Matthew 23

Matthew 23 is the gospel’s most sustained single piece of prophetic invective. After the temple-debates of chapter 22 have ended in the religious establishment’s silence, Jesus turns from the establishment’s questions to the establishment’s own people, first warning the crowds and the disciples about the scribes and Pharisees, then delivering seven woes directly against them, then closing with a lament over Jerusalem. The chapter is the gospel’s clearest single example of the prophetic-imagination genre: the prophetic critique of failed religious leadership in the same vocabulary, structure, and emotional register the Hebrew Bible’s prophets used (Isaiah 5; Habakkuk 2; Jeremiah; Ezekiel 34). It is also the chapter most honest about the cost of prophetic ministry, ending with the lament that those who killed the prophets are about to kill the prophet now teaching them.

The chapter has three movements. The first (verses 1 to 12) is the warning to the crowds and the disciples about the scribes and Pharisees: their words may be sound, but their lives are not, and the disciples are not to imitate them. The second (verses 13 to 36) is the seven woes themselves: a sustained prophetic indictment of religious-leadership patterns that produce hypocrisy, greed, neglect of mercy, and complicity in the killing of the prophets. The third (verses 37 to 39) is the closing lament over Jerusalem: a tender and grieved address to the city that has refused the gathering Jesus has been offering.

Beneath the chapter’s surface flow is the gospel’s most direct single application of the prophetic tradition’s vocabulary to first-century religious leadership. The chapter is hard to read for any reader (modern or ancient) because the indictments are sharp, specific, and largely about religious people. The chapter is also doing essential gospel-theological work: the kingdom Jesus is bringing requires the prophetic-critique pattern to function. Without the woes, the kingdom-promise of grace-to-the-marginalized would be sentiment; with the woes, the promise has the prophetic-tradition’s full weight.

A · Matthew 23:1–12 · The warning about the scribes and Pharisees

¹ Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples, ² saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees sat on Moses’ seat. ³ All things therefore whatever they tell you to observe, observe and do, but don’t do their works; for they say, and don’t do. ⁴ For they bind heavy burdens that are grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not lift a finger to help them. ⁵ But all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad, enlarge the fringes of their garments, ⁶ and love the place of honor at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, ⁷ the salutations in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi, Rabbi’ by men. ⁸ But don’t you be called ‘Rabbi,’ for one is your teacher, the Christ, and all of you are brothers. ⁹ Call no man on the earth your father, for one is your Father, he who is in heaven. ¹⁰ Neither be called masters, for one is your master, the Christ. ¹¹ But he who is greatest among you will be your servant. ¹² Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Matthew 23:1–12, World English Bible)

1. The scribes and the Pharisees sat on Moses’ seat (verse 2). The Greek epi tes Moyseos kathedras, “on the seat of Moses,” names the rabbinic-teaching position. Moses’ seat (Hebrew moshav Moshe) was a specific stone or wooden seat in first-century synagogues from which the Torah was authoritatively taught (archaeological remains of such seats have been found at synagogues in Chorazin, Hammath, and elsewhere). The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative-cultural precision, that the scribes and Pharisees occupy a recognized teaching-office. Jesus is not denying their position; he is critiquing how they are using it.
2. All things therefore whatever they tell you to observe, observe and do, but don’t do their works (verse 3). The Greek panta oun hosa ean eiposin hymin tereesate kai poieite, kata de ta erga auton me poieite, “therefore whatever they say keep and do, but according to their works do not do,” names the chapter’s most carefully calibrated single instruction. Jesus is not telling the disciples to ignore Pharisaic teaching; he is telling them to observe the teaching while not imitating the lifestyle. The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative care, that the issue is not the Pharisees’ words but the gap between their words and their actions.
3. They bind heavy burdens that are grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not lift a finger to help them (verse 4). The Greek desmeuousin de phortia barea… epi tous omous ton anthropon, autoi de to daktylo auton ou thelousin kinesai auta, “they bind heavy burdens… on the shoulders of people, but they themselves will not move them with their finger,” is the chapter’s most direct contrast with 11:30 (my yoke is easy and my burden is light). The Pharisaic yoke the chapter is critiquing is the yoke Jesus already offered an alternative to. The chapter is recording, with characteristic verbal-thematic continuity, the gospel’s running critique: religious systems that load people down without lifting any of the load themselves are the wrong yokes.
4. They make their phylacteries broad, enlarge the fringes of their garments (verse 5). The Greek platynousin gar ta phylakteria auton kai megalynousin ta kraspeda, “they widen their phylacteries and enlarge their fringes,” names two specific ostentation-practices. Phylacteries (Hebrew tefillin) are the small leather boxes containing scripture passages that observant Jewish men bound to their forehead and arm during prayer; widening the boxes made them more visible. Fringes (Hebrew tzitzit) are the tassels on the corners of the prayer-shawl (Numbers 15:38-41); enlarging them made them more conspicuous. The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative-cultural specificity, that the issue is not the practices themselves (Jesus presumably wore both) but the practice of making them visible for human applause.
5. Don’t you be called “Rabbi,” for one is your teacher, the Christ, and all of you are brothers. Call no man on the earth your father, for one is your Father, he who is in heaven (verses 8 to 9). The Greek records the chapter’s most title-restricting instruction. The disciples are not to take the honorific titles (rabbi, father, master) that the religious establishment has been collecting. The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative-theological precision, the kingdom’s anti-hierarchical posture. The kingdom-community has one Teacher, one Father, one Master; the rest are siblings. (The verse has been variously interpreted in church history; the absolute reading would prohibit even calling one’s biological father father. Most readings take the verse as a critique of honorific religious titles used to elevate the title-holder above the community, not as a prohibition of all relational language.)
6. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted (verse 12). The Greek records the chapter’s first inversion-saying. The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative-thematic continuity, the kingdom’s same first-last principle that has been running since 19:30 and 20:26-28. The chapter is, in this verse, framing the seven woes that follow as cases-in-point of the inversion-principle.

