37. And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat.

38. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before

39 dinner. And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of

40 the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. Ye

41 fools, did not he that made that which is without, make that which is within also? But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and behold, all things are clean unto you.

42. But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint, and rue, and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to

43 leave the other undone. Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the uppermost seats in

44 the synagogues, and greetings in the markets. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.

45. Then answered one of the lawyers, and said unto him, Master, thus saying, thou re-

46 proachest us also. And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your

47 fingers. Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers

48 killed them. Truly ye bear witness, that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they

49 indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and per-

50 secute: that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the

51 world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily, I say unto you, It

52 shall be required of this generation. Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye enter not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.

53. And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge

54 him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things; laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him.

GROSS wickedness was hidden beneath the forms and the name of sanctity. Spiritual worship, the veneration and love of a God of righteousness, purity, truth, and all moral excellence, was almost unknown. There was a magnificent temple, an established worship, an ordained priesthood, a vast and gorgeous ritual, and sacrifices, and offerings, and feasts, and fasts. There were also synagogues open every day, and recognized forms of prayer which were repeated, not only in private, but in the market-places, and at the corners of the streets. It was even sought to invest the food, the dress, the looks, the postures of the body with the sacredness of religion; and if such things as these had constituted piety, that age must have been preëminently pious. But Jesus declared that true worship is perfectly separable from these things, and is not essentially connected with any of them, though it may consist along with them all. God looks to the soul alone, to its genuine and unconstrained actings, its reverence, trust, and love. Worship in God’s sight is wholly spiritual—always, altogether, only within the soul. Y.

37. Jesus, on entering, found himself, not among publicans and sinners, where he could soothe and teach and bless—not among the poor, to whom he could preach the kingdom of heaven—not among friends and disciples, who listened with deep and loving reverence to his words—but among the cold, hard, threatening faces, the sneers and frowns, of haughty rivals and open enemies. F.

39-52. His solemn work of reproof and teaching was never suspended out of mere compliment, nor were the intentions of the Pharisees toward him so friendly as these invitations seem to imply. They were given mostly from deference to popular opinion, and from no love to him; sometimes with a directly hostile object. A.—In the Pharisees, we see ignorance, pride, insolence, selfishness, rapacity—a restless desire for the applause of men, and an overbearing contempt for all but themselves. In him we see knowledge, wisdom, meekness, gentleness, generosity, sincerity, perfect disinterestedness, elevated piety, and unbounded benevolence toward all, however humble or poor. Gentle and peaceful as our Saviour was, he could not, without being false to himself and his mission, have refrained from affixing the brand of his indignant reprobation on characters and conduct such as theirs. Had these expressions fallen from any but the calm, the forgiving, the benevolent Jesus of Nazareth, we might have been ready to impute them to the acerbity of personal feeling; but his whole character forbids such an imputation, and constrains us to regard them as the well-weighed “words of truth and soberness,” wrung from him by the sight of the widespread and enduring mischief which these self-constituted leaders of the people were entailing upon their unhappy followers. W. L. A.—He exposed, in words which were no parables and could not be mistaken, the extent to which their outward cleanliness was but the thin film which covered their inward wickedness and greed. He denounced their scrupulosity in the tithing of potherbs, their flagrant neglect of essential virtues; the cant, the ambition, the ostentation of their outward orthodoxy, the deathful corruption of their inmost hearts. Hidden graves were they over which men walk, and, without knowing it, become defiled. . . . The modern representatives and continuers of the Pharisaic sect are called Perushim. “They proudly separate themselves from the rest of their coreligionists. Fanatical, bigoted, intolerant, quarrelsome, and in truth irreligious, with them the outward observance of the ceremonial law is everything, the moral law little binding, morality itself of no importance.” Such is the testimony of a Jew! (Frankl, “Jews in the East.”) F.

41. Give alms and all clean. As the greed of these hypocrites was one of the most prominent features of their character, our Lord bids them exemplify the opposite character, and then their outside, ruled by this, would be beautiful in the eye of God, and their meals would be eaten with clean hands, though never so fouled with the business of this worky world. B.—42. You lay stress on external trifles, and neglect the principles and duties of the inner life—you tithe petty garden-herbs, like mint and rue, and all kinds besides, and are indifferent to right and wrong, and to the love of God. G.—To understand how vast the number of superstitions, lying vanities, idle fancies, vain ceremonies, abominable deceptions, and foul corruptions, which had overgrown religion in his day, it is only necessary to examine that which claims to be religion in this same country at the present moment. W. M. T.

44. Appear not. As one might unconsciously walk over a grave concealed from view, and thus contract ceremonial defilement, so the plausible exterior of the Pharisees kept people from perceiving the pollution they contracted from coming in contact with such corrupt characters. B.—45. Lawyers. Any one might be a Pharisee, whether a layman, a priest, or a rabbi, as any of these might be a Sadducee. A scribe and a lawyer were different names for the same class—the clergy of the day. They were the authorities for the expositions of the law; they copied the sacred manuscripts, and devoted themselves as the work of their life to rabbinical studies and employments.

47,48. You rebuild these tombs to win favor with the people, while in your hearts you are ready to repeat to the prophets of to-day the deeds of your fathers toward those of old! Your pretended reverence for these martyrs, shown in restoring their sepulchres, while you are ready to repeat the wickedness of their murderers, makes these tombs a witness against you. G.—49. The wisdom of God. Christ himself, as appears from Matt. 23:34. The divine Logos (Word) is the sender of the prophets, and spake by their mouths—c. g., of Zacharias, to whose words Christ refers. W.—52. This metaphor of the key of knowledge is an allusion to the custom among the Jews in the admission of their doctors: for those to whom they gave authority to interpret the law and the prophets, were solemnly admitted into that office by delivering to them a key and a table book. So that by the key of knowledge is here meant the interpretation and understanding of the Scriptures; and by taking away the key of knowledge is meant, not only that they arrogated to themselves the true understanding of the Scriptures, but that they had conveyed away this key of knowledge, neither using it themselves nor suffering others to make use of it. Tillotson.

39-52. A new phase of our Saviour’s character—very different from that which we had before us in his treatment of the penitent sinner—thus reveals itself to our view: his firmness, his courage, his outspokenness, the depth of his indignant recoil from, the sternness of his condemnation of the inconsistencies, the hypocrisies, the haughtiness, the cruelty, the tyranny of the scribes and Pharisees. H.

Section 50.—Cautions the Disciples. The Rich Fool.

Galilee.