Bible Commentaries

1. Poverty In spirit.

—Devouring widows’ houses, and for a pretence making long prayers (being spiritually rich).

2. The mourners.

—The kingdom of heaven shut against others, while they go not in themselves. Fanaticism as opposed to repentance.

3. The meek.

—Zeal of proselytism.

4. Hungering and thirsting after righteousness

—Casuistical morality, which after corrupts the doctrine of sin, and raises the human above the divine. Swearing by the gold of the temple, by the offering.

5. The merciful.

—Tithing mint and anise; and leaving out righteousness, mercy, and faith,

6. The pure in heart.

—Cleansing the outside of the platter, the inside being full of uncleanness and covetousness.

7. The children of peace (mossengers of life).

—Sepulchres, fill of hypo risy and lawlessness.

Summary of the Seven.

Persecuted for righteousness sake as the prophets were persecuted

Murderers of the prophets

Persecuted for Christ’ sake

The ninth woe is wanting and this is very significant. Instead of it we hear the lamentation of Christ over Jerusalem. (see the Doctrinal Thought below.)

Matthew 23:14. Ye devour.—We put Matthew 23:14 before Matthew 23:13 (see the different readings). It is to be remarked that our Lord here establishes precisely the same connection between the worldly care and covetousness of the Pharisees, and their hypocritical formality, as in Matthew 6:1; Matthew 6:19; but in that passage the order is inverted, as the Lord there proceeds from the hypocrisy to its root—worldliness of mind and covetousness. The ὅτι gives the reason; because.—Devour widows’ houses, i.e, to obtain them unrighteously. This was damnable in itself, but much more when it was done under the cloak of piety, or καἱ προφάσει. The καί “mechanically brought from Mark.” It marks an advancement in the guilt. The περισσότερ ον κριμα we refer, as a prolonged sentence, to the lengthened hypocritical prayers which went before. “At a very early date this avarice in securing legacies crept into the Christian Church; and therefore Justinian passed ordinances forbidding the clergy to inherit possessions.” Heubner.

Matthew 23:13. Ye shut up.—The kingdom of heaven, appearing with Christ, is represented as a palace, or, more precisely, a wedding-hall, with open doors. The hypocrites shut the kingdom of heaven before the people, ἔμπροσθεν.—For ye neither go in yourselves.—The shutting up is therefore twofold: 1. by their own guilt and wicked example; 2. by the actual keeping back of those who are entering, who not only would go in, but have their feet already on the threshold. So was it with Israel. The people were on the point of believing, when their hierarchical authorities drew them back into unbelief.

Ver.I5. Ye compass sea and land.—Fanatical proselytism. Danz: De cura Hebræoram in conquirendis proselytis in Meuschenii N. T. ex .Talm. illust. p649. That the Pharisees undertook actual missionary journeys, cannot be inferred with certainty from Joseph. Antiq. xx2, 4 (not 3 and not1); for this passage speaks of a Jewish merchant who made proselytes, and the remnant of the Ten Tribes were very abundant in Adiabene. But we may suppose that there were such missions, and, indeed, that a proselyting impulse generally drove the Jews through the world. The real Pharisee did not make proselytes from heathenism to Judaism merely, but also from Judaism to Pharisaism.—The child of hell.—One who is doomed to perish or at least in great danger.—Twofold more than yourselves.—Διπλότερον, according to Valla, must be taken as an adjective, and not, as is customary, adverbially. But how was the proselyte worse than the Pharisee? Olshausen: Because the proselytes were without the spiritual substratum of the Mosaic economy, which was an advantage the Pharisees still possessed. That is, the latter were Jews and Pharisees, while the proselytes were only a caricature of Pharisaism. De Wette: Error and superstition are doubled by communication. Meyer: Experience proves that proselytes become worse and more extreme than their teachers. Thus the proselyte is a Pharisee of a higher degree. We might point to the Idumeans as examples, who converted John Hyrcanus (not till afterward a Sadducee) by force in their ξ ηρά—“ τὴν θὰλασσαν καὶ ξηράν—Or Petra. The house of Herod afforded a striking illustration of the character of such proselytes, in whom the dark elements of heathenism were blended with the dark elements of Judaism. The proselyte Poppœa probably urged Nero to the persecution of the Christians. But that the misleader is generally worse than the misled, is a fact which does not here come into view; it is a wicked conversion or perversion that is spoken of, and the intensification of Pharisaism with the course of time. De Wette rightly observes, that Jesus does not here mean the endeavor to convert the Gentiles to Judaism generally. Meanwhile Judaism as Judaism was not called to the work of heathen missions except in the way of mere preparation. The law can only make proselytes; the gospel alone can convert. See Heubner on Proselytes and Proselytizing, p346. Cardinal Dubois, under the regency in France, convertisseur en chef. Several Jewish proselytes of modern times.²⁵

