25“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and unrighteousness.26You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the platter, that its outside may become clean also.
27“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitened tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.28Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and unrighteousness.
26 You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the platter, that its outside may become clean also.
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitened tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
TYNDALETyndale New Testament (1534)
25 Wo be to you scribes and pharises ypocrites which make clene the vtter syde of the cuppe and of the platter: but within they are full of brybery and excesse.
26 Thou blinde Pharise clense fyrst the outsyde of the cup and platter that the ynneside of them maye be clene also.
27 Wo be to you Scribe and Pharises ypocrite for ye are lyke vnto paynted tombes which appere beautyfull outwarde: but are with in full of deed bones and of all fylthynes.
28 So are ye for outwarde ye appere righteous vnto me when within ye are full of ypocrisie and iniquite.
Show all 3 translations
GNVGeneva Bible (1599)
25 Wo be to you, Scribes and Pharises, hypocrites: for ye make cleane the vtter side of the cup, and of the platter: but within they are ful of briberie and excesse.
26 Thou blinde Pharise, cleanse first the inside of the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be cleane also.
27 Wo be to you, Scribes and Pharises, hypocrites: for ye are like vnto whited tombes, which appeare beautifull outward, but are within full of dead mens bones, and all filthines.
28 So are ye also: for outwarde ye appeare righteous vnto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisie and iniquitie.
Luke 11:39-40(v25)The Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, but your inward part is full of extortion and…
2 Corinthians 7:1(v26)Having therefore these promises, beloved, let’s cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear…
Luke 11:44(v27)Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like hidden graves, and the men who walk over them don’t know it.”
Acts 23:3(v27)Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! Do you sit to judge me according to the law, and command me to be struck…
Hebrews 10:22(v26)let’s draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and having our body washed…
Show all 25 cross-references
James 4:8(v26)Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Matthew 15:19-20(vv25, 28)For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual sins, thefts, false testimony, and blasphemies. These are the things…
Isaiah 55:7(v26)Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to Yahweh, and he will have mercy on him, to our God,…
Ezekiel 18:31(v26)Cast away from you all your transgressions, in which you have transgressed; and make yourself a new heart and a new spirit: for why will…
Matthew 12:33(v26)“Either make the tree good, and its fruit good, or make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by its fruit.
Luke 6:45(v26)The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings out that which is good, and the evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart…
Luke 16:15(v28)He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of men, but God knows your hearts. For that which is exalted among men…
Numbers 19:16(v27)“Whoever in the open field touches one who is slain with a sword, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven…
Psalms 51:6(v28)Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts. You teach me wisdom in the inmost place.
Isaiah 28:7-8(v25)They also reel with wine, and stagger with strong drink. The priest and the prophet reel with strong drink. They are swallowed up by wine.…
Jeremiah 4:14(v26)Jerusalem, wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved. How long will your evil thoughts lodge within you?
Jeremiah 13:27(v26)I have seen your abominations, even your adulteries, and your neighing, the lewdness of your prostitution, on the hills in the field. Woe…
Matthew 23:5(v28)But they do all their works to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad, enlarge the fringes of their garments,
Mark 7:4-13(v25)They don’t eat when they come from the marketplace unless they bathe themselves, and there are many other things, which they have received…
1 Samuel 16:7(v28)But Yahweh said to Samuel, “Don’t look on his face, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for I don’t see as man…
Matthew 12:34-35(v28)You offspring of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good man…
Mark 7:21-23(v28)For from within, out of the hearts of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual sins, murders, thefts, covetings, wickedness, deceit,…
Hebrews 4:12-13(v28)For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both…
Jeremiah 17:9-10(v28)The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it? “I, Yahweh, search the mind. I try the heart, even…
Isaiah 58:1-2(v27)“Cry aloud! Don’t spare! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Declare to my people their disobedience, and to the house of Jacob their sins.…
25 distinct cross-references across this passage (26 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (22 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn v25Hypocrites are too much careful of outward things, and…
Hypocrites are too much careful of outward things, and the inward they utterly contemn.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv25–2825 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for…
25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
Ver. 25. Ye make clean the outside] True Ephraimites, or rather Canaanites, so they are called, Hos 12:7-8, that is, mere natural men, Eze 16:4; the balances of deceit were in their hands, they loved to oppress, yet so long as thereby they grew rich, they flattered themselves, and said, "In all my labours they shall find none iniquity in me, that were sin." Hypocrites if they can but make fair to the worldward it is enough. But as the fish sepia is exposed by the black colour which she casteth out to cover her; so the hypocrite is convinced by the very show of godliness under which he hoped to have lurked. God so discovers his deceitful courses, as that his wickedness is shown before the whole congregation, Pro 26:26.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv25, 27Luke hath this, Luk 11:39,40, as occasioned by the…
Luke hath this, Luk 11:39,40, as occasioned by the Pharisees wondering that he washed not before dinner; instead of extortion and excess, he hath ravening and wickedness, and addeth, Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also? But the same thing might be spoken at two several times. He speaks there to the Pharisee, with whom he dined, Mat 23:37. Here he speaks to the disciples and the multitude. Our Saviour’s design here seemeth to me not to be a condemning of their legal or traditional washings of pots and cups, which he elsewhere reflects upon, but, by way of allusion only, to blame them that in their whole conversation they rather studied an external purity, than the inward purity of the heart, whereas if they would first have looked at purity of heart, the other would have followed that. A man may be outwardly pure, and inwardly filthy and impure; but no man can have a pure heart, but he will live a pure and holy life, for the external acts are but the impure acts of the soul: Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, and according to the inclinations and affections of the heart the foot moveth, the hand and all the bodily members act. For our Saviour’s application of this to their traditional washings, I shall speak to it when I come to Luk 11:39.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt1703 · Public DomainOn vv25, 27Our Saviour doth not here condemn their legal, or…
Our Saviour doth not here condemn their legal, or traditional washing of pots of cups, or any external decency and cleanliness in conversation; but his design is to shew them the vanity of outward purity, without inward sancity, and to convince them of the necessity of cleansing the heart, in order to the purifying and reforming the life: plainly intimating,
1. That men’s lives could no be so bad, if their hearts were not worse, all the obliquity fo their lives proceeding from the impurity of their hearts and natures.
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2. That an holy heart will be accompanied with an holy life. A man may be outwardly pure, and yet inwardly filthy; but he that has a pure heart will live a pure and holy life. Cleanse that which is within the cup, that the outside may be clean also.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv25–28Thou blind Pharisee,.... Well might Christ call such an…
Thou blind Pharisee,.... Well might Christ call such an one a blind Pharisee, who was so scrupulously careful to cleanse his cup and platter; and yet made no conscience of filling them with what was gotten in an unjust way, and so defiled himself and them:
cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also: get food and drink in an honest way, remove all extortion and oppression out of thine hands, and luxury and intemperance from thy table; and so shall the outward cleanness of thy cup and dish, be no reproach unto thee, or testimony against thee, of thine hypocrisy. So the great concern of all men should be, inward purity; that their hearts be purified by faith in the blood of Christ, and sprinkled from an evil conscience by the same; that principles of grace and holiness be formed in them by the Spirit of God; and then their outward lives and conversations being influenced thereby, will be honourable and agreeable to their professions. Otherwise, an external reformation, or an outward show of holiness, and bare pretensions to it, without internal grace, will never be of any avail in the sight of God.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv25–26Full of rapine and intemperance - The censure is…
Full of rapine and intemperance - The censure is double (taking intemperance in the vulgar sense.) These miserable men procured unjustly what they used intemperately. No wonder tables so furnished prove a snare, as many find by sad experience. Thus luxury punishes fraud while it feeds disease with the fruits of injustice. But intemperance in the full sense takes in not only all kinds of outward intemperance, particularly in eating and drinking, but all intemperate or immoderate desires, whether of honour, gain, or sensual pleasure.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv25, 27, 28Verse 25. Ye make clean the outside] The Pharisees…
Verse 25. Ye make clean the outside] The Pharisees were exceedingly exact in observing all the washings and purifications prescribed by the law; but paid no attention to that inward purity which was typified by them. A man may appear clean without, who is unclean within; but outward purity will not avail in the sight of God, where inward holiness is wanting.
Extortion and excess.] 'Αρπαγης και ακρασιας, rapine and intemperance; but instead of ακρασιας, intemperance, many of the very best MSS., CEFGHKS, and more than a hundred others, the Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, Slavonic, with Chrysostorn, Euthym., and Theophylact, have αδικιας injustice, which Griesbach has admitted into the text instead of ακρασιας. The latter Syriac has both. Several MSS. and versions have ακαθαρσιας, uncleanness; others have πλεονεξιας, covetousness; some have πονηριας, wickedness; and two of the ancients have iniquitate, iniquity. Suppose we put them all together, the character of the Pharisee will not be overcharged. They were full of rapine and intemperance, injustice and uncleanness, covetousness, wickedness, and iniquity.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn vv25, 27Mat 23:25-26. Wo unto you, hypocrites! for ye make…
Mat 23:25-26. Wo unto you, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup, &c. — This is the sixth wo. They were at great pains to appear virtuous, and to have a decent external conduct, while they neglected to beautify their inward man with true holiness, and a conformity to the divine goodness, or with the graces of God’s Holy Spirit, which in the sight of God are ornaments of great price, and render men dear and valuable to all who know what true religion and virtue are. But within they — Namely, the cup and platter; are full of extortion and excess — Which ye swallow down without the least scruple. Gr. αρπαγης και ακρασιας, rapine and intemperance. The censure is double, (taking intemperance in the vulgar sense.) These miserable men procured unjustly what they used intemperately. No wonder tables so furnished prove a snare, as many find by sad experience. Thus luxury punishes fraud, while it feeds disease with the fruits of injustice. But intemperance, in the full sense, takes in not only all kinds of outward intemperance, particularly in eating and drinking, but all intemperate or immoderate desires, whether of honour, gain, or sensual pleasure. It must be observed, however that instead of ακρασιας, intemperance, very many manuscripts and ancient versions have the word αδικιας, which, says Dr. Campbell, “suits much better with all the accounts we have in other places of the character of the Pharisees, who are never accused of intemperance, though often of injustice. The former vice is rarely found with those who, like the Pharisees, make great pretensions to religion.” Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup, &c. — And is not so much exposed to view. Cleanse first thy mind, thy inward man, from evil dispositions and affections, and of course thy outward behaviour will be righteous and good.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv25–27The cup and the platter - The drinking-cup and…
The cup and the platter - The drinking-cup and the dish containing food. The Pharisees were diligent in observing all the washings and obligations required by their traditions. See the notes at Mar 7:4.
