Clean Surfaces, Heavy Burdens, and a Grieving Lament

The audience is the crowd and the disciples; the scribes and Pharisees are spoken about before they are spoken to in verse 13. Mark gives this denunciation three verses (Mark 12:38–40), and Luke scatters similar woes across a Pharisee’s dinner table (Luke 11:37–52). Matthew gathers them into one address, his last public speech.

Moses’ seat may have been a real piece of furniture. Stone chairs have been found in the ancient synagogues of Chorazin, Hammath Tiberias and Delos, and a later midrash speaks of “the cathedra of Moses”. “Sit” is an aorist in Greek, “have sat down”, which some take to mean they have taken the seat for themselves.

The command sits awkwardly beside 16:12, “beware of the doctrine of the Pharisees”, and interpreters have long weighed the two. “They say, and do not” is the second son of 21:30 all over again: “I go, sir: and went not.”

The picture is of a pack animal loaded with bundles tied tight. Jesus had offered the opposite: “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (11:30). “Move them with one of their fingers” can mean they will not lift a finger to help carry the load, or that they will not loosen it.

Phylacteries are tefillin, small leather boxes holding Scripture passages, bound on the arm and forehead after Deuteronomy 6:8; examples have been found at Qumran. The Greek word means safeguards, amulets. The “borders” are the tassels of Numbers 15:38–39, the kraspedon the sick touched on Jesus’ own garment (9:20; 14:36). He wore them himself.

“Uppermost rooms” meant the chief places at table, not upstairs chambers: “room” in 1611 meant a place. Guests reclined on couches ranked by nearness to the host. The “chief seats” in a synagogue were the front bench facing the congregation, where everyone could see who sat there.

Rabbi means “my great one”, a respectful address that hardened into a formal title for ordained teachers after AD 70. In Matthew only one disciple ever calls Jesus Rabbi, and it is Judas, at the supper and in the garden (26:25, 49).

In the oldest manuscripts the verse reads “one is your teacher”, didaskalos, without “even Christ”, which the King James text shares with verse 10. “All ye are brethren” matches 12:49–50, where Jesus named his disciples his brothers, and 28:10, where the risen Jesus calls them “my brethren”.

Abba, father, was an honorific for revered teachers; the Mishnah’s collection of sages’ sayings is called Avot, “the Fathers”, and a sage could be known as Abba Shaul. The saying points every such title upward to the one Father in heaven, a phrase Matthew uses more than any other Gospel.

“Masters” here is kathegetes, a guide or tutor, a word found nowhere else in the New Testament outside this passage; in modern Greek it means a professor. The line doubles verse 8 with a different word, which gives it the force of a refrain.

Almost word for word what Jesus told the twelve on the road in 20:26–27, when James and John wanted thrones. Now it is said in the temple courts, in the hearing of the men who hold the chief seats.

The saying runs through Scripture: “exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high” (Ezekiel 21:26); “A man’s pride shall bring him low” (Proverbs 29:23). The passives, “shall be abased”, “shall be exalted”, leave the actor unnamed, a common way of saying God will do it.

“Woe”, ouai, was the cry of mourning over the dead, as over the prophet buried at Bethel, “Alas, my brother” (1 Kings 13:30), and the prophets used it for judgment (Isaiah 5:8–22). The Sermon on the Mount opened with beatitudes; the last address has woes. “Shut up” sets them against Peter, given the keys in 16:19.

The verse is absent from the oldest manuscripts and appears in others either before or after verse 13, a sign it was brought in from Mark 12:40 or Luke 20:47. Without it the woes number seven. Scribes could act as trustees of a widow’s estate, one suggested way of devouring her house.

Josephus tells of Izates, king of Adiabene, drawn to Judaism by a merchant who said circumcision was not required, until Eleazar from Galilee arrived and insisted on it (Antiquities 20.34–48). “Child of hell” is a Hebrew idiom: “son of Gehenna”, one who belongs there.

“Blind guides” repeats 15:14, “blind leaders of the blind”. “He is a debtor” means he is bound, he owes what he swore. The Sermon on the Mount had already cut through such distinctions: “Swear not at all; neither by heaven... nor by Jerusalem” (5:34–35).

“Fools” is moroi, the word Jesus forbade in 5:22: “whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.” He uses it himself of the foolish builder (7:26) and the foolish virgins (25:2). “Whether is greater” means which is greater.

The “gift” is doron, the offering laid on the altar, the word of 5:23–24: “if thou bring thy gift to the altar”. “He is guilty” is the same Greek verb as “he is a debtor” in verse 16; the King James varies the English where the Greek repeats itself.

Exodus 29:37 settles the question: “whatsoever toucheth the altar shall be holy.” The altar makes the gift sacred, not the other way round, so an oath that ranks the gift above the altar has the order of holiness upside down.