Matthew 23:16. Woe unto you, ye blind guides!—Casuistry as the lax perversion of the fundamental laws of religion and morality. The mark common to both the examples given is this, that the divine institution, imposing holy obligation, is counted for nothing; and that, on the other hand, the human work which requires sanctification through the divine is placed in its stead. “The Pharisees distinguished oaths, in respect to their validity, according to external, superficial [or rather fundamentally wrong] notes, only in the interest of unscrupulousness.” De Wette.—By the temple.—The oath is very frequent, by this dwelling,המעון הזה. (Wetstein and Lightfoot).—By the gold of the temple.—By its golden adornments and vessels of gold; or by the temple-treasure. Jerome and Maldonatus are in favor of the latter. When we distinguish between the essential house of God, and the house of God as ceremonially adorned with gold, then Pharisaism swears only and always by the gold of the temple: it cannot swear by the temple itself. The outer manifestation is to it the reality itself: that is, for example, a church “with naked walls” is no church. “Meanwhile it is probable that the pharisaic and hierarchical covetousness preferred the oath by the treasure of the temple, as that by the sacrifice.” De Wette.—It is nothing.—It has no significance, and imposes no obligation (the Italian peccadiglio): the reservatio mentalis of Jesuitical morality.—He is a debtor.—Bound to observe the oath.

Matthew 23:17. For which is greater?—Superiority of the originally holy, the divine, to that which is derivatively holy, the human, which is made holy only by the divine. The same relation which the gold bears to the divine house, the human offering bears to the divine fire which makes the altar an altar.

Matthew 23:18. Whoso shall swear by the altar.—To any living view of the altar, the offering is one with the altar. Casuistry cuts asunder the living relations of religion, kills its life, denies its spirit and idolizes its body.

Matthew 23:21. And whoso shall swear by the temple.—We expect to hear, “he sweareth also by the gold of the temple.” But this is self-understood; and therefore Christ returns back to the Lord of the temple, who makes the temple what it is, and makes heaven, the great temple, what it is. The oath has its significance generally in this, and in this only, that it is a confirmation by God, a declaration uttered as before God.

Matthew 23:22. And he that shall swear by heaven.—Meyer: “The contrary of Matthew 23:22 is found in Schevuoth, f35, Matthew 2 : Quia prœter Deum, cœli et terra creatorem, datur etiam ipsum cœlum et terra, indubium esse debet, quod is, qui per cœlum et terram jurat, non per eum juret, qui ilia creavit, sed per illas ipsas creaturas.”

Matthew 23:23. For ye pay tithe.—The ordinances concerning tithes ( Leviticus 27:30; Numbers 18:21; Deuteronomy 12:6; Deuteronomy 14:22-28) placed the fruits of the field and of the trees under the obligation; but tradition applied the law to the smallest produce of the garden, to the mint, the dill, and the cummin (Babyl. Joma, f83, 2. Lightfoot, Hottinger: De decimis Judœor.)—The weightier things: βαρύτερα.—De Wette: Those things which were harder, difficiliora. Meyer: The more important, graviora. “It is very probable that Jesus referred to the analogy of the praœpta gravia (חמורים) et levia (קלים) among the Jewish teachers. (See Schöttgen, p183.)” But there is no need to distinguish things so closely connected: the important supposes the difficult. Pharisaism is led into legalism and ceremonialism by its aversion to the difficult requirements of internal spiritual religion.—Judgment, κρίσις, מִשְׁפָּט.—See Isaiah 1:17. Thus, not righteousness itself, but fidelity in the discharge of duties according to the principles of righteousness. The mark of this care for right is, that it is one with mercy; and this mercy cannot be replaced by a hypocritical appearance, the almsgiving of the Pharisees ( Matthew 6:1).—Faith, τὴνπισ τι ν.—Luther, “faith;” de Wette and Meyer, “fidelity,” as in Romans 3:3; Galatians 5:22. The opposite is ἀπιστια. Scriptural language does not distinguish between the two ideas, as ours does. Faith and fidelity are one in the principle of trust. But here ethical, subjective faith, or fidelity, is meant. Christ marks the moral development of the law in three stages: 1. The faithfulness of the Mosaic position: rigid care of law and right (Elijah). 2. The prophetic position: mercy to sinners, and even to the heathen, as the internal principle of legality3. Messianic fidelity as the fulfilment of the whole law. True fidelity is identical with this fidelity. Heubner: “κρίσις, conscientiousness: πίστις, sincerity. “It presupposes a blunted moral feeling to show much concern about little faults, but to care nothing for great ones. (Luther, Works, 10: 1986, applies the same passage to the papal laws.)”

These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.—Reverse order. True and internal adherence to law places the great matter first, without being lax in the less.