Full of extortion and excess - The outside appeared well; the inside was filled with the fruit of extortion, oppression, and wickedness. The meaning is, that though they took much pains to appear well, yet they obtained a living by extortion and crime. Their cups, neat as they appeared outward, were filled, not with the fruits of honest industry, but with that which had been extorted from the poor by wicked arts. Instead of “excess,” many manuscripts and editions of the Greek Testament read “wickedness.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary1859 · Public DomainOn vv25–28Woe to you. Jesus Christ here condemns, in forcible…
Woe to you. Jesus Christ here condemns, in forcible language, the principal vices of the Pharisees, viz. their hypocrisy, false devotion, boundless ambition, insatiable avarice, false zeal, and ignorance in deciding upon cases of conscience. St. Luke represents our Saviour as saying this to the Pharisees at dinner; (Chap. xi.) so that Christ must either have repeated these things at different times; or, St. Matthew according to custom, must have added them to other words of our Saviour, which, though spoken on another occasion, had some connection with the same subject. In vain do you, Pharisees, boast of your external sanctity. Do not imagine, that fornication, adultery, and other actions, are the only sins to be attended to; and that pride, avarice, anger, and other spiritual sins, are of no moment. He who made the body, made also the soul; and it is of equal consequence that both be kept clean and free from sin. (Nicholas de Lyra.) --- By the similitude of the cup, and of whited sepulchres, as also that of building the sepulchres of the prophets, he shews that they did all their actions purposely to be seen by men, and that this was their only motive in all they did. (Idem. [Nicholas de Lyra.]) --- Like Ezekiel’s bitter roll, we have here a dreadful list of woes, like as many thunderbolts, levelled against hypocrisy, avarice, ambition, and all bitter zeal. We should be careful not to suffer such rank weeds to grow up in our soil, to the ruin of all good.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv25–27within they are full of extortion--In Luke (Luk 11:39)…
within they are full of extortion--In Luke (Luk 11:39) the same word is rendered "ravening," that is, "rapacity."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv25, 26, 2825. Extortion and excess — The SIXTH WOE is…
25. Extortion and excess — The SIXTH WOE is pronounced upon moral hypocrisy, in which men will show a fair exterior of conduct, while they are in secret practising the most abundant wickedness. The two forms of profligacy which our Lord selects are secret commercial dishonesty and secret licentiousness.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv25–2725. are full] Observe how swiftly and naturally Eastern…
25. are full] Observe how swiftly and naturally Eastern speech passes from the figurative to the literal. The outside of the cup and platter is the external behaviour and conduct of the Pharisee, the inside of the cup is his heart and real life.
extortion] The same Greek word is translated “ravening,” Luk_11:39. Instances of this sin are alluded to Mat_23:14-15. See notes.
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excess] Opposed to sobriety and self-control. Luke in the parallel passage has “wickedness.”
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv25–28(25) The outside of the cup and of the…
(25) The outside of the cup and of the platter.—The latter word in the Greek indicates what we should call a “side-dish,” as distinct from the “charger” of Mat_14:11. The “outside” includes the inner surface. (Comp., as regards the practice, Mar_7:4.)
Are full of extortion and excess.—The two words point (1) to the source from which the viands and the wine came—the cup and the platter were filled with, or out of the proceeds of, extortion; (2) that to which they tended—they overflowed with unrestrained self-indulgence.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv25–27The sixth woe against merely external purification. (Mar_7:4 Luk_11:39)…
The sixth woe against merely external purification. (Mar_7:4 Luk_11:39) Ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter. Thus the Lord typically denotes the Pharisees" external ceremonialism, their legal purity. They looked, so to speak, to the cleanliness of the outside of the cup that contained their drink, and the platter that held their food. Such cleansing would, of course, have no effect on the drink or meat itself. They are full of (gemousin ex , are full from) extortion and excess (akrasiav). For this last word the manuscripts offer many variations, arising, probably, from its uucommoness. It seems, however, to be genuine. But we find it altered into "unrighteousness," "impurity," Vulgate, immunditia, "intemperance," "covetousness," "wickedness." The vessels are conceived as filled with contents acquired by violence and used without self-control.
Vers. 25-28. Fatal blindness.
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Our Lord continues to denounce woes against hypocrites, both for what they do and for what they are. The relation between doing and being is constant. These things are written for our learning.
I THE HYPOCRITE IS WOEFULLY GUILTY.
1. He is guilty of heart wickedness.
(1) Under the utmost ceremonial strictness, like the garnished tomb enclosing "dead men"s bones and all uncleanness," is concealed the greatest moral laxity. Thus"Nature, like a beauteous wall, Doth oft close in pollution." (Shakespeare.)
(2) As an adorned tomb is but the garniture of death and corruption, so is the external sanctity of the Pharisee in disgusting contrast to his inward turpitude.
(3) The meat and drink in the platter and cup, externally so scrupulously cleansed, are the nourishment and refreshment of the hypocrite. His luxuries are procured by means nefarious and corrupt (see ver. 14). The hypocrite is selfish to cruelty.
(4) The nourishment and refreshment of the Pharisee is, in the estimation of Christ, filth and poison. Luxury punishes fraud, feeding disease with fruits of injustice. The disease and death thus nourished are moral more than physical.
2. He is guilty of deceiving others.
(1) The cleansed outside of the cup and platter, and the whiting on the sepulchre, are intended to be seen; and so is the piety of the hypocrite. The purpose is to divert attention from the filth and rottenness within.
(2) The success is often too well assured. Man surveys surfaces. His vision does not search substances. To do this requires experiment which he is too lazy to institute.
(3) Hence the professed belief in human nature.
(a) Unconverted men must be hypocrites to be endured. Society would be intolerable but for its veneer.
(b) The children of nature are readily deceived in a world of hypocrites. Their pride and self-conceit leads them to credit themselves with virtues; and the Pharisee deceives them.
(c) But that religious persons should "believe in human nature" only shows how successfully the hypocrite may even "deceive the very elect.
(d) The believers in human nature are liable to trust in it instead of Christ for their salvation, and perish in their delusion.
3. He is guilty of insulting God.
(1) He ignores God. While he strives after the praise of men, he leaves God out of the account. Is God to be treated as nobody with impunity!
(2) He degrades God. Affecting the praise of men rather than the praise of God, he treats the Creator as inferior to his creatures. Will this insolence be endured forever?
(3) As the whitening of the sepulchre was intended to warn passengers to avoid its defiling contact, so should the sham piety of the Pharisee warn honest men away from the sphere of his moral infection. (see Luk_11:44)
(4) Let the sinner be alarmed at the formidableness of the impending woe. Let him repent, amend, and sue for mercy.
II THE HYPOCRITE IS CRIMINALLY BLIND.
1. God requires truth in the heart.
(1) He is himself essentially holy. This means that his nature must repel from him everything that is unholy. God must needs wage eternal war against sin.
(2) But his grace has made possible his reconciliation to the sinner.
(a) In the provision of the atonement.
(b) In the gift of the Holy Spirit.
(c) Through faith the righteousness of the Law may not only become "imputed to us," but also "fulfilled in us.
(3) The life will be holy when the heart is clean. "The heart may be a temple of God or a grave; a heaven or a hell" (Slier). The cleansing of the inside affects the outside, but not contrariwise. "Cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the platter, that the outside. thereof may become clean also.
(4) There is a cleansing that is external even after the heart is clean. This our Lord evinced when he washed the feet of his disciples.
2. The hypocrite imposes upon himself.
(1) He is criminally blind to the folly that avoids those scandalous sins which would spoil his reputation with men, while he allows the heart wickedness which renders him odious to God. (see Psa_5:9) Jesus saw the filth within the cup and platter, and the rottenness within the sepulchre.
(2) He is criminally blind to the fact that in imposing upon his fellows he does not impose upon his Maker. The same Jesus who showed the Pharisee the extortion and excesses of the heart will show these things to him again in the day of woe.
(3) The hypocrite is criminally blind to the fact that the life is cleansed in the heart. Those only are externally clean who are inwardly pure. Christ views the profession in relation to the state of the heart. In this light he will judge the works of men at the last great day. J.A.M.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn v25For ye make clean the outside of the cup.
Mat_23:25-28
For ye make clean the outside of the cup.
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Moral ablution
By this allusion to the cup and platter the Saviour taught that it is necessary to cleanse the heart first, that the external conduct might be pure.
I. Why must we cleanse ourselves from sin?
1. Because it renders us injurious to our fellow-men.
2. Because it hinders prayer.
3. Because it renders us offensive to God.
4. Because it is destructive to ourselves.
II. How may we cleanse ourselves from sin?
1. Not by merely desiring to be cleansed.
2. Not by external reformations.
3. Not by scrupulous attention to religious ordinances.
4. Not by mere repentance.
5. But by faith in the only cleansing element-the precious blood of Jesus.
III. When may we cleanse ourselves from sin? Now!
1. Delay increases the difficulty.
2. The present the only time of which we are sure.
3. Gods commands brook no delay, etc. (A. Tucker.)
Hypocrisy contradictory
Hypocrites are like pictures on canvas, they show fairest at farthest. A hypocrites profession is in folio, but his sincerity is so abridged that it is contained in decimo-sexto, nothing in the world to speak of. A hypocrite is like the Sicilian Etna, flaming at the mouth when it hath snow at the foot. Their mouths talk hotly, but their feet walk coldly. The nightingale hath a sweet voice, but a lean carcase; a voice, and nothing else but a voice: and so have all hypocrites. (Adams.)
