Bible Commentaries
Matthew 23

Verses 1-39

XXIII 1-36 Discourse on the Scribes and Pharisees (Mark 12:38-40; Luke 20:45-47; cf.Luke 11:37-54)—The whole chapter is a warning to those who are or may be deceived by the worst elements in Pharisaism. It is with this in view that our Lord mercilessly exposes them. Note, however, that the recurrent ’Woe!’ is not a curse but a portentous expression of grief; cf. 24:19.

1-7 The Pharisees and their Victims— 1-4. When the scribes and Pharisees faithfully expound the Law it is on the teaching-chair of Moses that they sit (???T?sa?, aorist equivalent to the Semitic stative ’imperfect’; Black, 93). Accordingly they must be obeyed. But this obedience should not lead to imitation because they are hypocrites at heart. The letter of the Law they observe, not without ingenuity, but not its spirit; cf.John 7:19-23. On the contrary, the casuistic interpretations of the Law that over-burdened the conscience of others, Acts 15:40, served to extricate the Pharisees themselves from many an obligation; cf. Edersheim 2, 777. They take pains to make neat and heavy parcels and to lift them on to the shoulders of others. With their own shoulders, nay with their own fingers they will not carry them an inch; cf. Lagrange, L’Evangile, 337.

5-7. (Mark 12:38-39; Luke 20:48.) Their show is hollow though it is the basis of their prestige. They seek to impress others with their zeal for the Law by making their phylacteries more noticeable. The ’phylacteries’ (F??a?t???a,i.e. safeguards, amulets; Aram. lepillîn, literally ’prayers’) were tiny, oblong, leather-covered cases containing four strips of parchment on which were written the texts, Exodus 13:1-10, Exodus 13:11-16; Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Deuteronomy 11:13-21, the monotheistic profession of faith. Here the word is evidently use to include the ribbons or thongs by which the cases were fastened, one to the forearm, another to the forehead, at the time of morning-prayer. The practice derived from an unduly literal interpretation of Exodus 13:9, Exodus 13:16. Our Lord condemns neither phylacteries nor tassels, 9:20-22, § 691f, but only the ostentatious piety that makes them conspicuous. The low respectful bow in sight of, all, the title Rabbi (’master’, ’teacher’) delighted the scribes and Pharisees.

8-12 Danger of Imitation (Mt only)—Our Lord turns to his disciples. As he had not condemned phylacteries so in 7 does he not forbid the title ’Rabbi’ but the vain complacency taken in it. It is in this sense that the injunction of 8 is to be understood. Our Lord is not out to reform current nomenclature; he is concerned with the spirit, not with the letter. But the use, 9, or acceptance, 8, 10, of any adulation that threatens to intrude between man and God is sternly forbidden. All human titles are only shadows of God’s authority from which they derive, Ephesians 3:15. Unless this is clearly understood, ’call no one on earth "Abi"’, ’father’, a term sometimes used of the great Rabbis; cf. Edersheim 2, 408-10. Note that our Lord is not a grammarian regulating the use of terms: he is a doctor of the spirit. He forbids any acknowledgement of fatherhood that obscures the fatherhood of God, nothing more. If we make no allowance for the concreteness and brevity of his phrases we reduce either them to absurdity (e.g. 6:3) or him to inconsistency (e.g.John 18:23, cf. § 686d). He would not forbid a human son to use the word ’father’ nor would he forbid the term if addressed to one who is God’s representative; in this second case, indeed, it serves to remind its user of the fatherhood of God. Nor must the Christian disciple pose as an independent spiritual guide (10, ?aT???t??). He himself is subject to one Teacher (d?d?s?a???, 8) and one Guide, 10 —our Lord himself (the term ’Christ’, if a scribal insertion, nevertheless renders the sense rightly). They have one Father who is in heaven. The principle of graded authority remains (11; cf. 20:26, note) but the spirit in which that authority is wielded must be one of humility. For 12, cf. 18:4, note.

