Matthew 23:27

Mat 23:27. Wo unto you, for you are like whited sepulchres — Here we have the seventh wo. Dr. Shaw, (Trav., p. 285,) gives a genial description of the different sorts of tombs and sepulchres in the East — concluding with this paragraph — “Now all these, with the very walls of the enclosure, being always kept clean, white-washed, and beautified; continue to this day to be an excellent comment upon Mat 23:27.” The scribes and Pharisees, like fine whited sepulchres, looked very beautiful without, but within were full of all uncleanness, and defiled every one who touched them. This was a sore rebuke to men who would not keep company with publicans and sinners for fear they should have been polluted by them!

Mat 23:29-31. Wo unto you, because ye build the tombs of the prophets — Here we have the eighth and last wo. “By the pains they took in adorning the sepulchres of their prophets, they pretended a great veneration for their memory; and, as often as their happened to be mentioned, condemned their fathers who had killed them, declaring that if they had lived in the days of their fathers, they would have opposed their wickedness; while, in the mean time, they still cherished the spirit of their fathers, persecuting the messengers of God, particularly his only Son, on whose destruction they were resolutely bent.” Ye build the tombs of the prophets — And that is all, for ye neither observe their sayings nor imitate their actions. And say, We would not have been partakers, &c. — Ye make fair professions, as did your fathers. Wherefore ye be witnesses, &c. — By affirming that if you had lived in the days of your fathers you would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets, ye acknowledge that ye are the children of them who murdered the prophets. But I must tell you, that you are their children in another sense than by natural generation; for though you pretend to be more holy than they were, you are like them in all respects; particularly in that you possess their wicked, persecuting spirit, and cover it by smooth words, thus imitating them, who, while they killed the prophets of their own times, professed the utmost veneration for those of past ages.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Matthew

THE KING’S FAREWELL

Mat 23:27 - Mat 23:39.

If, with the majority of authorities, we exclude Mat 23:14 from the text, there are, in this chapter, seven woes, like seven thunders, launched against the rulers. They are scathing exposures, but, as the very word implies, full of sorrow as well as severity. They are not denunciations, but prophecies warning that the end of such tempers must be mournful. The wailing of an infinite compassion, rather than the accents of anger, sounds in them; and it alone is heard in the outburst of lamenting in which Christ’s heart runs over, as in a passion of tears, at the close. The blending of sternness and pity, each perfect, is the characteristic of this wonderful climax of our Lord’s appeals to His nation. Could such tones of love and righteous anger joined have been sent echoing through the ages in this Gospel, if they had not been heard?

I. The woe of the ‘whited sepulchres.’

The first four woes are directed mainly to the teachings of the scribes and Pharisees; the last three to their characters. The two first of these fasten on the same sin, of hypocritical holiness. There is, however, a difference between the representation of hypocrites under the metaphor of the clean outside of the cup and platter, and that of the whited sepulchre. In the former, the hidden sin is ‘extortion and excess’; that is, sensual enjoyment wrongly procured, of which the emblems of cup and plate suggest that good eating and drinking are a chief part. In the latter, it is ‘iniquity’-a more general and darker name for sin. In the former, the Pharisee is ‘blind,’ self-deceived in part or altogether; in the latter, stress is rather laid on his ‘appearance unto men.’ The repetition of the same charge in the two woes teaches us Christ’s estimate of the gravity and frequency of the sin.

The whitened tombs of Mohammedan saints still gleam in the strong sunlight on many a knoll in Palestine. If the Talmudical practice is as old as our Lord’s time, the annual whitewashing was lately over. Its purpose was not to adorn the tombs, but to make them conspicuous, so that they might be avoided for fear of defilement. So He would say, with terrible irony, that the apparent holiness of the rulers was really a sign of corruption, and a warning to keep away from them. What a blow at their self-complacency! And how profoundly true it is that the more punctiliously white the hypocrite’s outside, the more foul is he within, and the wider berth will all discerning people give him! The terrible force of the figure needs no dwelling on. In Christ’s estimate, such a soul was the very dwelling-place of death; and foul odours and worms and corruption filled its sickening recesses. Terrible words to come from His lips into which grace was poured, and bold words to be flashed at listeners who held the life of the Speaker in their hands! There are two sorts of hypocrites, the conscious and the unconscious; and there are ten of the latter for one of the former, and each ten times more dangerous. Established religion breeds them, and they are specially likely to be found among those whose business is to study the documents in which it is embodied. These woes are not like thunder-peals rolling above our heads, while the lightning strikes the earth miles away. A religion which is mostly whitewash is as common among us as ever it was in Jerusalem; and its foul accompaniments of corruption becoming more rotten every year, as the whitewash is laid on thicker, may be smelt among us, and its fatal end is as sure.