Matthew 23:24. Blind guides, comp. Matthew 23:16.—The term implies that they not only acted as hypocrites, but also taught as hypocrites. Matthew 23:16 pronounces a separate woe against all casuistry. But here the words, and what follows them, explain the woe of Matthew 23:23 rather in its dogmatic side. The appellations, “Ye fools and blind,” Matthew 23:17; Matthew 23:19, represent them as self-blinded and in voluntary delusion.

Strain out²⁶a gnat.—Ye strain (the wine) in order to separate off the gnats. The liquare vinum had among the Greeks and Romans only a social significance; but to the Pharisees it was a religious act. It was supposed that the swallowing of the gnat would defile them; and therefore the Jews strained the wine, in order to avoid drinking an unclean animal. (Buxtorf, Lex. Talm. Wetstein, from Chollin, fol67, culices pusillos, quos percolant.) The actual custom is here a symbol of the highest Levitical scrupulosity; and the opposite, the swallowing of camels, which of course could only signify the most enormous impurities in the enjoyment of life and its earthly pleasures, was the symbol of unbounded and unreflectingly stupid eagerness in sin. The expression is of a proverbial type. The camel was in the law unclean, because it had no divided hoof, Leviticus 11:4; and, moreover, this hypothetical swallowing of the camel would involve a thorough violation of the Noachic prohibition of eating blood and things strangled.

Matthew 23:25. The outside of the platter.—Figurative description of the legal appearance of gratification. Cup and platter: meat and drink, or the enjoyment of life in all its forms.—But within.—Here we have the internal and moral side of gratification.—They are full of extortion and excess.—“That of which they are full, wine and food, was the produce of robbery and incontinence (ἀκρασία, a later form of ἀκράτεια).” Meyer. See Isaiah 28:7 sqq.

Matthew 23:26. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first.—The rebuking adjective blind points here also to the absurdity of their practice.—Cleanse the inside. Sanctify thy enjoyment by righteousness and temperance.—That the outside may be clean.—Fritzsche: May be able to be cleansed. Meyer, better: That the purity of the externals may follow. “External purity is not here declared useless (de Wette); but it is declared not to be true holiness, which implies the preceding purification of the inner man.” It is here presupposed that all their adorning of the outside must fail to make even that clean, so long as the inside is full of defilement: that is, Levitical purity without moral purity is itself defilement. (Bengel, in a gentler expression, non est mundities.)

Matthew 23:27. Whited sepulchres.—“The graves were every year, on the 15 th Adar, whitened with a kind of chalk (κονία)—a practice derived by the Rabbins from Ezekiel 39:15; not merely for the sake of appearance, but also that these places, the touch of which was defilement ( Numbers 19:16), might be more easily seen and avoided. (See the rabbinical passages in Lightfoot, Schöttgen, and Wetstein.) Thus they always had a pleasant outward appearance.” Meyer. But thus also they were adorned. Luke 11:44 is a similar thought, not, however, the same.

Full of dead men’s bones.—Dead bodies were unclean according to the law, and the touch of them defiled ( Numbers 5:2; Numbers 6:6): this was specially the case with the bones of the dead and the odor of decay from the grave. Impurity has a deadly effect. Spiritual death exerts a deadly influence ( 1 John 3:14-15); and thus what follows, the murder of the prophets, is introduced.

Matthew 23:28. Hypocrisy is here the wicked disguise; and iniquity, ανμία, is not simply immorality, but consummate theocratical lawlessness.

Matthew 23:29. Ye build the tombs of the prophets.—Construction of sepulchral graves, stones, and monuments, with various designs and inscriptions on consecrated burial ground. The antithesis is delicate: And garnish the sepulchres of the righteous (canonized saints). The latter are acknowledged at once, and receive their monuments; the prophets, on the other hand, often lay long in unknown and even dishonored graves. Later generations then began to become enthusiastic about them, and make their common graves elaborate monuments. “The custom of building monuments to ancient and celebrated persons, has existed among all peoples and in all ages. Comp. Wetstein, Lightfoot, Jahn, Arch. Matthew 1:2.” De Wette. Consult Robinson’s Researches on the remarkable sepulchres around Jerusalem, and the Song of Solomon -called sepulchres of the prophets.

Matthew 23:30. And say.—First of all, by the fact of adorning their sepulchres.—If we had been in the days of our fathers. Not: if we were (Meyer), which here gives no sense.—Of our fathers.—Primarily, by natural lineage, but also in the sense of fellowship: Sons of the murderers, in a spiritual sense; which de Wette, without any reason, opposes.