B · Matthew 23:13–36 · The seven woes

¹³ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and as a pretense you make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation. ¹⁵ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel around by sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of Gehenna as yourselves. ¹⁶ “Woe to you, you blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obligated.’ ¹⁷ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifies the gold? ¹⁸ ‘Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obligated.’ ¹⁹ You blind fools! For which is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift? ²⁰ He therefore who swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it. ²¹ He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who has been living in it. ²² He who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by him who sits on it. ²³ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. But you ought to have done these, and not to have left the others undone. ²⁴ You blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel! ²⁵ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and unrighteousness. ²⁶ You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the platter, that its outside may become clean also. ²⁷ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitened tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. ²⁸ Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. ²⁹ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and decorate the tombs of the righteous, ³⁰ and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we wouldn’t have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ ³¹ Therefore you testify to yourselves that you are children of those who killed the prophets. ³² Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. ³³ You serpents, you offspring of vipers, how will you escape the judgment of Gehenna? ³⁴ Therefore behold, I send to you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify; and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city; ³⁵ that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the sanctuary and the altar. ³⁶ Most certainly I tell you, all these things will come upon this generation.” (Matthew 23:13–36, World English Bible)

1. The Greek ouai, “woe,” opens each of the seven woes. Ouai is the prophetic-lament word the Hebrew Bible’s prophets used (Isaiah 5:8-23, the six woes; Habakkuk 2:6-19, five woes; Zephaniah 2:5; 3:1). The chapter is recording, with characteristic Hebrew Bible-prophetic literacy, that Jesus is doing prophetic-genre invective in the same form, the same vocabulary, and the same structural rhythm as the prophets the chapter will end up naming as having been killed by the establishment’s ancestors. The seven-woes form is itself a claim: the prophet who speaks woes is functioning in the prophetic-tradition the chapter ends by lamenting.
2. You devour widows’ houses, and as a pretense you make long prayers (verse 14). The Greek katesthiete tas oikias ton choron, “you eat down the houses of widows,” uses the same eat down verb the Hebrew Bible used for predatory leadership (Micah 3:3, who eat the flesh of my people). The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative-prophetic precision, that the religious establishment’s economic exploitation of widows (likely through the trust-management arrangements that put widows’ estates under religious-leader control) is being critiqued in the prophetic tradition’s exact vocabulary. (Some manuscripts omit verse 14; modern critical editions place it as a later interpolation from Mark 12:40 or Luke 20:47. The substance of the indictment is the same regardless of textual choice.)
3. You travel around by sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of Gehenna as yourselves (verse 15). The Greek records the second woe’s irony. The Pharisees’ missionary energy (which was real; the first century saw active Jewish proselytizing throughout the Mediterranean world) is producing converts who absorb the worst of the system rather than the best of it. The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative-honest precision, that religious zeal is not, in itself, a virtue. Zealous transmission of a corrupted system produces twice-as-corrupted converts.
4. You tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith (verse 23). The Greek aphekate ta barytera tou nomou, ten krisin kai to eleos kai ten pistin, “you have left aside the weightier matters of the Torah, justice and mercy and faith,” names the chapter’s most theologically concentrated single critique. The Pharisaic tithing of garden herbs (which the Torah did not strictly require, but which Pharisaic practice extended) is meticulous. The Torah’s weightier matters (Hebrew distinction between light and heavy commandments was a standard rabbinic category): justice (krisis), mercy (eleos, the Septuagint’s word for chesed), faith (pistis) have been neglected. The chapter is recording, with characteristic Hebrew Bible-prophetic precision, the Micah 6:8 vocabulary applied to the religious establishment: what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?