II. The woe of the sepulchre builders {Mat 23:29 - Mat 23:36}.

In these verses we have, first, the specification of another form of hypocrisy, consisting in building the prophets’ tombs, and disavowing the fathers’ murder of them. Honouring dead prophets was right; but honouring dead ones and killing living ones was conscious or unconscious hypocrisy. The temper of mind which leads to glorifying the dead witnesses, also leads to supposing that all truth was given by them; and hence that the living teachers, who carry their message farther, are false prophets. A generation which was ready to kill Jesus in honour of Moses, would have killed Moses in honour of Abraham, and would not have had the faintest apprehension of the message of either.

It is a great deal easier to build tombs than to accept teachings, and a good deal of the posthumous honour paid to God’s messengers means, ‘It’s a good thing they are dead, and that we have nothing to do but to put up a monument.’ Bi-centenaries and ter-centenaries and jubilees do not always imply either the understanding or the acceptance of the principles supposed to be glorified thereby. But the magnifiers of the past are often quite unconscious of the hollowness of their admiration, and honest in their horror of their fathers’ acts; and we all need the probe of such words as Christ’s to pierce the skin of our lazy reverence for our fathers’ prophets, and let out the foul matter below-namely, our own blindness to God’s messengers of to-day.

The statement of the hypocrisy is followed, in Mat 23:31, with its unmasking and condemnation. The words glow with righteous wrath at white heat, and end in a burst of indignation, most unfamiliar to His lips. Three sentences, like triple lightning flash from His pained heart. With almost scornful subtlety He lays hold of the words which He puts into the Pharisees’ mouths, to convict them of kindred with those whose deeds they would disown. ‘Our fathers, say you? Then you do belong to the same family, after all. You confess that you have their blood in your veins; and, in the very act of denying sympathy with their conduct, you own kindred. And, for all your protestations, spiritual kindred goes with bodily descent.’ Christ here recognises that children probably ‘take after their parents,’ or, in modern scientific terms, that ‘heredity’ is the law, and that it works more surely in the transmission of evil than of good.

Then come the awful words bidding that generation ‘fill up the measure of the fathers.’ They are like the other command to Judas to do his work quickly. They are more than permission, they are command; but such a command as, by its laying bare of the true character of the deed in view, is love’s last effort at prevention. Mark the growing emotion of the language. Mark the conception of a nation’s sins as one through successive generations, and the other, of these as having a definite measure, which being filled, judgment can no longer tarry. Generation after generation pours its contributions into the vessel, and when the last black drop which it can hold has been added, then comes the catastrophe. Mark the fatal necessity by which inherited sin becomes darker sin. The fathers’ crimes are less than the sons’. This inheritance increases by each transmission. The cloak strikes one more at each revolution of the hands.

It is hard to recognise Christ in the terrible words that follow. We have heard part of them from John the Baptist; and it sounded natural for him to call men serpents and the children of serpents, but it is somewhat of a shock to hear Jesus hurling such names at even the most sinful. But let us remember that He who sees hearts, has a right to tell harsh truths, and that it is truest kindness to strip off masks which hide from men their own real character, and that the revelation of the divine love in Jesus would be a partial and impotent revelation if it did not show us the righteous love which is wrath. There is nothing so terrible as the anger of gentle compassion, and the fiercest and most destructive wrath is ‘the wrath of the Lamb.’ Seldom, indeed, did He show that side of His character; but it is there, and the other side would not be so blessed as it is, unless that were there too.