13-31 The Seven Woes— 13. First Woe: opposition and obstacle to the Kingdom. A general denunciation. Our Lord’s anger is explained by the harm he sees done to simple folk. The formalism of scribes and Pharisees has blocked the entrance even to our Lord’s own kingdom. It has darkened the public mind and made it incapable of appreciating the need for inward religion or even of recognizing its presence.

14. An insertion from Mark 12:42.

15. Second Woe: proselytism to bad purpose (Luke 11:52). Not content with obstructing entrance to the Kingdom, the Pharisees seek, with immense zeal, to draw ignorant pagans down to their own level and to make them too consciously sin against the proffered light of Christ. On the intense and successful Jewish proselytism of this period, cf. Schürer 2, 2, 303-27. Often twice as fanatical as the born-Jew the newcomer is twice as surely established in the infernal dominion (’son of’ in this Semitic sense = ’belonging to’).

16-22. Third Woe: casuistry; a sample.16-19. The Scribes and Pharisees, blind themselves, have absurdly assumed the role of guide. To illustrate the blindness our Lord chooses an example (or contrives a characteristic, if non-existent, case) of their attitude to vows. On the annulment of these they were an ingenious court of appeal. The terms of the vow were closely scrutinized without regard to the original intention of the one who had made it. Their verdict would be either: ’It is nothing’ (it is no vow) or ’He is under obligation’. Two individual illustrations of this attitude are given, 16, 18. Vows naming the gold (apparently the votive-offerings) in the temple and vows naming the sacrifice (’gift’) on the altar. These are declared ’valid’; vows on the temple or altar itself are declared void. But our Lord turns the casuistry against them, 17, 19. If they are determined to make these distinctions (though distinctions in this matter are out of place, cf. 20-22), surely the house of God and his chosen altar are more sacred than man’s ossessions. These last are sacred only when, and ecause, they become offerings. Even casuistry should have reached a conclusion contradictory to that of the scribes. 10-22. But, in truth, there is no room for it. A sacred vow, whatever its terms, is made in the presence of God. And (22—a final thrust), contrary to the explicit decision of the Jewish doctors, the invocation of ’heaven’ in place of the divine name makes not the slightest difference. It is the intention and not the word that tells. 23-24. Fourth Woe: false perspectives (Luke 11:42).

23. The minutiae of the tithe-laws (based on Leviticus 27:30) on all comestible plants were truly astonishing, Edersheim 2, 412. Even the small seasoning herbs, ’mint, dill, cummin’, were not forgotten. The practice is’ not condemned, nor is it enjoined, despite the misleading Semitic downrightness of the phrase ’these things [’justice’ etc.] you should have practised without neglecting the other [tithe]’. But it surely should not be found incompatible with the weightier matters of the Law—justice to one’s neighbour (???s??,i.e.mišpa?;cf.Deuteronomy 10:18), sympathy for him (??e??), good faith in dealings with him [p?st??; cf. Ps 32( 33): 4; Galatians 5:22(23)].

24. This fantastic situation is illustrated in massive hyperbole. Such conduct is compared to that of one who would carefully filter from his cup a tiny gnat (lest he incur some legal impurity) leaving there a camel. Attention is sometimes called to the play on words (gml’, qlm’, qml’; respectively ’camel’, ’gnat’, ’filter’; cf. Lagrange, Mt, 447) which probably indicates that the saying was proverbial. 25-26. Fifth Woe: formalism (Luke 11:39-41). Meticulous ceremonial care to avoid legal impurity (cf.Mark 7:4; Schürer 2, 2, 106-11) was not matched by moral scruples. The surface of the crockery was, no doubt, clean, but it held the product of plunder and the means of intemperance: ’within they [the vessels] are filled from [??] robbery and excess’. First things first: see that what is within (t? ??t??) is morally pure; it will then confer all necessary purity upon the surface of the container.

