ABLUTION ( ). the ceremonial wash ing whereby, as a symbol of purification from un cleanliness a person was considered—(t) to be cleansed from the taint of an inferior and less pure condition, and initiated into a higher and purer state (Lev. viii :6) ; (2) to be cleansed from the soil of common life, and fitted for special acts of religious service (Exod. xxx:17-21) ; (3) to be cleansed from defilements contracted by par ticular acts or circumstances, and restored to the privileges of ordinary life (Lev. xii-xv) ; (4) as absolving or purifying himself, or declaring him self absolved and purified, from the guilt of a particular act (Dcut. xxi :1-9). We do not meet with any such ablutions in patriarchal times; but under the Mosaical dispensation they all occur.
(1) Influence of Pharisees. After the rise of the sect of the Pharisees, the practice of ablu tion was carried to such excess from the affecta tion of excessive purity, that it is repeatedly brought under our notice in the New Testament through the severe animadversions of our Saviour on the consummate hypocrisy involved in this fas tidious attention to the external types of moral purity, while the heart was left unclean. All the practices there described come under the head of purification from uncleanness, the acts involving which were made so numerous that persons of the stricter sect could scarcely move without contracting some involuntary pollution.
For this reason they never entered their houses ablution, from the strong probability that they had unknowingly contracted some defile ment in the streets. They were especially care
ful never to eat without washing the hands (Mark vii :1-5), because they were peculiarly liable to be defiled. As unclean hands were held to commu nicate uncleanness to all food (excepting fruit) which they touched, it was deemed that there was no security against eating unclean food but by always washing the hands ceremonially be fore touching any meat. The Israelites, who, like other Orientals, fed with their fingers, washed their hands before meals, for the sake of cleanli ness. (See WAsniNc.) (2) Distinct from Ceremonial Ablutions. But these customary washings were distinct from the ceremonial ablutions. It was the latter which the Pharisees judged to be so necessary. When, therefore, some of that sect remarked that our Lord's disciples ate 'with unwashen hands' (Mark vii :2), it is not to be understood literally that they did not at all wash their hands, but that they did not plunge them ceremonially according to their own practice. In at least an equal degree the Pharisees multiplied the ceremonial pollu tions which required the ablution of inanimate objects—'cups and pots, brazen vessels and tables:' the rules given in the law (Lev. vi:28; xi:32-36; xv :23) being extended to these multiplied con taminations. Articles of earthenware which were of little value were to be broken, and those of metal and wood were to be scoured and rinsed with water.