Albert Barnes Commentary Mark 7:17

"And when he was entered into the house from the multitude, his disciples asked of him the parable." — Mark 7:17 (ASV)

The parable. The obscure and difficult remarks that He had made in Mark 7:15. The word parable, here, means an obscure and difficult saying. They could not understand it. They had probably imbibed many of the popular notions of the Pharisees, and they could not understand why a man was not defiled by external things. Moreover, it was a doctrine of the law that people were ceremonially polluted by contact with dead bodies, etc., and they could not understand how it could be otherwise.