The words of the Lord Jesus in the text of Matthew 23:13-33 are meant as a condemnation upon those to whom they were directed. They show why all these things will come upon this generation (Matthew 23:36), and why their house is being left to them desolate (Matthew 23:38).
THE SEVEN WOES (Matthew 23:13-33)
The Lord Jesus now turns His attention directly towards the religious leaders to address them personally. His demeanour is straightforward and echoes the manner of a judge casting a condemning verdict. His decree came in the form of seven inescapable woes of condemnation. A woe is a curse placed upon the head of an individual for an act they had committed. These afflictions would have been well-known by the religious leaders considering their OT background and the previous references to Isaiah 5:8-23[1]. The first two woes are focused upon “who” they were destroying, while woe 3-4 focused upon “how” they were deceiving others and themselves. Woe 5-6 are aimed at their hypocrisy and inner state while the 7th woe was the crescendo for their guilt.
The first woe ascribed to the Pharisees and scribes was guilt for shutting off the kingdom of heaven from people. To enter the kingdom of heaven was equal to entering into salvation, both reliant upon receiving Jesus as their Messianic King. The verb “shut off” seems to indicate something that they were continuously doing. They persuaded the people not to follow the Lord Jesus and the success of this mission will be demonstrated at His trial. The second woe was about making proselytes or converts. It indicates that the limitation of their shutting off the kingdom wasn’t restricted to Israelites but extended to people of other nations. The expression “travel on land and sea” in this woe seems to point to a form of aggressive missionary work to convert people from far way. A proselyte was a convert to Judaism who adhered to its practices and ethics[2]. The problem was that these converts were being lead to their own school of Judaism rather than the kingdom of heaven. As D.A. Carson points out: They were winning them to their own position. The converts in view, therefore, are not converts to Judaism but to Pharisaism[3]. The expression “twice as much a son of hell (gehenna) as yourselves” is challenging. Most commentators seem to point to the fact that through the teaching of the Pharisees, these converts became even more aggressive than their teachers and perhaps alludes to their own spread of Pharisee teaching.
The following woe is a lengthy charge on the question of taking oaths. The Lord refers to them as “blind guides” which translates to foolish teachers who can’t see the reality of what they’re teaching. Their oath taking became a thoughtless display of their traditions. They constantly confused the identity of the greater item to swear upon. In Matthew 5:33-37, the Lord deals with oath taking and its seriousness whether it be by swearing by the temple, the items within the temple or heaven itself, since the danger is that it eventually leads to swearing upon God. It was the character of the individual and telling of the truth that were the important elements.
The Lord then moves to the principle of tithing. This rule is laid out in the OT (Leviticus 27:30; Deuteronomy 14:22) which required a tenth of their produce including herbs such as mint, dill and cummin’ to be offered to God. This, in of itself, was fulfilling the legal requirements of the Mosaic law but, while they didn’t transgress the law, they were guilty of lifting these external requirements over “the weightier provisions” or the central issues of the law. The things that mattered most were the things that would have aided those who were under their care. While they claimed to believe in justice, mercy[4] and faithfulness, none of these were extended to the people and the emphasis of their religious affections were based upon less-important principles of the law. With their misguided accentuation of the Torah, they strain out a gnat and swallow camel, the smaller unclean creature becomes the largest unclean creature.
The Lord Jesus then moves to the root of the problem in that these religious leaders, while focusing on cleaning the external part of the vessel, through their external deeds, have missed that internal cleansing. They lacked the wisdom to know that an inner cleaning is required to legitimatize their external acts. There needed to be an internal washing of their hearts to purify themselves of such things as their robbery and self-indulgence. A repentant heart produces justice, mercy, and faithfulness so that their external acts such as tithing would have any meaning.
In the 6th woe, the Lord continues the topic of internal versus the external. These religious leaders are compared to a whitewashed tomb. Tombs in the 1st century were marked with a lime-plaster. Their appearance was of something quite beautiful but inside it was full of dead men’s bones. The law forbade anyone from coming into contact with a dead body or bones (Numbers 19:11-22). While they seemed like the pinnacle of religious purity in their societal circles, especially the crowds, the Lord judges them as hypocrites and lawless men (those who had failed to see the true will of God).
The 7th woe is the most severe of them all. They outwardly portrayed themselves as respecting the prophets of old by building them beautiful tombs and monuments to honour them. Their duplicity extends to a verbal affirmation and declaration that they would not have participated with their ancestors to murder the prophets of old. They claim that they would have opposed the kings who put them to death yet, in their day, they had rejected John the Baptist, and they would become the main instigators in the death of the sinless Son of God. He commands these frauds to “fill up, then the measure of the guilt of your fathers” (V.32) signifying the guilt they would impute upon themselves for the upcoming participation in the murder of the sinless Son of God. Marcellus Kik comments:
The picture is that of a cup nearly filled and now being filled to overflowing by the present generation of Jews. National sin, accumulated over many centuries, had been trying the patience of God. Again, and again the Jews had sinned against their God and forsaken him for idols. God had manifested to them His forbearance and longsuffering and had pleaded with the Jews to repent and return unto him. Now, with the rejection of his Son and the crucifixion approaching, the patience of God had come to an end. The cup of sin through this greatest of all crimes would overflow and bring upon the nation the terrible stroke of divine judgment[5].
The cup of their sins would run over, and God’s wrath would come to judge them in that generation!
Finally, the term “brood of vipers” would have been familiar to some religious leaders as coming from the mouth of John the Baptist (Matthew 3:7). While John asks who told them to escape the wrath the come, the Lord is more explicit to ask how they will escape the sentence of hell (gehenna).
Now that the guilt of the religious leaders was established, we will explore in our next segment the outcome of their guilt and the declaration of the doom of Jerusalem to come.
[1] The assignment of a woe was placed upon certain cities (Matthew 11:21-24), those who cause others to stumble (Matthew 18:7) and for Judas Iscariot (Matthew 26:24).
[2] See Acts 2:11; 6:5; 13:43
[3] Carson P. 478
[4] Hosea 6:6
[5] An Eschatology of Victory, J. Marcellus Kik, P 79-80
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