at the table where one would have to break, and therefore bless, the bread. Meanwhile all these traditions, as Jesus testifies, could not prevent essential distortions connected with spiritual life, with such fundamental things as keeping the commandments. The Savior Himself gives an example of such a violation: promise to donate to the Temple what is needed to help elderly parents, and you no longer have to help them, since God is more important.

Formally everything is correct and pious, but in substance it is a violation of the fifth commandment. How is that possible? Jesus gives the answer immediately, reducing it to an aphoristic formulation: a person is defiled not by what enters him, but by what comes out of him. Other Gospels speak directly of a person's mouth. The point is evidently, on the one hand, the food that enters a person and, on the other hand, words. Of course, behind words there are always intentions, and it is those intentions that defile a person. In the Kingdom this is really so, because the fallen world and its elements no longer have their former power over a person.

Why, then, do people so often shift the emphases of spiritual life from what is primary to what is secondary? Jesus answers this question too. He says that what a person eats does not defile him. On the contrary, if a person lives a normal, full spiritual life, he is able to sanctify any food that enters his body. As for what comes out of the body, the intentions and words, that is exactly where the question is decided: will a person preserve purity or be defiled? This is understandable. Physically, a person is what he eats, but only physically; spiritually, he is what his soul desires and strives for. Where the treasure is, there the heart is also. If a person does not have a normal spiritual life, then of course every kind of uncleanness will cling to him. In that case, however, no cleansings will help, just as no medicines help someone who has no immunity at all. Jesus reminds the people listening to Him of all this as of things fundamental to spiritual life.

Jesus' conversation with the Pharisees about washing hands is a fine illustration of the essence of that conflict between Jesus and part of the Pharisaic brotherhood which eventually led many Pharisees to outright hatred of the One whom, as it seemed to them, they had awaited so eagerly. In this case, of course, the issue is not hygiene, not the need to wash one's hands before eating, but precisely ritual washing, without which, as some Pharisaic teachers believed, one could not touch the bread that was about to be broken and blessed. Believing Jews did not and do not eat bread without blessing it in a special way.

It should be noted that this washing was not so much the fulfillment of Torah norms as a tribute to tradition. The Torah, which indeed requires washing for those taking part in a temple sacrifice, says nothing about the need for washings before blessing food in general or bread in particular at home. But evidently, for some, perhaps quite significant, part of the Pharisees, refusal to follow this and other similar late and secondary traditions was equivalent to apostasy from God. And Jesus responds rather sharply to the accusations against His disciples, as usual the disciples are not accused directly, with all responsibility being placed on the Teacher. He does not enter into any discussions with His opponents about tradition. He merely reminds them of Isaiah's words about true and false worship of God, that honoring God with words does not mean honoring Him with the heart.

What, then, does He mean? After all, such "excessive" piety, at first glance, does not especially hinder genuine piety. One can, of course, be faithful to God without washing one's hands, but washing one's hands would seem unable to hinder such faithfulness either. And yet Jesus sees the situation differently. The matter is probably not only that "excessive" piety so often becomes an occasion for pride and self-assertion at the expense of one's neighbor.

The matter is, above all, in the spiritual roots of such "piety." The point is that a person who does not want his relationship with God to deepen and intensify, and who fears such deepening, is often inclined to replace it with excessive religiosity, which gives rise to "super-piety." The person unwilling to go "inward," to deepen his relationship with God, will inevitably go "outward," along the path of increasing the number of religious rites and religious obligations. And the more numerous they become, the fewer the chances of returning to the path of movement "inward." Jesus, of course, understands this perfectly well. And He condemns the movement "outward" in the most decisive way. For by moving that way, one will never come to the Kingdom.