Jesus now states the rule positively. An oath by the altar takes in everything the altar holds; there is no swearing by a container while keeping its contents free. The legal escape was built on separating things that cannot be separated.

Solomon had called the temple “a settled place for thee to abide in for ever” (1 Kings 8:13). Jesus affirms that the temple is sworn by as God’s dwelling, and then within a few verses says “your house is left unto you desolate” (verse 38) and walks out of it (24:1).

“The heaven is my throne” is Isaiah 66:1, and Jesus used the same reasoning in the Sermon on the Mount: swear not “by heaven; for it is God’s throne” (5:34). The chain of oaths ends where every oath ends, with the one who sits on the throne.

Deuteronomy 14:22–23 tithes grain, wine and oil; the Mishnah extends tithing to anything grown and eaten (Maaserot 1:1), and dill, the “anise” here, is discussed there by name. The weightier matters are those of Micah 6:8: to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God.

Tyndale and the Geneva Bible had “strain out a gnat”; the King James “strain at” has long been suspected of being a misprint. Wine was strained through cloth to keep out insects, since gnats and camels were both unclean (Leviticus 11:4, 41). In Aramaic the two words sound alike, galma and gamla.

Purity law distinguished the inside of a vessel from its outside, and the schools of Shammai and Hillel argued over how uncleanness passed between them. “Extortion” is harpage, plunder; “excess” is akrasia, lack of self control. The cup is scrubbed; what fills it was taken and is consumed without restraint.

The only singular address in the chapter: “Thou blind Pharisee”. After a string of plurals, Jesus speaks as if to one man. The order matters: first the inside, and then the outside will follow.

Before Passover, graves around Jerusalem were whitened with lime so pilgrims would not touch one unawares and become unclean for seven days (Numbers 19:16); the Mishnah dates the marking to the month of Adar (Shekalim 1:1). This is Passover week, and the tombs would have been freshly white.

“Iniquity” is anomia, lawlessness, a hard word to throw at men devoted to the law. Matthew uses it four times, and in 7:23 it is what Jesus says to those who called him Lord: “depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Monuments of this kind stood in Jerusalem as Jesus spoke. The tall tombs in the Kidron valley, later called the tombs of Absalom and Zechariah, date from these centuries, and Josephus says Herod built a white marble monument at the entrance to David’s tomb (Antiquities 16.182).

“Partakers” is koinonoi, partners, the word for business associates. The disclaimer rests on a guess about how they would have behaved in another century, a claim no one can check and everyone finds flattering.

In Hebrew idiom to be a son of someone is to share his character, as “child of hell” did in verse 15. By calling the killers “our fathers” in verse 30 they have supplied the evidence against themselves. “Witnesses unto yourselves” is courtroom language.

The idea of a measure of sin that must fill before judgment falls goes back to Genesis 15:16, where Abraham’s descendants must wait because “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” Some manuscripts read “ye have filled up” instead of the command.

“Generation of vipers” is John the Baptist’s phrase to the Pharisees and Sadducees at the Jordan (3:7), and Jesus used it once already (12:34). The question “how can ye escape” also echoes John: “who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

In Luke the saying is attributed to “the wisdom of God” (Luke 11:49); in Matthew Jesus says “I send”. Scourging in synagogues was predicted in 10:17, and Paul later records receiving forty stripes save one five times (2 Corinthians 11:24). “Scribes” here recalls 13:52, the scribe instructed in the kingdom.

Abel is the first murder in Genesis, and Zechariah son of Jehoiada the last recorded in Chronicles, which closes the Hebrew Bible, so the span runs from its first book to its last. Abel’s blood cried from the ground (Genesis 4:10); the dying Zechariah said, “The LORD look upon it, and require it” (2 Chronicles 24:22).

“This generation” returns at 24:34, “This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.” Jerusalem fell to Rome about forty years later, in AD 70, within the lifetime of many who heard the words.

The doubled name is the sound of lament, as David cried “O Absalom, my son, my son” (2 Samuel 18:33). Shelter under wings is an old image for God’s protection (Ruth 2:12; Psalm 91:4). “How often” implies earlier visits to Jerusalem that Matthew does not record; John’s Gospel records several.

In 21:13 Jesus called the temple “My house”; now it is “your house”. The words echo Jeremiah 22:5, “this house shall become a desolation”, and Jeremiah 12:7, “I have forsaken mine house”. A few manuscripts, including Codex Vaticanus, lack “desolate”.

“Henceforth” is ap’ arti, from now on, the phrase Jesus uses twice more: at the supper, “I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine” (26:29), and before the high priest, “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man” (26:64). His public teaching in the temple ends here.