Matthew 23:31. Ye be witnesses unto yourselves.—How this? De Wette: By virtue of the guilt transmitted to you. Meyer: “When ye thus speak of your fathers, ye give testimony against yourselves, that ye belong to the kin of the murderers of the prophets.” But the meaning is rather, the opposite of this: Since ye repute the fathers, in spite of their murderous spirit against the prophets, as being in the fullest sense of the word, in your traditions, your fathers; and explain the ancient blood-guiltiness, which has been transmitted to you, only as accidental evils into which they fell, or as the product of a barbarous age. Just as in these days the horrors of the inquisition are excused on account of the barbarism of the Middle Ages, although they had their essential root in the fanaticism of the principle of tradition. The continued acknowledgment of those old false principles, from which those murders sprang, establishes the community of guilt, and the propagation of the old guilt to consummate judgment. Heubner quotes: “Sit licet divus, dummodo non vivus.”²⁷

Matthew 23:32. Fill ye up then the measure.—Chrysostom says that this πλρώσατε was spoken prophetically; Grotius, permissively. De Wette and Meyer make it an ironical imperative. De Wette: “The πληρώσατε presupposes the ability and willingness in the mind of the Pharisees which merely needs encouragement.” (!) The difficult analogon of this difficult passage is the word of Jesus to Judas, John 13:27 : “What thou intendest to do, do quickly.” The last means to scare the wicked from their gradually ripening iniquity is the challenge: Do what ye purpose at once! If this is irony, it is divine Irony, as in Psalm 21:4.²⁸—Fill ye up.—The ancient crime of the prophet-murdering spirit ran on continuously through the ages, (See Isaiah 6; Matthew 13:14; Acts 28:26.) Its consummation was the murder of Christ.—Fill up then, even ye,—καὶ ὑμεῖς. The emphasis, however, falls upon the πληρώσατε. Ye, who condemn the murderers of the prophets, will even fulfil the measure of their guilt.—The measure of guilt. The expression was, according to Wetstein, current among the Rabbins. With the full measure of guilt, judgment begins. The passage, Exodus 20:5, which de Wette quotes, describes the generic nature of guilt in the reduced sphere of a single house; and the guilt of a community, of a church, of an order, is to be distinguished as an enlarged measure of the more limited family guilt.

Matthew 23:33. Serpents.—Comp. Luke 3:7. Πῶς φύγητε. The Conj. delib. supposes the matter to be inwardly decided. The judgment of hell, ἀπὸ τῆς κρίσεως τῆς γεέννης. The sentence which condemns to hell. The expression, judicium Gehennœ was used by the Rabbins (Wetstein).

Matthew 23:34. Wherefore I send, etc.—Fearful teleology of judgment. The messengers of salvation must hasten the process of doom for the hardened. Sin, which will not be remedied, must be drawn out into its full manifestation, that it may find its doom and destruction in the judgment.—Behold, I send unto you—This is difficult, inasmuch as Jesus seems to bring down into the present, as His own sending, the sending of the prophets who had appeared in earlier times. (I) Van Hengel: The quotation of an old prediction. (2) Olshausen refers to Luke 11:49, Jesus speaking here as the essential Wisdom. (3) De Wette: Jesus utters this with the feeling of His Messianic dignity; these prophets and wise men are His own messengers, the Apostles, etc. But here it is not merely the New Testament martyrdoms that are meant; the whole history of the persecutions of the prophets appears Ideologically, i.e, as judgment. Hence Jesus speaks out of the central consciousness of the theocratical Wisdom of Solomon, and in unison with the consciousness of the Father: comp. Matthew 11:19. As the last who was sent of God, He was the moving, actuating principle of all the divine missions: comp. John 1:26. But as the Old Testament times were not excluded, so the New Testament times are included.²⁹ The futures are prophetic, as is the whole passage. Hence in the σταυρώσετε Jesus thought assuredly of Himself. Meyer refers to the crucifixion of Simeon, bishop of Jerusalem and Pella: Euseb. Hist. Ecclesiastes 3:22.—The expression καὶ ἐξ αὐτῶν is very strong. They will be no better than brands for the fire of your fanaticism.

Matthew 23:35. That upon you may come.—The common expression for judgment, Ephesians 5:6, as intimating its inevitableness, suddenness, power, and grandeur.—The righteous (innocent) blood, דָּם נָקִי; that is, the punishment for it, comp. Matthew 27:25, but such as the righteous blood has awakened. Innocent blood appears as the leader of avenging powers: comp. Genesis 4:10; Hebrews 12:24; Revelation 6:10. Certainly the blood of Christ speaketh better things than the blood of Abel; but that blood has also its condemning character, and indeed in the shedding of that blood the judgment of the world was completed. The righteous blood is here emphatic: the consecrated, sanctified blood of the prophets. Bengel: “αῖ̓μα, ter hoc dicitur uno hoc versu magna vi.” ’Ε κχυνόμενον, in the present tense. The blood is a continuous stream, which still flows and will flow, being present especially in its spiritual influence. Revelation 6:10,

