⁹ Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!^(A)

²¹ I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness^[a] comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

¹⁶ “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you.^{(A) 17} Instead, we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. We used to have plenty of food and prospered and saw no misfortune.^(B)

³ He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴ For God said,^[a] ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’^{(A) 5} But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’^[b] then that person need not honor the father.^{[c](B) 6} So, for the sake of your tradition, you nullify the word^[d] of God.

¹³ thus nullifying the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”

³ (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands,^[a] thus observing the tradition of the elders,^(A)

¹⁰ When King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria, he saw the altar that was at Damascus. King Ahaz sent to the priest Uriah a model of the altar and its pattern exact in all its details.^{(A) 11} The priest Uriah built the altar; in accordance with all that King Ahaz had sent from Damascus, so did the priest Uriah build it, before King Ahaz arrived from Damascus. ¹² When the king came from Damascus, the king viewed the altar. Then the king drew near to the altar, went up on it, ¹³ and offered his burnt offering and his grain offering, poured his drink offering, and dashed the blood of his offerings of well-being against the altar. ¹⁴ The bronze altar that was before the Lord he removed from the front of the house, from the place between his altar and the house of the Lord, and put it on the north side of his altar.^{(B) 15} King Ahaz commanded the priest Uriah, saying, “Upon the great altar offer the morning burnt offering and the evening grain offering and the king’s burnt offering and his grain offering, with the burnt offering of all the people of the land, their grain offering, and their drink offering; then dash against it all the blood of the burnt offering and all the blood of the sacrifice, but the bronze altar shall be for me to inquire by.”^{(C) 16} The priest Uriah did everything that King Ahaz commanded.