Hypocrisy deceptive
As a thick wood that giveth great shadow doth delight the eyes of the beholders greatly with the variety of flourishing trees and pleasant plants, so that it seemeth to be ordained only for pleasures sake, and yet within is full of poisonous serpents, ravening wolves, and other wild beasts; even so a hypocrite, when outwardly he seemeth holy and to be well furnished with all sorts of virtues, doth please well the eyes of his beholders; but within him there lurketh pride, envy, covetousness, and all manner of wickedness, like wild and cruel beasts wandering in the wood of his heart. (Cawdray.)
Whited sepulchres:-Appearances not always to be trusted
Hypocrites seem as glow-worms, to have both light and heat; but touch them and they have neither. The Egyptian temples were beautiful on the outside, when within ye should find nothing but some serpent or crocodile. Apothecaries boxes oft have goodly titles when yet they hold not one dram of any good drug. A certain stranger coming on embassage unto the senators of Rome, and colouring his hoary hair and pale cheeks with vermilion hue, a grave senator espying the deceit stood up and said, What sincerity are we to expect from this mans hands, whose locks, and looks, and lips, do lie? Think the same of-all painted hypocrites. These we may compare(as Lucian doth his Grecians) to a fair gilt bossed book; look within it, and there is the tragedy of Thyestes; or perhaps Arrius Thalya; the name of a muse, the matter heresy; or Conradus Vorstius book-monster that hath De Deo in the front, but atheism and blasphemy in the text. (J. Trapp.)
False appearances
If yon go into a churchyard some snowy day, when the snow has been falling thick enough to cover every monument and tombstone, how beautiful and white does everything appear! But remove the snow, dig down beneath, and you find rottenness and putrefaction-dead mens bones and all uncleanness. How like that churchyard on such a day is the mere professor-fair outside, sinful, unholy within! The grass grows green upon the sides of a mountain that holds a volcano in its bowels. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Emblem of hypocrisy
A very capital painter in London exhibited a piece representing a friar habited in his canonicals. View the painting at a distance, and you would think the friar to be in a praying attitude. His hands are clasped together, and held horizontally to his breast; his eyes meekly demissed like those of the publican in the gospel, and the good man appears to be quite absorbed in humble adoration and devout recollection. But take a nearer survey, and the deception vanishes. The book which seemed to be before him is discovered to be a punch-bowl into which the rascal is all the while, in reality, only squeezing a lemon. How lively a representation of a hypocrite! (G. S. Bowes.)
There is a spice of hypocrisy in us all. (S. Rutherford.)
The hypocrite-the man that stole the livery of heaven to serve the devil in. (R. Pollok.)
The hypocrite takes a partial Christ
The hypocrite maps out the road to Zion, knows it well, has sounded with plummet the depths of the promises, can talk about them. But he has accepted a two-parts Christ; there is perhaps a little pet sin, snugly tucked up in a warm corner of his heart, that he is unwilling to part with. Christ is his Priest, his Prophet, but he will not have Him as his King.
Hypocrisy sometimes difficult to discover
Formality frequently takes its dwelling near the chambers of integrity, and so assumes its name; the soul not suspecting that hell should make so near an approach to heaven. A rotten post, though covered with gold, is more fit to be burned in the fire than for the building of a fabric. The dial of our faces does not infallibly show the time of day in our hearts; the humblest looks may enamel the former, while unbounded pride covers the latter. Unclean spirits may inhabit the chamber when they look not out at the window. (Archbishop Secker.)
Posthumous testimony to the great and good
I. A serious charge.
1. A too late recognition of goodness which, when living, was ignored or persecuted.
2. A pretended veneration of the characters of the pious dead.
3. In truth a signalizing of their own goodness.
II. A false defence.
1. Their character belied their profession-persecutors of Jesus would hardly have been defenders of Isaiah, etc.
2. Betrayed great ignorance of their own character.
III. A solemn verdict.
1. Pronounced guilty of the righteous blood shed by their party.
2. Hypocrites for pretending a veneration for departed worth while they persecuted living goodness.
Tombs
Tombs are the clothes of the dead: a grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered. Tombs ought, in some sort, to be proportioned, not to the wealth, but deserts of the party interred. Yet may we see some rich man of mean worth loaden under a tomb big enough for a prince to bear. There were officers appointed in the Grecian games who always, by public authority, did pluck down the statues erected to the victors if they exceeded the true symmetry and proportion of their bodies. The shortest, plainest, and truest epitaphs are the best. Mr. Camden, in his Remains, presents us with examples of great men who had little epitaphs. And when once I asked a witty gentleman what epitaph was fitted to be written on Mr. Camdens tomb, Let it be, said he, Camdens Remains. I say also, the plainest; for except the sense lie above ground, few will trouble themselves to dig for it. Lastly, it must be true; not, as in some monuments where the red veins in the marble may seem to blush at the falsehoods written on it. He was a witty man that first taught a stone to speak; but he was a wicked man that taught it first to lie. (N. Rogers.)
God searches the heart
Momus, the heathen god of ridicule, complained that Jupiter had not made a window in the human breast, so that it might be seen what was passing within. To an omniscient God no window is needed, every thought, and wish, and intention being perfectly discerned.
Garnished tombs
The tombs of saints in Egypt are held in great veneration. They are covered with a circular building in the form of a cupola, and are regularly whitewashed, repaired, rebuilt, and decorated, as was the case with the Jews. In the larger tombs lamps are kept constantly burning, as amongst the Romanists, and no Christian is allowed to enter. At Pera the tablets are all upright, and surmounted with turbans, tarbooshes, or flowers. The dignity of the person in the grave is displayed by the kind of turban at the top of the stone. Most were of white marble, and many richly gilt and ornamented. They are about the size of our railway mile-posts, and are as thick on the ground as nine-pins. The flowers denote females. Some are painted green, these were descendants of Mahomet. (Gadsby.)
Whitened sepulchres
In the plains of Sahrai-Sirwan Rawlinson noticed many whitewashed obelisks placed on any elevations which occurred conveniently, some rising to the height of fifteen feet, a modern example of whitened sepulchres. The custom of garnishing the sepulchres prevails more or less throughout Persia.
Outward purification must begin within
I. It is a characteristic of fallen men that they are apt to content themselves with cleansing the outside. They are at greater pains to seem pure than to be pure.
II. Though outward purity is desirable, and even measurably praiseworthy, yet, if it be not the fruit of a purified heart, it is unreliable and comparatively valueless. For the welfare of this life it is better that one should be winning than repulsive, moral than immoral. It is better to have a washed outside than to have both outside and inside filthy. If outside only it is unreliable; has no inherent permanency.
III. A cleansed heart is a sure producer of genuine and permanent purity of life. Learn:
1. That God estimates character by the state of the heart.
2. That man has a corrupt heart, and is therefore loathsome in Gods sight.
3. That to have Gods favour man must be cleansed, and that to be effectual it must begin in his heart.
4. That there is such a thing as being effectually cleansed and rendered acceptable to the Holy One. (T. Williston.)
Deception deceived
So it ever comes to pass that we are punished for deceiving others by being ourselves deceived. Our success secures our delusion. When an act which is properly an indication of some good motive is repeatedly performed in the sight of those who cannot see the heart, they take for granted the motive and give us the credit of it-provided only the act be of the class which it is the fashion of the day and place to applaud as religious. We are assumed to be what, at first, we know we are not. But in time this knowledge fades away; we accept as the independently formed judgment of others that which really rested upon our own successful deception; we come to consider our conduct as in itself sufficient proof of the motive which is universally assumed to be its source. We move in a circle of hypocrisy, and it becomes difficult to decide whether we are the authors or the victims of the delusion. We are, in fact, both. (J. C. Coghlan, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson1891 · Public DomainOn vv25, 27, 2825, 26. Ye make clean the outside, etc. The…
25, 26. Ye make clean the outside, etc. The figure is plain. Its application rebukes scrupulous care of outside forms, while neglecting to have the heart pure.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren1905 · Public DomainOn v27Mat 23:27 - Mat 23:39.
Matthew
THE KING’S FAREWELL
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Mat 23:27 - Mat 23:39.
If, with the majority of authorities, we exclude Mat 23:14 from the text, there are, in this chapter, seven woes, like seven thunders, launched against the rulers. They are scathing exposures, but, as the very word implies, full of sorrow as well as severity. They are not denunciations, but prophecies warning that the end of such tempers must be mournful. The wailing of an infinite compassion, rather than the accents of anger, sounds in them; and it alone is heard in the outburst of lamenting in which Christ’s heart runs over, as in a passion of tears, at the close. The blending of sternness and pity, each perfect, is the characteristic of this wonderful climax of our Lord’s appeals to His nation. Could such tones of love and righteous anger joined have been sent echoing through the ages in this Gospel, if they had not been heard?
I. The woe of the ‘whited sepulchres.’
The first four woes are directed mainly to the teachings of the scribes and Pharisees; the last three to their characters. The two first of these fasten on the same sin, of hypocritical holiness. There is, however, a difference between the representation of hypocrites under the metaphor of the clean outside of the cup and platter, and that of the whited sepulchre. In the former, the hidden sin is ‘extortion and excess’; that is, sensual enjoyment wrongly procured, of which the emblems of cup and plate suggest that good eating and drinking are a chief part. In the latter, it is ‘iniquity’-a more general and darker name for sin. In the former, the Pharisee is ‘blind,’ self-deceived in part or altogether; in the latter, stress is rather laid on his ‘appearance unto men.’ The repetition of the same charge in the two woes teaches us Christ’s estimate of the gravity and frequency of the sin.