Zachariah, son of Barachiah.—See 2 Chronicles 24:20. Zachariah, the son of the high-priest Jehoiada, stoned in the court of the temple by command of the king. There are difficulties here:1. He was not the last of the martyrs of the Old Testament: the murder of Urijah, Jeremiah 26:23, was of a later date. But besides the order of the Hebrew canon, there was something pre-eminently wicked in the destruction of the former. Zachariah was the son of a high-priest of the greatest merit; he was murdered between the temple and the altar, and died crying, The Lord seeth, and will avenge it. And, moreover, his destruction was always vividly in the remembrance of the Jews. See Lightfoot on this passage, and Targum Thren. Matthew 2:20. 2. The father of Zachariah was Jehoiada, here called Barachiah. Different explanations: (a) Beza, Grotius, al.: his father had two names; (b) van Hengel, Ebrard: Barachias was the father, Jehoiada the grandfather; (c) Kuinoel supposes that the words, “son of Barachiah,” are a gloss, (d) de Wette, Bleeck, Meyer [and Al-ford] decide that an error in the name has crept in. “Probably Jesus Himself did not mention the name of the father ( Luke 11:51), and it was added from an original tradition: the error being the result of confounding the person of Zachariah with the better known Zechariah the prophet, whose father was named Barachiah ( Zechariah 1:1). This tradition was followed by Matthew; but in the Gospel of the Hebrews the error was not found (according to Jerome, the name there was Jehoiada).” Meyer, (e) According to Hammond and Hug, the Zachariah meant was the son of Baruch, who was killed in the temple after the death of Christ (Joseph. Bell. Judges 4, 6, 4). Hug thinks that Jesus spoke in the future, but that the Evangelist, after the event had taken place, put it in the preterite. But this is an untenable notion, even apart from the difference between Baruch and Barachiah. Ammon, who also refers the words to the Zachariah of Josephus, explained them as interpolation. (f) Chrysostom quoted an ancient opinion, according to which it was the last but one of the lesser prophets, Zechariah. (g) Origen, Basil, and others, thought it was Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist—following a mere legend; to which the objection holds good, that if Jesus had come down to such recent times, he would doubtless have mentioned John the Baptist Himself. The Lord moreover speaks not of the blood-guiltiness of the present generation, but of the guilt of former times, which came upon the present generation because they filled up the iniquities of their fathers. (Comp. art. in “Studien und Kritiken” for1841, p20, and Pharmaci des, περὶ Ζαχαριου υἱοῦ Βαραχίου. Athens, 1838.) We prefer the solution sub (b). But if there was an error of name (see (d)), we might ascribe it, with Amnion and Eichhorn, to the translator of St. Matthew rather than the primitive evangelical tradition, as de Wette and Meyer do. It is very difficult to determine whether Matthew, in his familiarity with the genealogies, had a more correct account than that of the Book of Chronicles, or whether his translator made the change. It is in favor of the second supposition of Jehoiada being the grandfather, that he died at the age of130, and that Zechariah, who is called his Song of Solomon, was laid hold on by the Spirit at a later time, and appeared as a prophet.³⁰

Matthew 23:37. Jerusalem, Jerusalem ( Luke 13:34, where it is placed earlier for pragmatic reasons).—Language of the more mighty emotion of compassion after the stern language of judgment. But with the change of feeling there is also a change of subject, and of the exhibition of the guilt. In the place of the Pharisees and scribes, it is Jerusalem; that is, the centre of the hierarchy, but also of the people, and this name combines the poor misled and the blind misleaders,—the present, also, and the past. In the place of the punishment of ancient blood-guiltiness spoken of before, Jerusalem’s own personal guilt is denounced now as justifying this condemnation.—Thou that killest.—The expressions ἀποκτείνουσα and λθοβλοῦσαare emphatic in two ways: first, through the participial form, and, secondly, through the present tense,—the habitual murderess of the prophets, the stoner of the messengers of God.—How often would I have gathered!—The Lord still speaks out of the theocratic and prophetical consciousness which embraces in one the Old and New Testaments; yet the “how often” presupposes a frequent operation of the Lord’s grace in Jerusalem, and visits which the Evangelist was acquainted with, but which did not fall within his plan. Comp. here the Gospel of John. —Thy children.—That is, thy inhabitants. But, in a wider sense, all Israelites were children of Jerusalem.—As a hen.—Allusion to the destruction which impended over Jerusalem, in a figure which signifies that He would have taken Jerusalem under the protection of His Messianic glory, if it had turned to Him in time. The figure of the hen was often used by the Rabbins concerning the Shechinah, as gathering the proselytes under the shadow of its wings.—But ye would not.—The one guilt of Jerusalem was unfolded in the guilt of her individual children. Jesus knew that with the obduracy of the authorities the obduracy of the city and its inhabitants was decided. Hence He used the preterite, not the present tense. Jerusalem’s children had made their choice. The crucifixion of Jesus and the fall of the city were decided. It is quite an independent question, how many of the individual inhabitants of Jerusalem were saved by apostolical preaching. Historical notices on the later deplorable condition of Jerusalem, see in Heubner’s Com. p349.³¹