The woe ends with the double prophecy that that generation would repeat and surpass the fathers’ guilt, and that on it would fall the accumulated penalties of past bloodshed. Note that solemn ‘therefore,’ which looks back to the whole preceding context, and forward to the whole subsequent. Because the rulers professed abhorrence of their fathers’ deeds, and yet inherited their spirit, they too would have their prophets, and would slay them. God goes on sending His messengers, because we reject them; and the more deaf men are, the more does He peal His words into their ears. That is mercy and compassion, that all men may be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth; but it is judgment too, and its foreseen effect must be regarded as part of the divine purpose in it. Christ’s desire is one thing, His purpose another. His desire is that all should find in His gospel ‘the savour of life’; but His purpose is that, if it be not that to any, it shall be to them the savour of death. Mark, too, the authority with which He, in the face of these scowling Pharisees, assumes the distinct divine prerogative of sending forth inspired men, who, as His messengers, shall stand on a level with the prophets of old. Mark His silence as to His own fate, which is only obscurely hinted at in the command to fill up the measure of the fathers. Observe the detailed enumeration of His messengers’ gifts,-’prophets’ under direct inspiration, like those of old, which may especially refer to the apostles; ‘wise men,’ like a Stephen or an Apollos; ‘scribes,’ such as Mark and Luke and many a faithful servant since, whose pen has loved to write the name above every name. Note the detailed prophecy of their treatment, which begins with slaying and goes down to the less severe scourging, and thence to the milder persecution. Do the three punishments belong to the three classes of messengers, the severest falling to the lot of the most highly endowed, and even the quiet penman being hunted from city to city?

We need not wriggle and twist to try to avoid admitting that the calling of the martyred Zacharias, ‘the son of Barachias,’ is an error of some one who confused the author of the prophetic book with the person whose murder is narrated in 2Ch 24:1 - 2Ch 24:27 We do not know who made the mistake, or how it appears in our text, but it is not honest to try to slur it over. The punishment of long ages of sin, carried on from father to son, does in the course of that history of the world, which is a part of the judgment of the world, fall upon one generation. It takes long for the mass of heaped-up sin to become top-heavy; but when it is so, it buries one generation of those who have worked at piling it up, beneath its down-rushing avalanche.

‘The mills of God grind slowly,

But they grind exceeding small.’

The catastrophes of national histories are prepared for by continuous centuries. The generation that laid the first powder-hornful of the train is dead and buried, long before the explosion which sends constituted order and institutions sky-high. The misery is that often the generation which has to pay the penalty has begun to awake to the sin, and would be glad to mend it, if it could. England in the seventeenth century, France in the eighteenth, America in the nineteenth, had to reap harvests from sins sown long before. Such is the law of the judgment wrought out by God’s providence in history. But there is another judgment, begun here and perfected hereafter, in which fathers and sons shall each bear their own burden, and reap accurately the fruit of what they have sown. ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die.’

III. The parting wail of rejected love.

The lightning flashes of the sevenfold woes end in a rain of pity and tears. His full heart overflows in that sad cry of lamentation over the long-continued foiling of the efforts of a love that would fain have fondled and defended. What intensity of feeling is in the redoubled naming of the city! How yearningly and wistfully He calls, as if He might still win the faithless one, and how lingeringly unwilling He is to give up hope! How mournfully, rather than accusingly, He reiterates the acts which had run through the whole history, using a form of the verbs which suggests continuance. Mark, too, the matter-of-course way in which Christ assumes that He sent all the prophets whom, through the generations, Jerusalem had stoned.

So the lament passes into the solemn final leave-taking, with which our Lord closes His ministry among the Jews, and departs from the temple. As, in the parable of the marriage-feast, the city was emphatically called ‘their city,’ so here the Temple, in whose courts He was standing, and which in a moment He was to quit for ever, is called ‘your house,’ because His departure is the withdrawing of the true Shechinah. It had been the house of God: now He casts it off, and leaves it to them to do as they will with it. The saddest punishment of long-continued rejection of His pleading love, is that it ceases at last to plead. The bitterest woe for those who refuse to render to Him the fruits of the vineyard, is to get the vineyard for their own, undisturbed. Christ’s utmost retribution for obstinate blindness is to withdraw from our sight. All the woes that were yet to fall, in long, dreary succession on that nation, so long continued in its sin, so long continued in its misery, were hidden in that solemn departure of Christ from the henceforward empty temple. Let us fear lest our unfaithfulness meet the like penalty! But even the departure does not end His yearnings, nor close the long story of the conflict between God’s beseeching love and their unbelief. The time shall come when the nation shall once more lift up, with deeper, truer adoration, the hosannas of the triumphal entry. And then a believing Israel shall see their King, and serve Him. Christ never takes final leave of any man in this world. It is ever possible that dumb lips may be opened to welcome Him, though long rejected; and His withdrawals are His efforts to bring about that opening. When it takes place, how gladly does He return to the heart which is now His temple, and unveil His beauty to the long-darkened eyes!