The whitened tombs of Mohammedan saints still gleam in the strong sunlight on many a knoll in Palestine. If the Talmudical practice is as old as our Lord’s time, the annual whitewashing was lately over. Its purpose was not to adorn the tombs, but to make them conspicuous, so that they might be avoided for fear of defilement. So He would say, with terrible irony, that the apparent holiness of the rulers was really a sign of corruption, and a warning to keep away from them. What a blow at their self-complacency! And how profoundly true it is that the more punctiliously white the hypocrite’s outside, the more foul is he within, and the wider berth will all discerning people give him! The terrible force of the figure needs no dwelling on. In Christ’s estimate, such a soul was the very dwelling-place of death; and foul odours and worms and corruption filled its sickening recesses. Terrible words to come from His lips into which grace was poured, and bold words to be flashed at listeners who held the life of the Speaker in their hands! There are two sorts of hypocrites, the conscious and the unconscious; and there are ten of the latter for one of the former, and each ten times more dangerous. Established religion breeds them, and they are specially likely to be found among those whose business is to study the documents in which it is embodied. These woes are not like thunder-peals rolling above our heads, while the lightning strikes the earth miles away. A religion which is mostly whitewash is as common among us as ever it was in Jerusalem; and its foul accompaniments of corruption becoming more rotten every year, as the whitewash is laid on thicker, may be smelt among us, and its fatal end is as sure.
II. The woe of the sepulchre builders {Mat 23:29 - Mat 23:36}.
In these verses we have, first, the specification of another form of hypocrisy, consisting in building the prophets’ tombs, and disavowing the fathers’ murder of them. Honouring dead prophets was right; but honouring dead ones and killing living ones was conscious or unconscious hypocrisy. The temper of mind which leads to glorifying the dead witnesses, also leads to supposing that all truth was given by them; and hence that the living teachers, who carry their message farther, are false prophets. A generation which was ready to kill Jesus in honour of Moses, would have killed Moses in honour of Abraham, and would not have had the faintest apprehension of the message of either.
It is a great deal easier to build tombs than to accept teachings, and a good deal of the posthumous honour paid to God’s messengers means, ‘It’s a good thing they are dead, and that we have nothing to do but to put up a monument.’ Bi-centenaries and ter-centenaries and jubilees do not always imply either the understanding or the acceptance of the principles supposed to be glorified thereby. But the magnifiers of the past are often quite unconscious of the hollowness of their admiration, and honest in their horror of their fathers’ acts; and we all need the probe of such words as Christ’s to pierce the skin of our lazy reverence for our fathers’ prophets, and let out the foul matter below-namely, our own blindness to God’s messengers of to-day.
The statement of the hypocrisy is followed, in Mat 23:31, with its unmasking and condemnation. The words glow with righteous wrath at white heat, and end in a burst of indignation, most unfamiliar to His lips. Three sentences, like triple lightning flash from His pained heart. With almost scornful subtlety He lays hold of the words which He puts into the Pharisees’ mouths, to convict them of kindred with those whose deeds they would disown. ‘Our fathers, say you? Then you do belong to the same family, after all. You confess that you have their blood in your veins; and, in the very act of denying sympathy with their conduct, you own kindred. And, for all your protestations, spiritual kindred goes with bodily descent.’ Christ here recognises that children probably ‘take after their parents,’ or, in modern scientific terms, that ‘heredity’ is the law, and that it works more surely in the transmission of evil than of good.
Then come the awful words bidding that generation ‘fill up the measure of the fathers.’ They are like the other command to Judas to do his work quickly. They are more than permission, they are command; but such a command as, by its laying bare of the true character of the deed in view, is love’s last effort at prevention. Mark the growing emotion of the language. Mark the conception of a nation’s sins as one through successive generations, and the other, of these as having a definite measure, which being filled, judgment can no longer tarry. Generation after generation pours its contributions into the vessel, and when the last black drop which it can hold has been added, then comes the catastrophe. Mark the fatal necessity by which inherited sin becomes darker sin. The fathers’ crimes are less than the sons’. This inheritance increases by each transmission. The cloak strikes one more at each revolution of the hands.
It is hard to recognise Christ in the terrible words that follow. We have heard part of them from John the Baptist; and it sounded natural for him to call men serpents and the children of serpents, but it is somewhat of a shock to hear Jesus hurling such names at even the most sinful. But let us remember that He who sees hearts, has a right to tell harsh truths, and that it is truest kindness to strip off masks which hide from men their own real character, and that the revelation of the divine love in Jesus would be a partial and impotent revelation if it did not show us the righteous love which is wrath. There is nothing so terrible as the anger of gentle compassion, and the fiercest and most destructive wrath is ‘the wrath of the Lamb.’ Seldom, indeed, did He show that side of His character; but it is there, and the other side would not be so blessed as it is, unless that were there too.
The woe ends with the double prophecy that that generation would repeat and surpass the fathers’ guilt, and that on it would fall the accumulated penalties of past bloodshed. Note that solemn ‘therefore,’ which looks back to the whole preceding context, and forward to the whole subsequent. Because the rulers professed abhorrence of their fathers’ deeds, and yet inherited their spirit, they too would have their prophets, and would slay them. God goes on sending His messengers, because we reject them; and the more deaf men are, the more does He peal His words into their ears. That is mercy and compassion, that all men may be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth; but it is judgment too, and its foreseen effect must be regarded as part of the divine purpose in it. Christ’s desire is one thing, His purpose another. His desire is that all should find in His gospel ‘the savour of life’; but His purpose is that, if it be not that to any, it shall be to them the savour of death. Mark, too, the authority with which He, in the face of these scowling Pharisees, assumes the distinct divine prerogative of sending forth inspired men, who, as His messengers, shall stand on a level with the prophets of old. Mark His silence as to His own fate, which is only obscurely hinted at in the command to fill up the measure of the fathers. Observe the detailed enumeration of His messengers’ gifts,-’prophets’ under direct inspiration, like those of old, which may especially refer to the apostles; ‘wise men,’ like a Stephen or an Apollos; ‘scribes,’ such as Mark and Luke and many a faithful servant since, whose pen has loved to write the name above every name. Note the detailed prophecy of their treatment, which begins with slaying and goes down to the less severe scourging, and thence to the milder persecution. Do the three punishments belong to the three classes of messengers, the severest falling to the lot of the most highly endowed, and even the quiet penman being hunted from city to city?
We need not wriggle and twist to try to avoid admitting that the calling of the martyred Zacharias, ‘the son of Barachias,’ is an error of some one who confused the author of the prophetic book with the person whose murder is narrated in 2Ch 24:1 - 2Ch 24:27 We do not know who made the mistake, or how it appears in our text, but it is not honest to try to slur it over. The punishment of long ages of sin, carried on from father to son, does in the course of that history of the world, which is a part of the judgment of the world, fall upon one generation. It takes long for the mass of heaped-up sin to become top-heavy; but when it is so, it buries one generation of those who have worked at piling it up, beneath its down-rushing avalanche.
‘The mills of God grind slowly,
But they grind exceeding small.’
The catastrophes of national histories are prepared for by continuous centuries. The generation that laid the first powder-hornful of the train is dead and buried, long before the explosion which sends constituted order and institutions sky-high. The misery is that often the generation which has to pay the penalty has begun to awake to the sin, and would be glad to mend it, if it could. England in the seventeenth century, France in the eighteenth, America in the nineteenth, had to reap harvests from sins sown long before. Such is the law of the judgment wrought out by God’s providence in history. But there is another judgment, begun here and perfected hereafter, in which fathers and sons shall each bear their own burden, and reap accurately the fruit of what they have sown. ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die.’
III. The parting wail of rejected love.
The lightning flashes of the sevenfold woes end in a rain of pity and tears. His full heart overflows in that sad cry of lamentation over the long-continued foiling of the efforts of a love that would fain have fondled and defended. What intensity of feeling is in the redoubled naming of the city! How yearningly and wistfully He calls, as if He might still win the faithless one, and how lingeringly unwilling He is to give up hope! How mournfully, rather than accusingly, He reiterates the acts which had run through the whole history, using a form of the verbs which suggests continuance. Mark, too, the matter-of-course way in which Christ assumes that He sent all the prophets whom, through the generations, Jerusalem had stoned.
So the lament passes into the solemn final leave-taking, with which our Lord closes His ministry among the Jews, and departs from the temple. As, in the parable of the marriage-feast, the city was emphatically called ‘their city,’ so here the Temple, in whose courts He was standing, and which in a moment He was to quit for ever, is called ‘your house,’ because His departure is the withdrawing of the true Shechinah. It had been the house of God: now He casts it off, and leaves it to them to do as they will with it. The saddest punishment of long-continued rejection of His pleading love, is that it ceases at last to plead. The bitterest woe for those who refuse to render to Him the fruits of the vineyard, is to get the vineyard for their own, undisturbed. Christ’s utmost retribution for obstinate blindness is to withdraw from our sight. All the woes that were yet to fall, in long, dreary succession on that nation, so long continued in its sin, so long continued in its misery, were hidden in that solemn departure of Christ from the henceforward empty temple. Let us fear lest our unfaithfulness meet the like penalty! But even the departure does not end His yearnings, nor close the long story of the conflict between God’s beseeching love and their unbelief. The time shall come when the nation shall once more lift up, with deeper, truer adoration, the hosannas of the triumphal entry. And then a believing Israel shall see their King, and serve Him. Christ never takes final leave of any man in this world. It is ever possible that dumb lips may be opened to welcome Him, though long rejected; and His withdrawals are His efforts to bring about that opening. When it takes place, how gladly does He return to the heart which is now His temple, and unveil His beauty to the long-darkened eyes!
