So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,“This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.” You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’ Then he said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! (Mark 7: 5-9)

The Pharisees were scrupulous in their piety and earnest in their beliefs. They were, according to contemporary commentators, the most popular of the contending schools of thought in First Century Palestine.

But Jesus calls them hypocrites. This is from the Greek word hupokrites that means a stage actor or someone who uses the words of others or a pretender. Hebrew does not have a word of equivalent meaning. Jesus might have used the Greek.

To clarify his meaning Jesus quotes from Isaiah 29. Here the prophet criticizes empty religious practice. Isaiah explains that God will radically transform the people's faith and understanding through a process compared to a nightmare... or it might be a piece of theater.

Isaiah explains that religious tradition has actually "turned things around." We would say, turned things upside down. The tradition has put the last things first and first things last. Isaiah promises that that through the work of God things will be made right side up.

In answer to the Pharisees' criticism Jesus almost certainly intended for them to recall the final words of Isaiah 29: "Those who err in mind will know the truth, and those who criticize will accept instruction."