Matthew 23:38. Behold, your house.—No longer “My Father’s house.” According to Grotius, Meyer etc, the city; according to de Wette and others, temple and city. But the only true interpretation is that of Theophylact, Calvin, Ewald, the temple. For the word marks the moment at which Jesus leaves the temple, and leaves it for a sign that it was abandoned by the Spirit of the theocracy. Indeed, the leaving of the temple intimated that not merely the city, but also the land, was forsaken of the Spirit; for the temple is referred to in its symbolical meaning. We retain the addition “desolate,” i.e, a spiritual ruin. It was omitted in some copies, probably because it was thought that the word would open up some prospect of a restoration of the temple. But the prospect of the restoration of Israel involves only the spiritual rebuilding of Israel’s temple in the Spirit of Christ.

Matthew 23:39. For I say unto you.—Most solemn declaration.—Ye shall not see Me henceforth:—In My Messianic work and operation. From that, as among the Jews, He now entirely withdrew. See John 12:37 sq. After the resurrection, He showed Himself only to His own people.—Till ye shall say.—Neither at the destruction of Jerusalem (Wetstein), nor at the advent of Christ (Meyer), but in the future general conversion of Israel ( Romans 11; Zechariah 12:10; Isaiah 66:20, etc.).—Blessed be He that cometh, Psalm 118—See the notes on the entry into Jerusalem, Matthew 21:9-10. Jerusalem itself had not met the Redeemer with these words of greeting, but had asked, Who is this ( Matthew 21:10)? Thus it is an intimation of a future conversion. Not tragic and judicial, as Meyer explains it.

Matthew 24 : Matthew 23:1. And Jesus went out.—It is not merely a local and temporary departure from the temple that is meant. It is true that He had overcome all the assaults of His enemies in the temple; but still they had declined to give Him their faith, and at length had declined it by their absolute silence. And as the Lord of the temple, the temple had rejected Him, in the person of those who had legal authority in it. That was the fall of the temple; and it was then decided that it was no more now than a den of robbers, in which all—the Messiah, and the Spirit, and the hope of the Gentiles, and the blessing of Israel—was as it were murdered. He takes farewell of the temple; and from that time forward it became no better than a hall of desolation, a dreary and forsaken ruin. According to a Jewish legend in Joseph. Bell. Judges 6:5; Judges 6:3, the guardian angels of the temple deserted it at a much later period. “At the Pentecost, when the priests for the night went into the temple to perform the divine service, they heard a great and rushing sound, and then the cry, μεταβαίνωμεν ἐντεῦθεν.—Tacitus, Hist. Matthew 5:13 : Expresses repente delubri fores et audita major humana vox. Excedere deos; simul ingens motus excedentium. In the fortieth year before the destruction of Jerusalem, the lamp in the temple was extinguished of itself, according to Jewish accounts (see Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. ad Matthew 26:3). The synagogue is still a place void of God, because it knows not Christ.” Heubner. Indeed, this departure of Christ was not absolutely the last; for, after the resurrection, He solicited His enemies there, in the person of His Apostles. For the last time He left it when Paul was condemned in it ( Acts 21:33; Acts 22:22), and James the son of Alphæus was slain (Joseph. Antig. xx9, 1).

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. See the preceding Exegetical Notes.

2. The seven benedictions of the Sermon on the Mount were summed up in an eighth: Blessed are all who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. And this benediction has here its counterpart in a comprehensive woe, the eighth, upon the murderers of the prophets. But the ninth benediction, “Blessed are ye, if ye be scorned and persecuted for My sake,” has no counterpart among the woes, but the cry of distress over Jerusalem. True, that the Jews themselves afterward cried: “His blood be on us and on our children” ( Matthew 27:25); but Jesus Himself knew that His “blood would speak better things than the blood of Abel.” Hence the change of the ninth woe into the lament over Jerusalem.

3. The guilt of the scribes and Pharisees became now, to the Lord’s view, the guilt of Jerusalem, and then the guilt of the nation itself. For Jerusalem was the representative of the spirit of the Pharisees and of the national genius. But Jerusalem represents also³² the life and the honor, the fathers and the glory, the youth and the hope of the nation. Jerusalem represents the children of the nation, so often threatened by tempests of ruin, and now threatened by the saddest of all. Therefore the Lord mourns and laments over His own ruined Jerusalem. All the missions and messages of God which had been sent to Jerusalem, and which formed the ground of Israel’s judgment, to Him appeared now rather as so many efforts and impulses of God to save them. His own compassionate desire to save them had been active throughout all those ages of divine mission; but especially had it been active during the time of His own labors and ministry. His whole pilgrimage on earth was troubled by distress for Jerusalem, like the hen who sees the eagle threatening in the sky, and anxiously seeks to gather her chickens together under her wings. With such distress, Jesus saw the Roman eagles approach for judgment upon the children of Jerusalem, and sought with the strongest solicitations of love to save them. But in vain! They were like dead children to the voice of maternal love!

