John Lightfoot on Luke 11:39

[Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, &c.] This our Saviour speaks of the persons, and not of the vessels; which is plain, in that,

I. He saith, your inward parts, &c.; so that the sense is to this purpose: You cleanse yourselves outwardly indeed by these kinds of washings; but that which is within you is full of rapine, &c.

II. Whereas he saith, he that made that which is without, he doth not speak it of the artificer that made the cup or the platter, but of God. Else what kind of argument is this? 'He that made the cups and the platters, made both the outside and the inside of them': what then? 'Therefore do ye make yourselves clean both outside and inside too.' But if we refer it to God, then the argument holds forcibly enough: 'Did not God, that made you without, make you within too? he expects, therefore, that you should keep yourselves clean, not only as to your outside, but as to your inside too.'

III. It is hardly probable that the Pharisees should wash the outside of the cup or platter, and not the inside too. Take but these two passages out of this kind of authors themselves: "Those dishes which any person eats out of over night, they wash them, that he may eat in them in the morning. In the morning they wash them, that he may eat in them at noon. At noon, that he may eat in them at the mincha. After the mincha, he doth not wash them again; but the cups, and jugs, and bottles, he doth wash, and so it goes throughout the whole day," &c. I will not give myself nor reader the trouble to examine the meaning of the words: it suffices that here is mention only of washing, and that the whole vessel, not of this or that part only: and the washing of such vessels was by dipping them in water.

"All vessels that have an outside and an inside, if the inside be defiled, the outside is also; but if the outside be defiled, the inside is not defiled." One would think this was to our purpose, and asserted the very literal sense of the words we have in hand, viz. that the cups and the platters, although they were unclean on the outside, yet in the inside they might be clean; and it was sufficient to the Pharisee, if he cleansed them on the outside only. But the vessels here mentioned (if the Gloss may be our interpreter) are such as they might use both the outside and the inside indifferently. Some of them are recited by the Gemarists, viz. sacks, wallets, nightcaps, pillowcases, &c.

Our Saviour, therefore, does not here speak according to the letter, neither here nor in Matthew 23:25, when he saith, "Ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter"; but by way of parable and similitude. 'You, while you are so very nice and officious in your external washings, you do nothing more than if you only washed the outside of the cup or dish, while there was nothing but filth and nastiness within.'