Matthew 23
23
Religious Hypocrites Denounced
1Then # Mk 12:38-39; Lk 20:45-46 Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: # Mt 10:42; 28:19; Lk 14:26; Jn 8:31; 13:35; 15:8; Ac 6:1 2“The scribes and the Pharisees are seated in the chair of Moses. # Perhaps a special chair for teaching in synagogues, or a metaphorical phrase for teaching with Moses’ authority # Ezr 7:6,25; Neh 8:4 3Therefore do whatever they tell you, and observe it. But don’t do what they do, # Lit do according to their works because they don’t practice what they teach. # Mt 5:20; 15:3-9; Rm 2:17-23 4They tie up heavy loads that are hard to carry # Other mss omit that are hard to carry and put them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves aren’t willing to lift a finger # Lit lift with their finger to move them. # Lk 11:46; Ac 15:10; Gl 6:13 5They do everything # Lit do all their works to be observed by others: They enlarge their phylacteries # Small leather boxes containing OT texts, worn by Jews on their arms and foreheads # Ex 13:9; Dt 6:8; 11:18; Mt 6:1,5,16 and lengthen their tassels. # Other mss add on their robes # Mt 9:20; 14:36; Mk 6:56; Lk 8:44 6They love the place of honor at banquets, the front seats in the synagogues, # Lk 11:43; 14:7; 20:46 7greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by people.
8“But as for you, do not be called ‘Rabbi,’ because you have one Teacher, # Other mss add the Messiah and you are all brothers. # Mk 9:5; 10:51; Jn 1:38,49; 11:8; Jms 3:1 9Do not call anyone on earth your father, because you have one Father, who is in heaven. # Mal 1:6; Mt 6:9; 7:11 10And do not be called masters either, because you have one Master, # Or Teacher the Messiah. 11The greatest among you will be your servant. # Mt 20:26-27; Mk 9:35; 3Jn 9 12Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. # Pr 29:23; Ezk 21:26; Lk 14:11; 18:14; Jms 4:6,10; 1Pt 5:5-6
13“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You lock up the kingdom of heaven from people. For you don’t go in, and you don’t allow those entering to go in. # Mt 23:15,23,25; Lk 11:52
14“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You devour widows’ houses and make long prayers just for show. # Or prayers with false motivation This is why you will receive a harsher punishment. # Other mss omit bracketed text
15“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to make one proselyte, # Ac 2:11; 6:5; 13:43 and when he becomes one, you make him twice as fit for hell # Lit twice the son of gehenna as you are!
16“Woe to you, blind guides, # Mt 15:14; 23:24; Ac 1:16; Rm 2:19 who say, ‘Whoever takes an oath by the sanctuary, it means nothing. But whoever takes an oath # Lv 19:12; Nm 30:2; Dt 23:21; Mt 5:33; 14:7; 26:63,72 by the gold of the sanctuary is bound by his oath.’ # Lit is obligated 17Blind fools! # Lit Fools and blind For which is greater, the gold or the sanctuary that sanctified the gold? 18Also, ‘Whoever takes an oath by the altar, it means nothing. But whoever takes an oath by the gift that is on it is bound by his oath.’ # Lit is obligated 19Blind people! # Other mss read Fools and blind For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? # Ex 29:37; 30:29 20Therefore, the one who takes an oath by the altar takes an oath by it and by everything on it. 21The one who takes an oath by the sanctuary takes an oath by it and by Him who dwells # 1Kg 8:13; 2Ch 6:2; Ps 26:8; 132:14 in it. 22And the one who takes an oath by heaven takes an oath by God’s throne # Ex 17:16; Ps 11:4; Mt 5:34; Heb 8:1 and by Him who sits on it. # Ps 47:8; Mt 19:28; Rv 4:2
23“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You pay a tenth of # Or You tithe mint, dill, and cumin, # A plant whose seeds are used as a seasoning yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, # 1Sm 15:22; Ps 33:5; Jr 5:1; Mc 6:8; Zch 7:9; Lk 11:42 mercy, and faith. These things should have been done without neglecting the others. 24Blind guides! # Mt 15:14; 23:16 You strain out a gnat, yet gulp down a camel!
25“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed # Or full of violence and self-indulgence! # Mk 7:4; Lk 11:39 26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, # Other mss add and dish so the outside of it # Other mss read of them may also become clean.
27“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, # Lk 11:44; Ac 23:3 which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every impurity. 28In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
29“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, 30and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we wouldn’t have taken part with them in shedding the prophets’ blood.’ # Lit have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets 31You, therefore, testify against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ sins! # Lit the measure of your fathers # Gn 15:16; Ac 7:51; 1Th 2:15-16
33“Snakes! Brood of vipers! How can you escape being condemned to hell? # Lit escape from the judgment of gehenna # Mt 3:7; 5:22; 12:34 34This is why I am sending you prophets, # Ac 13:1; 1Co 12:28 sages, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues # 2Ch 36:15-16; Mt 10:17; Ac 22:19 and hound from town to town. 35So all the righteous blood shed on the earth will be charged to you, # Lit will come on you from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, # 2Ch 24:21; Zch 1:1 son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. # Gn 4:8; Heb 11:4; 1Jn 3:12; Rv 18:24 36I assure you: All these things will come on this generation! # Mt 10:23; 16:28; 24:34
Jesus’ Lamentation over Jerusalem
37“Jerusalem, Jerusalem! # Lk 13:34-35 She who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks # Or as a mother bird gathers her young under her wings, yet you were not willing! # Dt 32:11-12; Ru 2:12; Mt 5:12 38See, your house is left to you desolate. # 1Kg 9:7; Is 64:11; Jr 12:7; 22:5 39For I tell you, you will never see Me again until you say, ‘He who comes in the name of the Lord is the blessed One’! ” # Ps 118:26; Mt 21:9 # Ps 118:26
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Matthew 23: HCSB
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© 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee. All rights reserved.
Matthew 23
23
Religious Fashion Shows
1-3Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.
4-7“Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’
8-10“Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.
11-12“Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you’ll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you’re content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.
Frauds!
13“I’ve had it with you! You’re hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won’t let anyone else in either.
15“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.
16-22“You’re hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, ‘If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that’s nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that’s serious.’ What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: ‘If you shake hands on a promise, that’s nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that’s serious’? What ridiculous hairsplitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless.
23-24“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God’s Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that’s wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons?
25-26“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You buff the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.
27-28“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.
29-32“You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You’re cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count.
33-34“Snakes! Cold-blooded sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It’s on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.
35-36“You can’t squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah’s son, whom you murdered at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I’m telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation.
37-39“Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God’s news! How often I’ve ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn’t let me. And now you’re so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say? Only this: I’m out of here soon. The next time you see me you’ll say, ‘Oh, God has blessed him! He’s come, bringing God’s rule!’”
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.