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

23:27-28 It was a Jewish custom to coat limestone tombs (perhaps funerary urns or ossuaries) with a mixture of marble and lime to fill their porous surfaces, giving them a more pleasing appearance and helping visitors to Jerusalem to notice the graves and avoid touching them so as not to contaminate themselves. Jesus is not criticizing the adorning of tombs; rather, he points to the similarity between these whitewashed tombs and the teachers of religious law and Pharisees. Both may have looked good on the outside, but both were contaminated and impure within.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Mat 23:27. Ὅτι, κ.τ.λ., for, etc.) In this verse the especially distinctive characteristic of hypocrites is described: for hypocrisy is named in Mat 23:28. Cf. Luk 11:44 with the context.—κεκονιαμένοις, whited) The Jews used to whiten their sepulchres with chalk.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mat_23:27 f. The graves were whitewashed with lime (κονία) every year on the 15th of Adar (a custom which Rabbinical writers trace to Eze_39:15), not for the purpose of ornamenting them, but in order to render them so conspicuous as to prevent any one defiling himself (Num_19:16) by coming into contact with them. For the passages from Rabbinical writers, see Lightfoot, Schoettgen, and Wetstein. A kind of ornamental appearance was thus imparted to the graves. In Luk_11:44, the illustration is of a totally different character.

ὑποκρίς. κ. ἀνομ.] (immorality): both as representing their disposition. Thus, morally speaking, they were τάφοι ἔμψυχοι, Lucian, D. M. vi. 2.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mat 23:27-28 . Sixth woe , referring to no special Pharisaic vice, but giving a graphic picture of their hypocrisy in general ( cf. Luk 11:44 ).

Mat 23:27 . παρομοιάζετε , in [128] ὁμοιάζετε , under either form an hapaxleg. κεκονιαμένοις (from κονία , dust, slaked lime), whitewashed, referring to the practice of whitewashing the sepulchres in the month Adar, before passover time, to make them conspicuous, inadvertent approach involving uncleanness. They would be wearing their fresh coat just then, so that the comparison was seasonable ( vide Wetstein, ad loc. ). ἔξωθεν , ἔσωθεν , again a contrast between without and within, which may have suggested the comparison. ὡραῖοι , fair, without; the result but not the intention in the natural sphere, the aim in the spiritual, the Pharisee being concerned about appearance (chap. 6). ὀστέων , etc., revolting contrast: without, quite an attractive feature in the landscape; within, only death-fraught loathsomeness.

[128] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like whited sepulchres--or, whitewashed sepulchres. (Compare Act 23:3). The process of whitewashing the sepulchres, as LIGHTFOOT says, was performed on a certain day every year, not for ceremonial cleansing, but., as the following words seem rather to imply, to beautify them.

which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness--What a powerful way of conveying the charge, that with all their fair show their hearts were full of corruption! (Compare Psa 5:9; Rom 3:13). But our Lord, stripping off the figure, next holds up their iniquity in naked colors.

Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets--that is "ye be witnesses that ye have inherited, and voluntarily served yourselves heirs to, the truth-hating, prophet-killing, spirit of your fathers." Out of pretended respect and honor, they repaired and beautified the sepulchres of the prophets, and with whining hypocrisy said, "If we had been in their days, how differently should we have treated these prophets?" While all the time they were witnesses to themselves that they were the children of them that killed the prophets, convicting themselves daily of as exact a resemblance in spirit and character to the very classes over whose deeds they pretended to mourn, as child to parent. In Luk 11:44 our Lord gives another turn to this figure of a grave: "Ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them." As one might unconsciously walk over a grave concealed from view, and thus contract ceremonial defilement, so the plausible exterior of the Pharisees kept people from perceiving the pollution they contracted frown coming in contact with such corrupt characters.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 27. For ye are like] παρομοιαζετε, ye exactly resemble - the parallel is complete.

Whited sepulchres] White-washed tombs. As the law considered those unclean who had touched any thing belonging to the dead, the Jews took care to have their tombs white-washed each year, that, being easily discovered, they might be consequently avoided.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(27) Ye are like unto whited sepulchres.—Contact with a sepulchre brought with it ceremonial uncleanness, and all burial-places were accordingly white-washed once a year, on the 15th day of the month Adar—i.e., about the beginning of March—that passers-by might be warned by them, as they were of the approach of a leper by his cry, “Unclean, unclean!” (Lev_13:45). The word translated “whited,” means literally, “smeared with lime powder”—i.e., “whitewashed,” in the modern technical sense of the word. It should be noticed that the similitude in Luk_11:44 is drawn from the graves that were not whitened, or from which the whitewash had been worn away, and over which men passed without knowing of their contact with corruption. Some have thought, indeed, that this passage also refers to graves which had lost the coat of whitewash, and were “beautiful with grass and flowers.” It seems hardly likely, however, that the perfect participle would be used to describe such a state of things, and it is more probable, looking to the date above given, that our Lord pointed to some tombs that were shining in their new whiteness.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