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield1917 · Public DomainOn v28Lit. Lawlessness. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
iniquity
Lit. Lawlessness. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann1924 · Public DomainOn vv25, 27The sixth woe:
The sixth woe:
v. 25. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
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v. 26. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
A picture taken from the well-known strictness of the Pharisees in the matter of washings and purifications prescribed by law. In all such outward forms, also in the precepts concerning eating and drinking, they took care to maintain an unblemished appearance before men. But incidentally the results of robbery and incontinence filled their pockets. In true purity it is essential that the inside of the platter and cup be clean first; the purity of the exterior will follow as a matter of course. There can be no real piety, no true righteousness of life, unless the inward man is first renewed. Conversion must precede sanctification. A person may train himself to observe the outward semblance of proper form and even of Christian virtues, but without a change of heart all this avails nothing. "He says: Externally everything is so clean that it could not be better. But how is it in your heart? He does not speak of the cup or of the platter, but of the heart that it is full of uncleanness. He does not reject their purity altogether. For they should clean first of all what was inside. This purity which ye not only observe, but also teach, when ye think if the garment of purple is brushed, and everything, bed and dress, is clean, that is your righteousness, and do not hinder this purity, but even teach it, and are still inside full of robbery, devouring, uncleanness, and even defend this doctrine and life. It cannot be sin that ye rob and steal everything they have from the poor people!"
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv25, 27Woe to you ... hypocrites!
Woe to you ... hypocrites!
"How terrible it will be for you ... hypocrites!" See how you translated this in Matthew 11:21.
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For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence
This is a metaphor that means the scribes and Pharisees appear pure on the outside to others, but on the inside they are wicked. (See: Metaphor)
they are full of greed and self-indulgence
"they want what others have, and they act in the interest of the self"
You blind Pharisee
The Pharisees were spiritually blind. Although they thought of themselves as teachers, they were unable to understand God's truth. (See: Metaphor)
Clean first the inside of the cup and of the plate, so that the outside may become clean also
This is a metaphor that means that if they would become pure in their inner being, then the result is that they would be pure on the outside as well. (See: Metaphor)
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On v25 Hypocrites are too much careful of outward things, and…
Hypocrites are too much careful of outward things, and the inward they utterly contemn.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv25–28 25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for…
25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
Ver. 25. Ye make clean the outside] True Ephraimites, or rather Canaanites, so they are called, Hos 12:7-8, that is, mere natural men, Eze 16:4; the balances of deceit were in their hands, they loved to oppress, yet so long as thereby they grew rich, they flattered themselves, and said, "In all my labours they shall find none iniquity in me, that were sin." Hypocrites if they can but make fair to the worldward it is enough. But as the fish sepia is exposed by the black colour which she casteth out to cover her; so the hypocrite is convinced by the very show of godliness under which he hoped to have lurked. God so discovers his deceitful courses, as that his wickedness is shown before the whole congregation, Pro 26:26.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv25, 27 Luke hath this, Luk 11:39,40, as occasioned by the…
Luke hath this, Luk 11:39,40, as occasioned by the Pharisees wondering that he washed not before dinner; instead of extortion and excess, he hath ravening and wickedness, and addeth, Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also? But the same thing might be spoken at two several times. He speaks there to the Pharisee, with whom he dined, Mat 23:37. Here he speaks to the disciples and the multitude. Our Saviour’s design here seemeth to me not to be a condemning of their legal or traditional washings of pots and cups, which he elsewhere reflects upon, but, by way of allusion only, to blame them that in their whole conversation they rather studied an external purity, than the inward purity of the heart, whereas if they would first have looked at purity of heart, the other would have followed that. A man may be outwardly pure, and inwardly filthy and impure; but no man can have a pure heart, but he will live a pure and holy life, for the external acts are but the impure acts of the soul: Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, and according to the inclinations and affections of the heart the foot moveth, the hand and all the bodily members act. For our Saviour’s application of this to their traditional washings, I shall speak to it when I come to Luk 11:39.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv25, 27 Our Saviour doth not here condemn their legal, or…
Our Saviour doth not here condemn their legal, or traditional washing of pots of cups, or any external decency and cleanliness in conversation; but his design is to shew them the vanity of outward purity, without inward sancity, and to convince them of the necessity of cleansing the heart, in order to the purifying and reforming the life: plainly intimating,
1. That men’s lives could no be so bad, if their hearts were not worse, all the obliquity fo their lives proceeding from the impurity of their hearts and natures.
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2. That an holy heart will be accompanied with an holy life. A man may be outwardly pure, and yet inwardly filthy; but he that has a pure heart will live a pure and holy life. Cleanse that which is within the cup, that the outside may be clean also.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv25–28 Thou blind Pharisee,.... Well might Christ call such an…
Thou blind Pharisee,.... Well might Christ call such an one a blind Pharisee, who was so scrupulously careful to cleanse his cup and platter; and yet made no conscience of filling them with what was gotten in an unjust way, and so defiled himself and them:
cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also: get food and drink in an honest way, remove all extortion and oppression out of thine hands, and luxury and intemperance from thy table; and so shall the outward cleanness of thy cup and dish, be no reproach unto thee, or testimony against thee, of thine hypocrisy. So the great concern of all men should be, inward purity; that their hearts be purified by faith in the blood of Christ, and sprinkled from an evil conscience by the same; that principles of grace and holiness be formed in them by the Spirit of God; and then their outward lives and conversations being influenced thereby, will be honourable and agreeable to their professions. Otherwise, an external reformation, or an outward show of holiness, and bare pretensions to it, without internal grace, will never be of any avail in the sight of God.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv25–26 Full of rapine and intemperance - The censure is…
Full of rapine and intemperance - The censure is double (taking intemperance in the vulgar sense.) These miserable men procured unjustly what they used intemperately. No wonder tables so furnished prove a snare, as many find by sad experience. Thus luxury punishes fraud while it feeds disease with the fruits of injustice. But intemperance in the full sense takes in not only all kinds of outward intemperance, particularly in eating and drinking, but all intemperate or immoderate desires, whether of honour, gain, or sensual pleasure.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv25, 27, 28 Verse 25. Ye make clean the outside] The Pharisees…
Verse 25. Ye make clean the outside] The Pharisees were exceedingly exact in observing all the washings and purifications prescribed by the law; but paid no attention to that inward purity which was typified by them. A man may appear clean without, who is unclean within; but outward purity will not avail in the sight of God, where inward holiness is wanting.
Extortion and excess.] 'Αρπαγης και ακρασιας, rapine and intemperance; but instead of ακρασιας, intemperance, many of the very best MSS., CEFGHKS, and more than a hundred others, the Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, Slavonic, with Chrysostorn, Euthym., and Theophylact, have αδικιας injustice, which Griesbach has admitted into the text instead of ακρασιας. The latter Syriac has both. Several MSS. and versions have ακαθαρσιας, uncleanness; others have πλεονεξιας, covetousness; some have πονηριας, wickedness; and two of the ancients have iniquitate, iniquity. Suppose we put them all together, the character of the Pharisee will not be overcharged. They were full of rapine and intemperance, injustice and uncleanness, covetousness, wickedness, and iniquity.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv25, 27 Mat 23:25-26. Wo unto you, hypocrites! for ye make…
Mat 23:25-26. Wo unto you, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup, &c. — This is the sixth wo. They were at great pains to appear virtuous, and to have a decent external conduct, while they neglected to beautify their inward man with true holiness, and a conformity to the divine goodness, or with the graces of God’s Holy Spirit, which in the sight of God are ornaments of great price, and render men dear and valuable to all who know what true religion and virtue are. But within they — Namely, the cup and platter; are full of extortion and excess — Which ye swallow down without the least scruple. Gr. αρπαγης και ακρασιας, rapine and intemperance. The censure is double, (taking intemperance in the vulgar sense.) These miserable men procured unjustly what they used intemperately. No wonder tables so furnished prove a snare, as many find by sad experience. Thus luxury punishes fraud, while it feeds disease with the fruits of injustice. But intemperance, in the full sense, takes in not only all kinds of outward intemperance, particularly in eating and drinking, but all intemperate or immoderate desires, whether of honour, gain, or sensual pleasure. It must be observed, however that instead of ακρασιας, intemperance, very many manuscripts and ancient versions have the word αδικιας, which, says Dr. Campbell, “suits much better with all the accounts we have in other places of the character of the Pharisees, who are never accused of intemperance, though often of injustice. The former vice is rarely found with those who, like the Pharisees, make great pretensions to religion.” Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup, &c. — And is not so much exposed to view. Cleanse first thy mind, thy inward man, from evil dispositions and affections, and of course thy outward behaviour will be righteous and good.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv25–27 The cup and the platter - The drinking-cup and…
The cup and the platter - The drinking-cup and the dish containing food. The Pharisees were diligent in observing all the washings and obligations required by their traditions. See the notes at Mar 7:4.