Influence callout: Walter Brueggemann (the prophetic imagination and the seven woes)

Brueggemann’s reading of Matthew 23 names it as the gospel’s most sustained single example of what he calls the prophetic imagination: the prophetic-tradition’s distinctive mode of public speech, in which the failed religious-political-economic order is named, mourned, and exposed in the language of the prophets themselves. Brueggemann argues that the prophetic imagination operates on three movements: the critique of the dominant order (which the seven woes are doing in textbook fashion), the grief over what the order has done to its people (which 23:37’s lament will perform), and the energizing alternative future (which the rest of the gospel and the resurrection will eventually open). The chapter, on Brueggemann’s reading, is performing the first two movements. Jesus is doing exactly what Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and the other major prophets did: standing inside the religious-political establishment and naming its failure in the establishment’s own scriptural vocabulary. Brueggemann notes that the prophetic imagination is always misread when extracted from its three-movement context. Read in isolation, the woes can sound like spiritual condemnation. Read inside the prophetic tradition’s pattern, the woes are the necessary public-speech that exposes what the dominant order has refused to acknowledge, in order to open the space for the alternative future. The chapter’s seven-woes structure is also itself a claim: the form is the prophetic-tradition’s form, and the speaker is laying claim to the prophetic mantle that ends up costing him his life. Brueggemann argues that every Christian generation needs to hear this chapter as the prophetic imagination performed on the religious establishment, and that every generation’s religious establishment (including the church’s own) is recurringly susceptible to the same patterns the chapter critiques. The chapter is recording, in seven woes and a lament, the kingdom’s prophetic voice operating at full intensity.

1. You strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel (verse 24). The Greek records the chapter’s most vivid single image. The Pharisaic kosher-practice strained wine through cloth to remove gnats (technically unclean according to Leviticus 11:42); the same religious leadership has, on Jesus’s reading, swallowed a camel (a much larger unclean animal, Leviticus 11:4) by neglecting the weightier matters. The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative-rhetorical precision, the inversion: the small unclean thing is meticulously avoided; the large unclean thing has been ingested without notice.
2. You clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and unrighteousness (verse 25). The Greek records the fifth woe’s image. The pharisaic ritual-purity-of-vessels practice was extensive (the Mishnah’s tractate Kelim devotes thirty chapters to vessel-purity rules). The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative-prophetic care, that the inner-content of the vessel (the extortion and unrighteousness that produced its contents) has been unaddressed while the vessel’s exterior gets the meticulous treatment.
3. You are like whitened tombs (verse 27). The Greek taphois kekoniamenois, “tombs whitewashed,” refers to the Jewish practice of whitewashing tombs before Passover so that pilgrims would not accidentally touch them and become ritually unclean (Numbers 19:16). The whitened exterior signaled cleanness; the interior was full of corpse-bones and decay. The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative-cultural precision, the same inside-outside contrast in a more dramatic image.
4. You build the tombs of the prophets, and decorate the tombs of the righteous, and say, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we wouldn’t have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets” (verses 29 to 30). The Greek records the seventh woe’s most pointed irony. The religious establishment honors the dead prophets (their ancestors’ generation killed them; this generation builds memorials) while operating on exactly the trajectory that will produce the killing of the prophet currently in front of them. The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative-prophetic care, that honoring dead prophets is not the same as receiving a living one.
5. That on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the sanctuary and the altar (verse 35). The Greek references the entire span of the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic-witness blood. Abel (Genesis 4) is the first murdered righteous person in the canonical Hebrew Bible; Zechariah son of Berechiah (the prophet of the book of Zechariah) or Zechariah son of Jehoiada (the priest stoned in the temple court in 2 Chronicles 24:20-22) is among the last. The chapter is recording, with characteristic Hebrew Bible-canonical precision, that Jesus is bracketing the entire history of murdered prophets and naming the current generation as inheriting the cumulative weight. This generation (verse 36) is the gospel’s specific reference to Jesus’s contemporaries, and the all these things coming on them is, on the patristic-and-modern consensus, a prophetic prediction of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

