23
“Woe to You, Torah-Experts and Pharisees, You Hypocrites!”
1 Jesus, then, spoke to the crowds and to his disciples:
2 “It is with the authority inherited from Moses that the Torah-experts and the Pharisees teach.
3 ᵖYou must follow and obey, therefore, everything they tell ᵖyou. Do not follow, however, their example, because they don’t practice what they teach.
4 They place strict and heavy requirements on people, but they themselves are unwilling to do even the slightest little thing to provide any help.
5 All their deeds, moreover, they do for the eyes of men. Indeed, they make the memorials strapped on their arms and foreheads extra large and the blue-threaded tassels on their cloaks extra long.
6 They love the place of honor at feasts and the seats of honor in the synagogues
7 and elaborate greetings in the market areas and having others call them ‘Rabbi.’
8 ᵖYou, however, are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for ᵖyou have one Teacher, and all of you are brothers and sisters.
9 And don’t address anyone on the earth by this title of honor—‘Father’—for you have one Father, who is in heaven.
10 Nor are ᵖyou to be called ‘Master,’ for you have one Master, the Messiah.
11 The greatest among you, rather, must be your servant.
12 If someone exalts himself, he will be humbled, and if someone humbles himself, he will be exalted.
13 “But woe to ᵖyou, Torah-experts and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For ᵖyou keep locking the door to the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. Indeed, ᵖyou yourselves refuse to enter, and you won’t allow in those who are trying to enter.+
15 “Woe to you, Torah-experts and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For ᵖyou travel over land and sea to convert a single Gentile to Judaism, and when he does so, you make him twice as fit for punishment in Gehenna as yourselves.
16 “Woe to ᵖyou, blind guides! ᵖYou say, ‘If someone swears an oath “by the sanctuary,” his oath isn’t binding, but if someone swears an oath “by the gold of the sanctuary,” he is under strict obligation to fulfill it.’
17 You foolish and blind leaders! Exactly which, after all, is more important—the gold, or the sanctuary that makes the gold sacred?
18 ᵖYou also say, ‘If someone swears an oath “by the altar,” his oath isn’t binding, but if someone swears an oath “by the gift on the altar,” he is under strict obligation to fulfill it.’
19 You blind leaders! Exactly which, after all, is more important—the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred?
20 So then, if someone swears an oath ‘by the altar,’ he is swearing by it and by everything on it.
21 And if someone swears an oath ‘by the sanctuary,’ he is swearing by it and by the one who dwells in it.
22 And if someone swears an oath ‘by heaven,’ he is swearing by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.
23 “Woe to you, Torah-experts and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For although ᵖyou exceed the Torah’s requirements by tithing even mint and dill and cumin, ᵖyou neglect the weightier matters of the Torah—just judgment and mercy and faithfulness. These things ᵖyou should have done, while those others not neglecting.
24 You blind guides, filtering out of your drink the smallest unclean insect, gulping down, meanwhile, the largest unclean animal of all—the camel itself!
25 “Woe to you, Torah-experts and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For ᵖyou clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but on the inside they are full of things obtained by robbery and self-indulgence.
26 You blind Pharisee! Clean first the inside of the cup, so that the outside of the cup may become clean, too.
27 “Woe to you, Torah-experts and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For ᵖyou are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but on the inside are full of dead people’s bones and every kind of defiling filth.
28 In the same way, ᵖyou, too, on the outside appear to people as righteous, but on the inside are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
29 “Woe to you, Torah-experts and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you build monuments to honor and commemorate the prophets and decorate the tombs of the righteous
30 and claim, ‘If we had lived in the time of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’
31 So then, ᵖyou bear witness against yourselves that you are in fact descendants of those who murdered the prophets.
32 ᵖYou, then, go on and finish what ᵖyour ancestors started!
33 You serpents! You offspring of vipers! How will ᵖyou escape being condemned to Gehenna?
34 That is the reason why I am going to send ᵖyou prophets and wise men and experts in the Torah. Some of them ᵖyou will kill and crucify, and some of them ᵖyou will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town,
35 and as a result there will fall upon ᵖyou punishment for all the innocent blood that has been shed in the land—from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom ᵖyou murdered between the sanctuary and the altar of sacrifice.
36 Amen, I solemnly tell ᵖyou this: These things, all of them, will fall upon this generation.
37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I have wanted to gather ˢyour children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but ᵖyou refused!
38 Look! Your house is doomed to be left to ᵖyou desolate!
39 Yes, I tell ᵖyou this: Me ᵖyou will certainly not see from now until ᵖyou say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!’+”