27. like unto whited sepulchres] In Luke the comparison is to “graves that appear not,” by walking over which men unconsciously defile themselves. To avoid this ceremonial defilement the Jews carefully whitewashed the graves or marked them with chalk on a fixed day every year—the fifteenth of Adar. The custom still exists in the East. One of the spiteful devices of the Samaritans against the Jews was to remove the whitewash from sepulchres in order that the Jews might be contaminated by walking over them.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous,.... By making broad their phylacteries, enlarging the borders of their garments, praying long prayers, compassing sea and land to make one proselyte, paying tithes of all manner of herbs, and cleansing the outside of the cup and platter, and doing all their works, prayers, fastings, and alms deeds, to be seen of men. This is the accommodation of the above simile; by reason of these things they looked like whited sepulchres, outwardly beautiful: so these appeared outwardly righteous, they looked like righteous persons, and were not; they were what Hagar, as the Jews say, charged her mistress with being; for so they interpret these words, "her mistress was despised in her eyes", Gen 16:4 (b),

"She said, this Sarah is not secretly, what she is openly; she appears , "as if she was righteous" and she is not righteous.

The same they say of (c) Leah. This was a misrepresentation; but the representation Christ gives of these men, is right; they were of that sort of the Pharisees, which they call "the dyed", or "coloured" ones: it is said of Jannai the king, that he should say to those of his family (d),

"Do not be afraid of them that are Pharisees, (that are truly so,) nor of them that are not Pharisees; but of them that are, "dyed", for they are like to Pharisees; for their works are as the works of Zimri, (adulterers, as these were,) and they expect the reward as Phinehas.

The gloss upon it is,

"the Pharisees hated him, because he had slain many of their wise men, and was turned Sadducee; and when he was dying, his wife was afraid of them, lest they should take away the kingdom from her sons, and she desired him to seek their favour for her; but he said unto her, do not be afraid of the Pharisees, for they are "righteous", and will not render evil to thee, nor to thy sons; for they have not sinned against them; nor of them that are not Pharisees, for they are their friends; but of "the dyed ones": as if he had said, their appearance is not according to their nature, but they are dyed without,

, "and their inside is not as their outside": for their works are as the work of Zimri, for they are ungodly; and they expect the reward as Phinehas, saying to men, to honour them as Phinehas.

But this outward show and appearance of righteousness, was only "unto men", not unto God: they did not appear so to him, who is the searcher of hearts, and knows what is in man, and knew all the secret wickedness that was in them; for though they imposed upon, and deceived men, they could not deceive God; nor was their iniquity hid from Christ, who adds, "but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity": and which was evident from their ambition and vain glory, in desiring the uppermost rooms at feasts, the chief places in the synagogue, greetings in the markets, and titles of honour and grandeur; from their avarice and cruel oppression of the widows, and fatherless, under a pretence of long prayers; from their neglecting the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, and practising extortion and excess: that saying of their's (e), may be applied to themselves,

"every disciple of a wise man, , "whose inside is not as his outside", is no disciple of a wise man.

And it is expressly ascribed by some of their writers to one sort of the Pharisees, of whom they say (f),

"they are desirous to appear to men to be holy, but their inside is not as their outside;

which is much the same Christ here says of them. What our Lord charges these men with, is owned by their own doctors; they say (g), that "the iniquity of those that were under the first temple, was open and manifest, but the iniquity of those that were under the second temple, was not open.

But as the gloss says,

"the children of the second temple, , "were secretly wicked".

(b) Bereshit Rabba, sect. 45. fol. 40. 3. Jarchi in Gert. xvi. 4. (c) Bereshit Rabba, sect. 71. fol. 63. 2. (d) T. Bab. Sota, fol. 22. 2. (e) T. Bab. Yoma, fol. 72. 2. (f) Bartenora in Misn. Sota, c. 3. sect. 4. (g) T. Bab. Yoma, fol. 9. 2.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.