Full of extortion and excess - The outside appeared well; the inside was filled with the fruit of extortion, oppression, and wickedness. The meaning is, that though they took much pains to appear well, yet they obtained a living by extortion and crime. Their cups, neat as they appeared outward, were filled, not with the fruits of honest industry, but with that which had been extorted from the poor by wicked arts. Instead of “excess,” many manuscripts and editions of the Greek Testament read “wickedness.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv25–28 Woe to you. Jesus Christ here condemns, in forcible…
Woe to you. Jesus Christ here condemns, in forcible language, the principal vices of the Pharisees, viz. their hypocrisy, false devotion, boundless ambition, insatiable avarice, false zeal, and ignorance in deciding upon cases of conscience. St. Luke represents our Saviour as saying this to the Pharisees at dinner; (Chap. xi.) so that Christ must either have repeated these things at different times; or, St. Matthew according to custom, must have added them to other words of our Saviour, which, though spoken on another occasion, had some connection with the same subject. In vain do you, Pharisees, boast of your external sanctity. Do not imagine, that fornication, adultery, and other actions, are the only sins to be attended to; and that pride, avarice, anger, and other spiritual sins, are of no moment. He who made the body, made also the soul; and it is of equal consequence that both be kept clean and free from sin. (Nicholas de Lyra.) --- By the similitude of the cup, and of whited sepulchres, as also that of building the sepulchres of the prophets, he shews that they did all their actions purposely to be seen by men, and that this was their only motive in all they did. (Idem. [Nicholas de Lyra.]) --- Like Ezekiel’s bitter roll, we have here a dreadful list of woes, like as many thunderbolts, levelled against hypocrisy, avarice, ambition, and all bitter zeal. We should be careful not to suffer such rank weeds to grow up in our soil, to the ruin of all good.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv25–27 within they are full of extortion--In Luke (Luk 11:39)…
within they are full of extortion--In Luke (Luk 11:39) the same word is rendered "ravening," that is, "rapacity."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv25, 26, 28 25. Extortion and excess — The SIXTH WOE is…
25. Extortion and excess — The SIXTH WOE is pronounced upon moral hypocrisy, in which men will show a fair exterior of conduct, while they are in secret practising the most abundant wickedness. The two forms of profligacy which our Lord selects are secret commercial dishonesty and secret licentiousness.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv25–27 25. are full] Observe how swiftly and naturally Eastern…
25. are full] Observe how swiftly and naturally Eastern speech passes from the figurative to the literal. The outside of the cup and platter is the external behaviour and conduct of the Pharisee, the inside of the cup is his heart and real life.
extortion] The same Greek word is translated “ravening,” Luk_11:39. Instances of this sin are alluded to Mat_23:14-15. See notes.
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excess] Opposed to sobriety and self-control. Luke in the parallel passage has “wickedness.”
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv25–28 (25) The outside of the cup and of the…
(25) The outside of the cup and of the platter.—The latter word in the Greek indicates what we should call a “side-dish,” as distinct from the “charger” of Mat_14:11. The “outside” includes the inner surface. (Comp., as regards the practice, Mar_7:4.)
Are full of extortion and excess.—The two words point (1) to the source from which the viands and the wine came—the cup and the platter were filled with, or out of the proceeds of, extortion; (2) that to which they tended—they overflowed with unrestrained self-indulgence.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv25–27 The sixth woe against merely external purification. (Mar_7:4 Luk_11:39)…
The sixth woe against merely external purification. (Mar_7:4 Luk_11:39) Ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter. Thus the Lord typically denotes the Pharisees" external ceremonialism, their legal purity. They looked, so to speak, to the cleanliness of the outside of the cup that contained their drink, and the platter that held their food. Such cleansing would, of course, have no effect on the drink or meat itself. They are full of (gemousin ex , are full from) extortion and excess (akrasiav). For this last word the manuscripts offer many variations, arising, probably, from its uucommoness. It seems, however, to be genuine. But we find it altered into "unrighteousness," "impurity," Vulgate, immunditia, "intemperance," "covetousness," "wickedness." The vessels are conceived as filled with contents acquired by violence and used without self-control.
Vers. 25-28. Fatal blindness.
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Our Lord continues to denounce woes against hypocrites, both for what they do and for what they are. The relation between doing and being is constant. These things are written for our learning.
I THE HYPOCRITE IS WOEFULLY GUILTY.
1. He is guilty of heart wickedness.
(1) Under the utmost ceremonial strictness, like the garnished tomb enclosing "dead men"s bones and all uncleanness," is concealed the greatest moral laxity. Thus"Nature, like a beauteous wall, Doth oft close in pollution." (Shakespeare.)
(2) As an adorned tomb is but the garniture of death and corruption, so is the external sanctity of the Pharisee in disgusting contrast to his inward turpitude.
(3) The meat and drink in the platter and cup, externally so scrupulously cleansed, are the nourishment and refreshment of the hypocrite. His luxuries are procured by means nefarious and corrupt (see ver. 14). The hypocrite is selfish to cruelty.
(4) The nourishment and refreshment of the Pharisee is, in the estimation of Christ, filth and poison. Luxury punishes fraud, feeding disease with fruits of injustice. The disease and death thus nourished are moral more than physical.
2. He is guilty of deceiving others.
(1) The cleansed outside of the cup and platter, and the whiting on the sepulchre, are intended to be seen; and so is the piety of the hypocrite. The purpose is to divert attention from the filth and rottenness within.
(2) The success is often too well assured. Man surveys surfaces. His vision does not search substances. To do this requires experiment which he is too lazy to institute.
(3) Hence the professed belief in human nature.
(a) Unconverted men must be hypocrites to be endured. Society would be intolerable but for its veneer.
(b) The children of nature are readily deceived in a world of hypocrites. Their pride and self-conceit leads them to credit themselves with virtues; and the Pharisee deceives them.
(c) But that religious persons should "believe in human nature" only shows how successfully the hypocrite may even "deceive the very elect.
(d) The believers in human nature are liable to trust in it instead of Christ for their salvation, and perish in their delusion.
3. He is guilty of insulting God.
(1) He ignores God. While he strives after the praise of men, he leaves God out of the account. Is God to be treated as nobody with impunity!
(2) He degrades God. Affecting the praise of men rather than the praise of God, he treats the Creator as inferior to his creatures. Will this insolence be endured forever?
(3) As the whitening of the sepulchre was intended to warn passengers to avoid its defiling contact, so should the sham piety of the Pharisee warn honest men away from the sphere of his moral infection. (see Luk_11:44)
(4) Let the sinner be alarmed at the formidableness of the impending woe. Let him repent, amend, and sue for mercy.
II THE HYPOCRITE IS CRIMINALLY BLIND.
1. God requires truth in the heart.
(1) He is himself essentially holy. This means that his nature must repel from him everything that is unholy. God must needs wage eternal war against sin.
(2) But his grace has made possible his reconciliation to the sinner.
(a) In the provision of the atonement.
(b) In the gift of the Holy Spirit.
(c) Through faith the righteousness of the Law may not only become "imputed to us," but also "fulfilled in us.
(3) The life will be holy when the heart is clean. "The heart may be a temple of God or a grave; a heaven or a hell" (Slier). The cleansing of the inside affects the outside, but not contrariwise. "Cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the platter, that the outside. thereof may become clean also.
(4) There is a cleansing that is external even after the heart is clean. This our Lord evinced when he washed the feet of his disciples.
2. The hypocrite imposes upon himself.
(1) He is criminally blind to the folly that avoids those scandalous sins which would spoil his reputation with men, while he allows the heart wickedness which renders him odious to God. (see Psa_5:9) Jesus saw the filth within the cup and platter, and the rottenness within the sepulchre.
(2) He is criminally blind to the fact that in imposing upon his fellows he does not impose upon his Maker. The same Jesus who showed the Pharisee the extortion and excesses of the heart will show these things to him again in the day of woe.
(3) The hypocrite is criminally blind to the fact that the life is cleansed in the heart. Those only are externally clean who are inwardly pure. Christ views the profession in relation to the state of the heart. In this light he will judge the works of men at the last great day. J.A.M.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v25 For ye make clean the outside of the cup.
Mat_23:25-28
For ye make clean the outside of the cup.
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Moral ablution
By this allusion to the cup and platter the Saviour taught that it is necessary to cleanse the heart first, that the external conduct might be pure.
I. Why must we cleanse ourselves from sin?
1. Because it renders us injurious to our fellow-men.
2. Because it hinders prayer.
3. Because it renders us offensive to God.
4. Because it is destructive to ourselves.
II. How may we cleanse ourselves from sin?
1. Not by merely desiring to be cleansed.
2. Not by external reformations.
3. Not by scrupulous attention to religious ordinances.
4. Not by mere repentance.
5. But by faith in the only cleansing element-the precious blood of Jesus.
III. When may we cleanse ourselves from sin? Now!
1. Delay increases the difficulty.
2. The present the only time of which we are sure.
3. Gods commands brook no delay, etc. (A. Tucker.)
Hypocrisy contradictory
Hypocrites are like pictures on canvas, they show fairest at farthest. A hypocrites profession is in folio, but his sincerity is so abridged that it is contained in decimo-sexto, nothing in the world to speak of. A hypocrite is like the Sicilian Etna, flaming at the mouth when it hath snow at the foot. Their mouths talk hotly, but their feet walk coldly. The nightingale hath a sweet voice, but a lean carcase; a voice, and nothing else but a voice: and so have all hypocrites. (Adams.)
Hypocrisy deceptive
As a thick wood that giveth great shadow doth delight the eyes of the beholders greatly with the variety of flourishing trees and pleasant plants, so that it seemeth to be ordained only for pleasures sake, and yet within is full of poisonous serpents, ravening wolves, and other wild beasts; even so a hypocrite, when outwardly he seemeth holy and to be well furnished with all sorts of virtues, doth please well the eyes of his beholders; but within him there lurketh pride, envy, covetousness, and all manner of wickedness, like wild and cruel beasts wandering in the wood of his heart. (Cawdray.)
Whited sepulchres:-Appearances not always to be trusted
Hypocrites seem as glow-worms, to have both light and heat; but touch them and they have neither. The Egyptian temples were beautiful on the outside, when within ye should find nothing but some serpent or crocodile. Apothecaries boxes oft have goodly titles when yet they hold not one dram of any good drug. A certain stranger coming on embassage unto the senators of Rome, and colouring his hoary hair and pale cheeks with vermilion hue, a grave senator espying the deceit stood up and said, What sincerity are we to expect from this mans hands, whose locks, and looks, and lips, do lie? Think the same of-all painted hypocrites. These we may compare(as Lucian doth his Grecians) to a fair gilt bossed book; look within it, and there is the tragedy of Thyestes; or perhaps Arrius Thalya; the name of a muse, the matter heresy; or Conradus Vorstius book-monster that hath De Deo in the front, but atheism and blasphemy in the text. (J. Trapp.)