27-28. Sixth Woe: hypocrisy (cf.Luke 11:44). The ’inner’ and ’outer’ contrast of 25-26 leads on to a formal accusation of hypocrisy. The comparison, deliberately nauseating, is borrowed from the tombs whitened with chalk four weeks before the Pasch to warn pilgrims of the danger of contact and legal impurity; cf.Numbers 19:16. The eye sees them gleaming in the sun but they cover corruption. By the same paradox the Law-abiding Pharisee is full of lawlessness (???µ?a); cf. 1-7, note. 29-33. Seventh Woe: murder of God’s envoy (Luke 11:47-48). As in 23 it is not the act of honouring their great ancestors, 29, that is condemned but present murderous intention which lays bare the hypocrisy of their protestations. They admit, 30, that it was their fathers who murdered the prophets but seek to disclaim responsibility. Nevertheless, they and our Lord know their murderous intent in his regard; cf. 21:38, 45. The situation of their ’fathers’ has reappeared and their conduct shows, 31, that they are worthy sons and that their protest, 30, is empty. Bitterly ironical, our Lord urges them to their deadly work: their fathers have killed the servants, 21:35, 36, it is theirs to complete the work and kill the Son. In these words, recalling those of the Baptist (33; cf. 3:7) but unexpected and terrible on the lips of our Lord, the crafty Pharisees are warned of the judgement that condemns to hell.

34-36. The crime and its punishment (Luke 11:49-51). To this end (i.e. of 32; 33 is parenthetical) our Lord in his turn (?d?? ???, emphatic) is sending (cf. 10:16) his own ’prophets’ to declare the divine message and ’wise men’ and ’scribes’ (cf. 13:52) to apply it. The old order will repeat itself, and with it the opportunity for sacrilegious murder. 35. Thus the chosen race will fitly bear the responsibility for all the innocent blood shed on the ground in the whole course of sacred history. The names of Abel and Zacharias are chosen because Abel’s murder is the first mentioned in the Scriptures, Genesis 4:8, and that of the priest Zacharias, 2 Par 24:20-22, the last in the Hebrew order of books. In each case there is question, as here, of a just reckoning to be made, Genesis 4:10 f.; 2 Par 24:22. The reference to Zacharias is certainly to the priest of 2 Par 24:20—’son of Joiada’ and slain in the temple precincts (cf.Luke 11:51)—and not to the prophet, who is called ’son of Barachias’ in Zach 1:1. There are some faint indications that the reading ’son of Barachias’ in Mt is not original: the phrase is absent altogether from the Sinaitic MS and from four cursives; it becomes ’son of Joiada’ in the ’Gospel of the Nazarenes’ known to Jerome and thought by him to be the original Matthew. Its absence from the parallel place in Lk suggests to many critics that it may be an ancient and mistaken gloss (e.g.*Allen, *Plummer, *Loisy). This theory is accepted by many Catholic exegetes. The question remains unsolved. 36. For all these crimes the nation shall shortly answer. The fall of Jerusalem came forty years later.

37-39 Lament for Jerusalem (Luke 13:34-35)—37. The sorrow underlying the anger of the denunciations rises to the surface. The city of God, 5:35, assassin of his envoys (cf. 30, 34; 2 Par 24:20 f.; Jeremiah 26:20 ff.; 4 Kg 21:16, etc.) and finally rejecting the reconciliation through the Son! By repeated appeal to Jerusalem (unmentioned in the Synoptics but told in Jn) our Lord has used the most anxious care to protect his own. 38. The city with its temple (’your house’) will be left forsaken as the prophet had threatened, Jeremiah 22:5—a repetition of the sorrows of the Babylonian exile.

39. But Jesus does not yet speak openly of material ruin. He speaks rather of the spiritual loss his absence will bring. They have heard his last appeal. His mission to them is over. Yet, it seems, he ends on a note of invitation. If Jerusalem should come to hail him as her King, as many on Sunday had saluted him (cf. 21:9, note), she will find him. But not till then. The words are perhaps merely a farewell exhortation though many (as Prat, Lagrange) see in them a promise of the future conversion of Israel to Christ—a conversion which is in fact prophesied by Paul, Romans 11:25. For barren resentment of Jewry we should substitute prayer.