As far as I know there has never been a commandment to wash your hands before eating. The pharisees had a lot of their own commandments, which did even contradict the true law of the Torah.
Mark 7:9 "And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition."
You are right, I am not well versed in all of the language but the pharisees had turned Biblical commands into a list of rules. They were experts at following the rules, but their hearts had not been changed...and thats what GOD wants. I think that at first the motives were pure, but over time mans rules were followed and GOD's rules were cast by the way side.
I am providing a list of the rules that mankind thought that they should focous on: http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm
An example that I like to use to point to the fact that the man made rules only changed the outside of a man (and GOD wanted the inside of mankind to be clean)
We know that GOD wants us to keep the Sabbath day Holy, and the genneral thought is to not work on the Sabbath, and some people considered walking to be 'work'. In the Jewish way of thinking a person was not allowed to walk 'X' number of steps from his property. So what was done was a rope was strung up and as long as the person stayed close to that rope then he never 'officialy' left his property.
So when JESUS called them "White warshed tombs" Matthew 23:27 it was quite accurate.
GOD does not want people to only change on the outside, are hearts need to be changed also...thanks for the comment!
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I thought that you might enjoy an article that I wrote:
https://steemit.com/traditionalvalues/@captaintj/our-high-tech-world-has-surely-moved-past-traditional-biblical-values-right
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