False appearances
If yon go into a churchyard some snowy day, when the snow has been falling thick enough to cover every monument and tombstone, how beautiful and white does everything appear! But remove the snow, dig down beneath, and you find rottenness and putrefaction-dead mens bones and all uncleanness. How like that churchyard on such a day is the mere professor-fair outside, sinful, unholy within! The grass grows green upon the sides of a mountain that holds a volcano in its bowels. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Emblem of hypocrisy
A very capital painter in London exhibited a piece representing a friar habited in his canonicals. View the painting at a distance, and you would think the friar to be in a praying attitude. His hands are clasped together, and held horizontally to his breast; his eyes meekly demissed like those of the publican in the gospel, and the good man appears to be quite absorbed in humble adoration and devout recollection. But take a nearer survey, and the deception vanishes. The book which seemed to be before him is discovered to be a punch-bowl into which the rascal is all the while, in reality, only squeezing a lemon. How lively a representation of a hypocrite! (G. S. Bowes.)
There is a spice of hypocrisy in us all. (S. Rutherford.)
The hypocrite-the man that stole the livery of heaven to serve the devil in. (R. Pollok.)
The hypocrite takes a partial Christ
The hypocrite maps out the road to Zion, knows it well, has sounded with plummet the depths of the promises, can talk about them. But he has accepted a two-parts Christ; there is perhaps a little pet sin, snugly tucked up in a warm corner of his heart, that he is unwilling to part with. Christ is his Priest, his Prophet, but he will not have Him as his King.
Hypocrisy sometimes difficult to discover
Formality frequently takes its dwelling near the chambers of integrity, and so assumes its name; the soul not suspecting that hell should make so near an approach to heaven. A rotten post, though covered with gold, is more fit to be burned in the fire than for the building of a fabric. The dial of our faces does not infallibly show the time of day in our hearts; the humblest looks may enamel the former, while unbounded pride covers the latter. Unclean spirits may inhabit the chamber when they look not out at the window. (Archbishop Secker.)
Posthumous testimony to the great and good
I. A serious charge.
1. A too late recognition of goodness which, when living, was ignored or persecuted.
2. A pretended veneration of the characters of the pious dead.
3. In truth a signalizing of their own goodness.
II. A false defence.
1. Their character belied their profession-persecutors of Jesus would hardly have been defenders of Isaiah, etc.
2. Betrayed great ignorance of their own character.
III. A solemn verdict.
1. Pronounced guilty of the righteous blood shed by their party.
2. Hypocrites for pretending a veneration for departed worth while they persecuted living goodness.
Tombs
Tombs are the clothes of the dead: a grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered. Tombs ought, in some sort, to be proportioned, not to the wealth, but deserts of the party interred. Yet may we see some rich man of mean worth loaden under a tomb big enough for a prince to bear. There were officers appointed in the Grecian games who always, by public authority, did pluck down the statues erected to the victors if they exceeded the true symmetry and proportion of their bodies. The shortest, plainest, and truest epitaphs are the best. Mr. Camden, in his Remains, presents us with examples of great men who had little epitaphs. And when once I asked a witty gentleman what epitaph was fitted to be written on Mr. Camdens tomb, Let it be, said he, Camdens Remains. I say also, the plainest; for except the sense lie above ground, few will trouble themselves to dig for it. Lastly, it must be true; not, as in some monuments where the red veins in the marble may seem to blush at the falsehoods written on it. He was a witty man that first taught a stone to speak; but he was a wicked man that taught it first to lie. (N. Rogers.)
God searches the heart
Momus, the heathen god of ridicule, complained that Jupiter had not made a window in the human breast, so that it might be seen what was passing within. To an omniscient God no window is needed, every thought, and wish, and intention being perfectly discerned.
Garnished tombs
The tombs of saints in Egypt are held in great veneration. They are covered with a circular building in the form of a cupola, and are regularly whitewashed, repaired, rebuilt, and decorated, as was the case with the Jews. In the larger tombs lamps are kept constantly burning, as amongst the Romanists, and no Christian is allowed to enter. At Pera the tablets are all upright, and surmounted with turbans, tarbooshes, or flowers. The dignity of the person in the grave is displayed by the kind of turban at the top of the stone. Most were of white marble, and many richly gilt and ornamented. They are about the size of our railway mile-posts, and are as thick on the ground as nine-pins. The flowers denote females. Some are painted green, these were descendants of Mahomet. (Gadsby.)
Whitened sepulchres
In the plains of Sahrai-Sirwan Rawlinson noticed many whitewashed obelisks placed on any elevations which occurred conveniently, some rising to the height of fifteen feet, a modern example of whitened sepulchres. The custom of garnishing the sepulchres prevails more or less throughout Persia.
Outward purification must begin within
I. It is a characteristic of fallen men that they are apt to content themselves with cleansing the outside. They are at greater pains to seem pure than to be pure.
II. Though outward purity is desirable, and even measurably praiseworthy, yet, if it be not the fruit of a purified heart, it is unreliable and comparatively valueless. For the welfare of this life it is better that one should be winning than repulsive, moral than immoral. It is better to have a washed outside than to have both outside and inside filthy. If outside only it is unreliable; has no inherent permanency.
III. A cleansed heart is a sure producer of genuine and permanent purity of life. Learn:
1. That God estimates character by the state of the heart.
2. That man has a corrupt heart, and is therefore loathsome in Gods sight.
3. That to have Gods favour man must be cleansed, and that to be effectual it must begin in his heart.
4. That there is such a thing as being effectually cleansed and rendered acceptable to the Holy One. (T. Williston.)
Deception deceived
So it ever comes to pass that we are punished for deceiving others by being ourselves deceived. Our success secures our delusion. When an act which is properly an indication of some good motive is repeatedly performed in the sight of those who cannot see the heart, they take for granted the motive and give us the credit of it-provided only the act be of the class which it is the fashion of the day and place to applaud as religious. We are assumed to be what, at first, we know we are not. But in time this knowledge fades away; we accept as the independently formed judgment of others that which really rested upon our own successful deception; we come to consider our conduct as in itself sufficient proof of the motive which is universally assumed to be its source. We move in a circle of hypocrisy, and it becomes difficult to decide whether we are the authors or the victims of the delusion. We are, in fact, both. (J. C. Coghlan, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv25, 27, 28 25, 26. Ye make clean the outside, etc. The…
25, 26. Ye make clean the outside, etc. The figure is plain. Its application rebukes scrupulous care of outside forms, while neglecting to have the heart pure.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v27 Mat 23:27 - Mat 23:39.
Matthew
THE KING’S FAREWELL
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Mat 23:27 - Mat 23:39.
If, with the majority of authorities, we exclude Mat 23:14 from the text, there are, in this chapter, seven woes, like seven thunders, launched against the rulers. They are scathing exposures, but, as the very word implies, full of sorrow as well as severity. They are not denunciations, but prophecies warning that the end of such tempers must be mournful. The wailing of an infinite compassion, rather than the accents of anger, sounds in them; and it alone is heard in the outburst of lamenting in which Christ’s heart runs over, as in a passion of tears, at the close. The blending of sternness and pity, each perfect, is the characteristic of this wonderful climax of our Lord’s appeals to His nation. Could such tones of love and righteous anger joined have been sent echoing through the ages in this Gospel, if they had not been heard?
I. The woe of the ‘whited sepulchres.’
The first four woes are directed mainly to the teachings of the scribes and Pharisees; the last three to their characters. The two first of these fasten on the same sin, of hypocritical holiness. There is, however, a difference between the representation of hypocrites under the metaphor of the clean outside of the cup and platter, and that of the whited sepulchre. In the former, the hidden sin is ‘extortion and excess’; that is, sensual enjoyment wrongly procured, of which the emblems of cup and plate suggest that good eating and drinking are a chief part. In the latter, it is ‘iniquity’-a more general and darker name for sin. In the former, the Pharisee is ‘blind,’ self-deceived in part or altogether; in the latter, stress is rather laid on his ‘appearance unto men.’ The repetition of the same charge in the two woes teaches us Christ’s estimate of the gravity and frequency of the sin.
The whitened tombs of Mohammedan saints still gleam in the strong sunlight on many a knoll in Palestine. If the Talmudical practice is as old as our Lord’s time, the annual whitewashing was lately over. Its purpose was not to adorn the tombs, but to make them conspicuous, so that they might be avoided for fear of defilement. So He would say, with terrible irony, that the apparent holiness of the rulers was really a sign of corruption, and a warning to keep away from them. What a blow at their self-complacency! And how profoundly true it is that the more punctiliously white the hypocrite’s outside, the more foul is he within, and the wider berth will all discerning people give him! The terrible force of the figure needs no dwelling on. In Christ’s estimate, such a soul was the very dwelling-place of death; and foul odours and worms and corruption filled its sickening recesses. Terrible words to come from His lips into which grace was poured, and bold words to be flashed at listeners who held the life of the Speaker in their hands! There are two sorts of hypocrites, the conscious and the unconscious; and there are ten of the latter for one of the former, and each ten times more dangerous. Established religion breeds them, and they are specially likely to be found among those whose business is to study the documents in which it is embodied. These woes are not like thunder-peals rolling above our heads, while the lightning strikes the earth miles away. A religion which is mostly whitewash is as common among us as ever it was in Jerusalem; and its foul accompaniments of corruption becoming more rotten every year, as the whitewash is laid on thicker, may be smelt among us, and its fatal end is as sure.
II. The woe of the sepulchre builders {Mat 23:29 - Mat 23:36}.
In these verses we have, first, the specification of another form of hypocrisy, consisting in building the prophets’ tombs, and disavowing the fathers’ murder of them. Honouring dead prophets was right; but honouring dead ones and killing living ones was conscious or unconscious hypocrisy. The temper of mind which leads to glorifying the dead witnesses, also leads to supposing that all truth was given by them; and hence that the living teachers, who carry their message farther, are false prophets. A generation which was ready to kill Jesus in honour of Moses, would have killed Moses in honour of Abraham, and would not have had the faintest apprehension of the message of either.