4. Stier, ii. Matthew 527: “Jehovah represented His dealing with His people, first, as that of an eagle, hovering over her young and bearing them on her wings ( Deuteronomy 32:11); but at last, as that of a hen which strives to extend her wings over her imperilled chickens.” Antithesis between the fidelity of ruling power, and the fidelity of suffering mercy.

5. Behold, your house.—Words which were sealed even by the vain attempt of Julian to build the temple again, as well as by its whole subsequent fate. Comp. Rauschesbusch (sen.): Leben Jesu, p327.

6. Till ye shall say, Blessed.—sepp, Life of Christ 3:31: The Jewish rulers failed in this greeting in the day of the Palm-entry, and the people owe it to Christ to this day. This word contains, however, a definite promise of the national restoration of Israel, as it is set forth in Romans 11, and in many passages of the prophets. See Alfred Meter: der Jude, Frankfort1856; where, however, there is too much intermin gling of Jewish Christian expectations.

7. Jesus, after departing from the temple, still remained quietly in the court of the women, and blessed the widow’s gift: thereby blessing true and simple piety, in the midst of debased and degraded ceremonialism. Comp. Mark 12:41; Luke 21:1; and the author’s Leben Jesu, ii3, p1249.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

1. The Preface (vers1–3) and the Discourse as a whole.—The preaching of the truth must, according to the repeated example of the Lord, turn from priests and teachers who persistently scorn it, to the common people.—The great condemnation pronounced by Jesus in the temple upon the Pharisees and the scribes.—The Lord vindicates and protects appointed ordinances, even while vehemently condemning those who administered them.—High esteem for the office never excludes free condemnation of the abuses of those who hold it.—Hypocrites condemn their own works by their own words.

2. The General Rebuke (vers4–7).—Dead traditionalism : 1. Its hardness; 2. its falsehood; 3. its selfishness.—Despotism in holy apparel and in the domain of the conscience: 1. Doubly fearful; 2. doubly ruinous; 3. doubly impotent.—The Lord holds up to His disciples the image of spiritual ambition and pride for an everlasting warning.—The power of faith disposes of the pretensions of spiritual ambition: faith in the only Teacher: faith in God as the only Father; faith in Christ as the only Lord and Guide. (Thus the Apostle’s Creed, rightly understood, is threefold Protestant.)—Out of the humility of fidelity springs the courage of freedom.

3. Specific Rebuke: the seven woes (vers13–37).—The seven benedictions and the seven woes.—The eighth woe as the summary of the seven: like the eighth benediction.—The ninth woe is changed into a lamentation over Jerusalem.—First woe: Spiritual avarice and greediness for securing legacies; petitioners changed into beggars.—The long prayers of the hypocrites, and the long sentence of judgment.—Second woe; Those who shut the kingdom of heaven to others, and exclude themselves. Third woe: Proselytism; soul-winners and soul-ruiners.³³—Fourth woe: The work of man up, the work of God down: the inward nothing, the outward everything.—The true oath always by the living and true God.—The blindest ignorance connected with a conceit of keenest insight into the laws of the kingdom of God.—Fifth woe: Legality in little things; lawlessness in great Straining out gnats; swallowing camels.—Sixth woe. The outside and the inside of the cup and the platter; or, the feast of the religious and moral hypocrite: 1. In the outward form, consecrated or adorned; 2. in the inner character, abominable and reprobate.—Seventh woe: The whited sepulchres: 1. Like pleasant abodes outwardly; 2. caves of bones, diffusing death, within.—Spiritual death, in the guise of spiritual bloom: 1. Captivating; 2. destructive.—The eighth woe: The murderers of the prophets.—How the garnishing the sepulchres of the prophets may be auspicious: 1.When it bears witness to a diseased hanging on to antiquity [false and morbid medievalism.—P. S.]; 2. when it robs the prophets of the present of their rights.—To persecute Christ in His saints is to persecute Christ Himself.—He who would free himself from the blood-guiltiness of olden times, must, free himself from the principles which created it then.—Ancient guilt finds its sure consummation in terrible judgment, however long delayed.—The sinner’s inherited guilt becomes his own only through his own personal guilt.—Jerusalem, Jerusalem!—How often.

