IV: Denunciation of the Pharisees
Matt. xxiii. 1-39; Mark xii. 38-40; Luke xx. 45-47.
Jesus then turned toward the assembled crowds, and branding the hypocrisy of these the masters of Israel, He spoke their final condemnation:—
"The Scribes and the Pharisees," He said, "are seated in the Chair of Moses. Take heed then and do everything they shall say to you; but do not according to their works, for they say and do not. They bind together heavy and intolerable burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they will not move them with even their fingertips. They do all their works to the end that they may be seen by men; to this end, they broaden their phylacteries and make themselves long fringes. They love the foremost places at the Feasts, and the first seats in the synagogues, to have men salute them in the market squares, and to be called Rabbis."
How far removed was this Judaic society, where such affectation and haughtiness prevailed, from the new rule now announced by Jesus! Here there is only one Master, the Father, Who reigns in Heaven; one only Doctor, the Christ; one only Nation of brethren, among whom the greatest is he who makes himself servant of all, and where the first places are reserved for the humblest. And this was the perfection which the Pharisees spurned, but so they might entrench themselves in that hypocrisy which was now destroying them and then nation!
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| "Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites...!" J-J Tissot. |
Jesus would not suffer such depravity to go unrebuked, and, for eight distinct times, standing in the centre of the listening throngs, now dumb with astonishment, He launched His Anathemas upon the princes and doctors of Israel:—
" Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who have taken the key of knowledge, and made use of it only to close the Kingdom of Heaven against men! You enter not yourselves, but hinder others from entering therein.
" Woe to you,Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who devour the homes of widows, while you feign to pray the longer! Wherefore your judgment shall be but the more terrible.
" Woe to you,Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you run over land and sea to make a single proselyte, and after he has become one you make him a son of Gehenna twofold worse than yourselves!
" Woe to you, blind leaders, who say: 'If a man swear by the Temple, it is nothing; but if he swear by the gold of the Temple, he is bound.' Blind and foolish folk! Which is a greater dignity, the gold, or the Temple which sanctifies the gold? . . . He who swears by the Temple swears by the Temple and Him that dwelleth therein.
" Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithes upon a leaf of mint or anise or cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the Law: justice, mercy, good faith!2 These things you ought to have done, and not to have left the others undone. Blind leaders, who strain your water that you may not swallow a gnat, and gulp down a camel!
" Woe to you,Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you are like to sepulchres overwhitened, which appear dutiful without, but within are full of dead men's bones and every sort of rottenness! Even so you outwardly appear in men's eyes, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
" Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who build the sepulchres of the Prophets, and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say:'If we had lived in the time of our fathers, we would not have been accomplices with them in the blood of the Prophets!' You, therefore, confess that you are the children of those who slew them. Fill up the measure of your fathers! Serpents, spawn of vipers, how will you escape the damnation of Gehenna? For lo! now I send you Prophets, wise men, doctors; some you will kill, others you will crucify; you will scourge them in your synagogues, you will persecute them from town to town, so that all the innocent blood shed upon earth may descend upon you, from the blood of Able the righteous unto the blood of Zachary, son of Barachias, whom you slew between the Temple and the Altar. I say unto you, of a truth, that all these things shall fall upon this present generation."
Vehement and fierce as these words sound, coming from the gentle Jesus, yet we know He rather bemoaned than coerced the faithlessness of Sion; and He manifests His feelings now more clearly by repeating that tender reproach which we once before heard from His lips:—
" Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou who killest the Prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy children, even as a hen gathereth her little ones under her wings, and thou wouldst not! And behold your city shall be left desolate; for I say unto you, you shall not see Me henceforth till you shall say:'And blessed be He Who cometh in the Name of the Lord!"
A mournful consolation this, for the nation of Deicides! Her last seed shall be converted only at the end of time, and then shall mourn the crime of their forefathers. This, then, was the only hope that Jesus could hold forth for the future to these Jews who now listened to Him, and who were to see, before their death, the Temple destroyed and their race scattered over the face of the globe.
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