It is a great deal easier to build tombs than to accept teachings, and a good deal of the posthumous honour paid to God’s messengers means, ‘It’s a good thing they are dead, and that we have nothing to do but to put up a monument.’ Bi-centenaries and ter-centenaries and jubilees do not always imply either the understanding or the acceptance of the principles supposed to be glorified thereby. But the magnifiers of the past are often quite unconscious of the hollowness of their admiration, and honest in their horror of their fathers’ acts; and we all need the probe of such words as Christ’s to pierce the skin of our lazy reverence for our fathers’ prophets, and let out the foul matter below-namely, our own blindness to God’s messengers of to-day.
The statement of the hypocrisy is followed, in Mat 23:31, with its unmasking and condemnation. The words glow with righteous wrath at white heat, and end in a burst of indignation, most unfamiliar to His lips. Three sentences, like triple lightning flash from His pained heart. With almost scornful subtlety He lays hold of the words which He puts into the Pharisees’ mouths, to convict them of kindred with those whose deeds they would disown. ‘Our fathers, say you? Then you do belong to the same family, after all. You confess that you have their blood in your veins; and, in the very act of denying sympathy with their conduct, you own kindred. And, for all your protestations, spiritual kindred goes with bodily descent.’ Christ here recognises that children probably ‘take after their parents,’ or, in modern scientific terms, that ‘heredity’ is the law, and that it works more surely in the transmission of evil than of good.
Then come the awful words bidding that generation ‘fill up the measure of the fathers.’ They are like the other command to Judas to do his work quickly. They are more than permission, they are command; but such a command as, by its laying bare of the true character of the deed in view, is love’s last effort at prevention. Mark the growing emotion of the language. Mark the conception of a nation’s sins as one through successive generations, and the other, of these as having a definite measure, which being filled, judgment can no longer tarry. Generation after generation pours its contributions into the vessel, and when the last black drop which it can hold has been added, then comes the catastrophe. Mark the fatal necessity by which inherited sin becomes darker sin. The fathers’ crimes are less than the sons’. This inheritance increases by each transmission. The cloak strikes one more at each revolution of the hands.
It is hard to recognise Christ in the terrible words that follow. We have heard part of them from John the Baptist; and it sounded natural for him to call men serpents and the children of serpents, but it is somewhat of a shock to hear Jesus hurling such names at even the most sinful. But let us remember that He who sees hearts, has a right to tell harsh truths, and that it is truest kindness to strip off masks which hide from men their own real character, and that the revelation of the divine love in Jesus would be a partial and impotent revelation if it did not show us the righteous love which is wrath. There is nothing so terrible as the anger of gentle compassion, and the fiercest and most destructive wrath is ‘the wrath of the Lamb.’ Seldom, indeed, did He show that side of His character; but it is there, and the other side would not be so blessed as it is, unless that were there too.
The woe ends with the double prophecy that that generation would repeat and surpass the fathers’ guilt, and that on it would fall the accumulated penalties of past bloodshed. Note that solemn ‘therefore,’ which looks back to the whole preceding context, and forward to the whole subsequent. Because the rulers professed abhorrence of their fathers’ deeds, and yet inherited their spirit, they too would have their prophets, and would slay them. God goes on sending His messengers, because we reject them; and the more deaf men are, the more does He peal His words into their ears. That is mercy and compassion, that all men may be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth; but it is judgment too, and its foreseen effect must be regarded as part of the divine purpose in it. Christ’s desire is one thing, His purpose another. His desire is that all should find in His gospel ‘the savour of life’; but His purpose is that, if it be not that to any, it shall be to them the savour of death. Mark, too, the authority with which He, in the face of these scowling Pharisees, assumes the distinct divine prerogative of sending forth inspired men, who, as His messengers, shall stand on a level with the prophets of old. Mark His silence as to His own fate, which is only obscurely hinted at in the command to fill up the measure of the fathers. Observe the detailed enumeration of His messengers’ gifts,-’prophets’ under direct inspiration, like those of old, which may especially refer to the apostles; ‘wise men,’ like a Stephen or an Apollos; ‘scribes,’ such as Mark and Luke and many a faithful servant since, whose pen has loved to write the name above every name. Note the detailed prophecy of their treatment, which begins with slaying and goes down to the less severe scourging, and thence to the milder persecution. Do the three punishments belong to the three classes of messengers, the severest falling to the lot of the most highly endowed, and even the quiet penman being hunted from city to city?
We need not wriggle and twist to try to avoid admitting that the calling of the martyred Zacharias, ‘the son of Barachias,’ is an error of some one who confused the author of the prophetic book with the person whose murder is narrated in 2Ch 24:1 - 2Ch 24:27 We do not know who made the mistake, or how it appears in our text, but it is not honest to try to slur it over. The punishment of long ages of sin, carried on from father to son, does in the course of that history of the world, which is a part of the judgment of the world, fall upon one generation. It takes long for the mass of heaped-up sin to become top-heavy; but when it is so, it buries one generation of those who have worked at piling it up, beneath its down-rushing avalanche.
‘The mills of God grind slowly,
But they grind exceeding small.’
The catastrophes of national histories are prepared for by continuous centuries. The generation that laid the first powder-hornful of the train is dead and buried, long before the explosion which sends constituted order and institutions sky-high. The misery is that often the generation which has to pay the penalty has begun to awake to the sin, and would be glad to mend it, if it could. England in the seventeenth century, France in the eighteenth, America in the nineteenth, had to reap harvests from sins sown long before. Such is the law of the judgment wrought out by God’s providence in history. But there is another judgment, begun here and perfected hereafter, in which fathers and sons shall each bear their own burden, and reap accurately the fruit of what they have sown. ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die.’
III. The parting wail of rejected love.
The lightning flashes of the sevenfold woes end in a rain of pity and tears. His full heart overflows in that sad cry of lamentation over the long-continued foiling of the efforts of a love that would fain have fondled and defended. What intensity of feeling is in the redoubled naming of the city! How yearningly and wistfully He calls, as if He might still win the faithless one, and how lingeringly unwilling He is to give up hope! How mournfully, rather than accusingly, He reiterates the acts which had run through the whole history, using a form of the verbs which suggests continuance. Mark, too, the matter-of-course way in which Christ assumes that He sent all the prophets whom, through the generations, Jerusalem had stoned.
So the lament passes into the solemn final leave-taking, with which our Lord closes His ministry among the Jews, and departs from the temple. As, in the parable of the marriage-feast, the city was emphatically called ‘their city,’ so here the Temple, in whose courts He was standing, and which in a moment He was to quit for ever, is called ‘your house,’ because His departure is the withdrawing of the true Shechinah. It had been the house of God: now He casts it off, and leaves it to them to do as they will with it. The saddest punishment of long-continued rejection of His pleading love, is that it ceases at last to plead. The bitterest woe for those who refuse to render to Him the fruits of the vineyard, is to get the vineyard for their own, undisturbed. Christ’s utmost retribution for obstinate blindness is to withdraw from our sight. All the woes that were yet to fall, in long, dreary succession on that nation, so long continued in its sin, so long continued in its misery, were hidden in that solemn departure of Christ from the henceforward empty temple. Let us fear lest our unfaithfulness meet the like penalty! But even the departure does not end His yearnings, nor close the long story of the conflict between God’s beseeching love and their unbelief. The time shall come when the nation shall once more lift up, with deeper, truer adoration, the hosannas of the triumphal entry. And then a believing Israel shall see their King, and serve Him. Christ never takes final leave of any man in this world. It is ever possible that dumb lips may be opened to welcome Him, though long rejected; and His withdrawals are His efforts to bring about that opening. When it takes place, how gladly does He return to the heart which is now His temple, and unveil His beauty to the long-darkened eyes!
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v28 Lit. Lawlessness. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
iniquity
Lit. Lawlessness. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv25, 27 The sixth woe:
The sixth woe:
v. 25. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
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v. 26. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
A picture taken from the well-known strictness of the Pharisees in the matter of washings and purifications prescribed by law. In all such outward forms, also in the precepts concerning eating and drinking, they took care to maintain an unblemished appearance before men. But incidentally the results of robbery and incontinence filled their pockets. In true purity it is essential that the inside of the platter and cup be clean first; the purity of the exterior will follow as a matter of course. There can be no real piety, no true righteousness of life, unless the inward man is first renewed. Conversion must precede sanctification. A person may train himself to observe the outward semblance of proper form and even of Christian virtues, but without a change of heart all this avails nothing. "He says: Externally everything is so clean that it could not be better. But how is it in your heart? He does not speak of the cup or of the platter, but of the heart that it is full of uncleanness. He does not reject their purity altogether. For they should clean first of all what was inside. This purity which ye not only observe, but also teach, when ye think if the garment of purple is brushed, and everything, bed and dress, is clean, that is your righteousness, and do not hinder this purity, but even teach it, and are still inside full of robbery, devouring, uncleanness, and even defend this doctrine and life. It cannot be sin that ye rob and steal everything they have from the poor people!"
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv25, 27 Woe to you ... hypocrites!
Woe to you ... hypocrites!
"How terrible it will be for you ... hypocrites!" See how you translated this in Matthew 11:21.
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For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence
This is a metaphor that means the scribes and Pharisees appear pure on the outside to others, but on the inside they are wicked. (See: Metaphor)
they are full of greed and self-indulgence
"they want what others have, and they act in the interest of the self"
You blind Pharisee
The Pharisees were spiritually blind. Although they thought of themselves as teachers, they were unable to understand God's truth. (See: Metaphor)
Clean first the inside of the cup and of the plate, so that the outside may become clean also
This is a metaphor that means that if they would become pure in their inner being, then the result is that they would be pure on the outside as well. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
woe
scribe
Pharisee
hypocrite
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv26–27 23:26 Internal purity will result in external righteousness, but…
23:26 Internal purity will result in external righteousness, but the reverse is not true (6:19-34; 12:33-37; 15:15-20).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.