4. The Departure from the Temple.—The temple desecrated by obduracy: 1. A house of men, forsaken of God; 2. a house of desolation, forsaken of the Spirit; 3. a house of misery and death, forsaken of Christ.—The golden sunset after the evening storm; or, the prospect of the restoration of Israel.—The departure of Christ from the temple of the Jews: 1. The close of a mournful past; 2. the sign of a miserable present; 3. the token of a sad futurity.—The last word of the Lord to His people, the announcement of His first royal advent to punish His people (in the destruction of Jerusalem).

Starke:—All hypocrites are severe toward others, but very indulgent toward themselves.—Canstein: A faithful teacher uses severity toward himself, but he rules those who are under him with gentleness.—By thy words wilt thou be condemned.—They would fain have men believe that there was a special sanctity in the habit of their order.—Canstein: Pharisaic folly; elegant Bibles and books of prayer, and no devotion in the heart.—One is our Master, Christ.—Quesnel: God’s word and truth is an inheritance common to all the brethren. He who would glory in being its lord, and keep his brethren from the use of it, is a robber of the Church’s inheritance.—The Church of Christ is a family, of which God alone is the Father.—[Quesnel on Matthew 23:1 : Let us always look with respect on Christ and His authority, even in the most imperfect of His ministers. The truth loses nothing of its value by the bad lives of its ministers. The faith is not built upon the lives of pastors, but upon the visible authority of the Church (? rather upon Christ and His word).—P. S.]—Hedinger: Let no man vaunt himself of his position and office.—The gifts by which we are useful to others are from Christ, and they are the gifts of grace.—Humility is the true way to abiding dignity.—Hypocrites would convert others, while they are themselves unconverted; hence their converts generally go from worse to worse.—It is not God, but gold, not the altar, but what is on it, that they are concerned with.—Swearing by the name of the great God, is, Indeed, a matter of tremendous importance.—Sins reproduce one another; when one has wasted what he has robbed, he robs again that he may waste.—The unconverted man is like a sepulchre, in which man lies in his corruption.—Quesnel: Many are Christians in name and appearance; few in spirit and in truth.—Canstein: At last the whited mask drops off, and the hypocrite is naked and discovered.—Garnishing the graves of the old martyrs, and making new martyrs.—When men in their wickedness receive no more exhortation, but make a mock of God and His servants, the measure of wrath is very near being filled up.—Wherefore I send unto you. Romans 2:4 : The goodness and long forbearance of God.—God remembers all the blood-guiltiness of the history of mankind: woe to them who become partakers of the guilt!

Verily I say unto you. God’s threatenings are not in sport.—Jerusalem, Jerusalem: the fatherly heart of God is earnest in calling men to salvation.—The cause of ruin is the evil will of man.—Osiander: Contempt of God’s word is followed by the downfall of all rule, authority, and good institutions, Daniel 9:6; Daniel 9:11-12.—Canstein: There is a time of grace; there is also a day of judgment.

Gerlach:

Matthew 23:6. Notwithstanding these solemn prohibitions, how much of these sins have been found in all churches and sects, from the highest to the least!

Matthew 23:16 sq. These rules of the Pharisees about swearing were doubtless designed, first, to relax the strict obligation of certain oaths of common life; and then to enrich the temple-treasure, by attributing a greater sanctity and more rigid obligation to the gold which was ordained for the temple, and the sacrifices which were ordained for the altar, and which were partly the perquisite of the priests. Comp. Matthew 15:5; Mark 7:11.

Matthew 23:36. Every sinner who, in spite of the divine warnings, walks in the footsteps of his fathers, draws down upon his own head the punishment which was in their times mercifully deferred and suspended.

Lisco:—The condemnation of Jesus affects all who are contented with appearing that which they should be.—The woe is upon their deceiving of souls; their hypocritical covetousness; their hypocritical proselyting; their hypocritical trafficking with oaths; their hypocritical pedantry; their hypocritical righteousness; their hypocritical respect for the saints of God.

Heubner:—The dignity of the ministry is to be honored for its own sake.—The ordinances of men always a burden; the commandments of God and of Christ are always a gentle yoke.—Spiritual pride and ambition always one of the chief temptations and dangers of ministers.—Christ does not forbid the title, but the ambition for it. Application to the Romish Church, and the name Papa universalis. Pater.—Not ruling, but serving, makes greatness.—Great difference between zeal for conversion and ambition for conversion [or missionary spirit and selfish proselyting.—P. S.].—Hypocrisy in vows, reservatio mentalis.—Ask whether anything impure clings to your enjoyment: the tears and sighs of the poor.—It is a base reverence for the great of olden time, which will not seek to imitate them.—Every generation should be improved by the preceding; if not, it is made worse.—The great design of Jesus is to gather in poor, wandering, and scattered children of men into one family of God.—Desolate. Every Christian temple, in which Christ is not preached, is empty; so is every heart in which He does not live.

Footnotes