C · Matthew 23:37–39 · The lament over Jerusalem

³⁷ “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to her! How often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! ³⁸ Behold, your house is left to you desolate. ³⁹ For I tell you, you will not see me from now on, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (Matthew 23:37–39, World English Bible)

1. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to her! (verse 37). The Greek Hierousalem Hierousalem, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” uses the doubled-name address that the Hebrew prophets used at moments of intense emotion (Genesis 22:11, Abraham, Abraham; Exodus 3:4, Moses, Moses; 1 Samuel 3:10, Samuel, Samuel). The chapter is recording, with characteristic Hebrew Bible-vocative precision, that the chapter’s tone has shifted from indictment to lament. The seven-woes mode has resolved into the prophetic-grief mode.
2. How often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings (verse 37b). The Greek hos ornis episynagei ta nossia autes hypo tas pterygas, “as a bird gathers her chicks under her wings,” uses an image that runs throughout the Hebrew Bible (Deuteronomy 32:11, the eagle-mother image; Psalm 17:8; 36:7; 57:1; 91:4, the shadow of your wings). The chapter is recording, with characteristic Hebrew Bible-imagery precision, the wings of the LORD image now appearing on Jesus’s own lips, with his own people as the chicks he had been longing to gather. The chapter’s most theologically loaded grief is here. The mother-bird image and the divine-shelter image converge in the speaker’s voice. The one whose lament this is is the one whose wings the prophets have been pointing toward.
3. And you would not (verse 37c). The Greek kai ouk ethelesate, “and you did not want,” names the chapter’s quietest single tragedy. The gathering was offered; the people refused. The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative honesty, the freedom that makes the lament possible. Refusal-of-gathering is a real human option, and the chapter’s lament holds the option’s weight.
4. Behold, your house is left to you desolate (verse 38). The Greek idou aphietai hymin ho oikos hymon eremos, “behold, your house is left to you desolate,” uses the eremos (deserted, abandoned) vocabulary the Septuagint uses for the temple’s coming desolation in Daniel 9:27 and 12:11 (the abomination of desolation). The chapter is recording, with characteristic Hebrew Bible-prophetic precision, the temple’s theological-functional abandonment. The house that was meant to be the dwelling-place of God’s name has, on Jesus’s reading, been emptied. The Roman destruction in 70 AD will be the historical out-working of what is, on the chapter’s claim, already theologically true.
5. You will not see me from now on, until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (verse 39). The Greek cites Psalm 118:26, the same Hallel-psalm the crowd was shouting at the entry (21:9). The chapter is recording, with characteristic narrative-citation continuity, that the same psalm-citation that opened the temple-week is closing it. The chapter is naming a future-recognition: the city will, eventually, say blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. The chapter does not specify when. (Some patristic readings hear this as the Parousia, the second coming; some modern readings hear it as the eventual Jewish recognition of the Messiah; the chapter’s vocabulary leaves the question open.) What is unambiguous is that the chapter’s grief is not final. The departure is for now; the eventual recognition is anticipated.

Reflection prompts

1. They tie up heavy burdens that are grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not lift a finger to help them. The chapter’s first warning is about religious leadership that loads people without lifting any of the load itself. Where in your life are you currently carrying a religious burden imposed by leaders who do not carry it with you, and what would it mean to bring that burden to the rabbi whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light?
2. You strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel. The chapter’s most vivid image of religious distortion: meticulous attention to the small things while ingesting the large unclean thing without notice. The weightier matters (justice, mercy, faith) have been left aside while the herb-tithes get the careful treatment. Where in your life are you currently meticulous about a small practice while neglecting one of the chapter’s weightier matters, and what would it mean to take Jesus’s order seriously: do these without leaving the others undone?
3. Jerusalem, Jerusalem… how often I would have gathered your children together, and you would not. The chapter ends in lament rather than indictment. The gathering was offered; the gathering was refused. The grief is real. Where in your life is the gathering Jesus has been offering currently being refused (by you, by the community you are part of, by the institutions you serve), and what does it mean to consider that the chapter’s lament is, even now, being held over the refusal, with the possibility of return still in the gospel’s open ending?