Ver. 27. Ye are like unto whited sepulchres] The Jews had their vaults or caves for burial. These the wealthier sort would paint, garnish, beautify at the mouth or entrance of them. And hereunto our Saviour alludeth, Intus Nero, foris Cato: loquitur hic ut Piso, vivit ut Gallomus, &c. It was said of the Sarmatians, that all their virtue was outward; and of Sejanus, that he had only a semblance of honesty, Intus summa adipiscendi libido, within he was full of extortion and excess. {a} Hypocrites seem as glowworms, to have both light and heat; but touch them, and they have neither. The Egyptian temples were beautiful on the outside, when within ye should find nothing but some serpent or crocodile. Apothecaries’ boxes often have goodly titles, when yet they hold not one dram of any good drug. A certain stranger coming on embassy unto the senators of Rome, and colouring his hoary hair and pale cheeks with vermilion hue, a grave senator espying the deceit, stood up, and said, "What sincerity are we to expect from this man’s hands, whose locks, and looks, and lips do lie?" Think the same of all painted hypocrites. These we may compare (as Lucian doth his Grecians) to a fair gilt bossed book; look within it, and there is the tragedy of Thyestes; or perhaps Arrius’ Thalya; the name of a muse, the matter heresy: or Conradus Vorstius’ book monster, that hath De Deo Concerning God, in the front, but atheism and blasphemy in the text.

{a} Omnis Sarmatarum virtus extra ipsos. Tac. i. 10. Palam compositus pudor, &c. Tac.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Like unto whited sepulchres - For the construction of sepulchres, see the notes at Mat 8:28. Those tombs were annually whitewashed to prevent the people from accidentally coming in contact with them as they went up to Jerusalem. This custom is still continued. Dr. Thomson (The Land and the Book, vol. i. p. 148) says, “I have been in places where this is repeated very often. The graves are kept clean and white as snow, a very striking emblem of those painted hypocrites, the Pharisees, beautiful without, but full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness within.” The law considered those persons unclean who had touched anything belonging to the dead, Num 19:16. Sepulchres were therefore often whitewashed, that they might be distinctly seen. Thus “whited,” they appeared beautiful; but within they contained the bones and corrupting bodies of the dead. So the Pharisees. Their outward conduct appeared well, but their hearts were full of hypocrisy, envy, pride, lust, and malice - suitably represented by the corruption within a whited tomb.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Whitened sepulchres. The Jews, lest they should be defiled with touching the sepuchres, whitened them on the outside, in order to distinguish them. But this exterior whiteness, covering interior corruption, was a genuine picture of the pharisaical character. But these men, says St. Gregory, can have no excuse before the severe judge at the last day; for, whilst they shew to the view of mankind so beautiful an appearance of virtue, by their very hypocrisy they demonstrate that they are not ignorant how to live well. (Moral. xxvi.) --- Tell me, you hypocrite, what pleasure there is in wickedness? why do you not wish to be what you wish to appear? What it is beautiful to appear, is beyond a doubt more beautiful to be. Be therefore what you appear, or appear what you really are. (St. John Chrysostom)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

The similitude is of the same import with the other, to show that the Pharisees had only a vizard of strictness and holiness, when in the mean time their hearts were full of lusts, hypocrisy, and iniquity. The Jews had two sorts of graves; some for ordinary persons, which appeared not (to which our Saviour likened the Pharisees, Luk 11:44); others that were covered with tombs, which were wont to be kept whited, so as they looked very fair outwardly, but had within nothing but rottenness and putrefaction. To these he compares them in this place. They were men that made a great show, but had nothing of any inward purity or cleanness, but were full of iniquity. Thus Paul called Ananias a whited wall; and, Psa 5:9, the psalmist saith of the throat of the wicked that it is an open sepulchre.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 27, 28. Seventh woe against another form of the same hypocrisy. (Luk_11:44) Whited (kekoniamenoiv) sepulchres. Once a year, about the fifteenth of the month Adar, the Jews used to whitewash the tombs and the places where corpses were buried, partly out of respect for the dead, but chiefly in order to make them conspicuous, and thus to obviate the risk of persons incautiously contracting ceremonial defilement by touching or walking over them. (Num_19:16) To such sepulchres our Lord compares these Pharisees, because their outwardly fair show concealed rottenness within. (comp. Act_23:3) Indeed, it might be said that their seeming exceptional purity was a warning of internal corruption, a sign post to point to hidden defilement. Obtrusive religiousness, emphatic scrupulosity, are marks of pride and self-righteousness, utterly alien from real devotion and holiness.

Appearance and reality.

"Ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." This is the revelation, not of a mere observer of men, but of a Divine Heart searcher, a Divine Thought reader.

I MAN JUDGES BY THE OUTWARD APPEARANCE, AND MAKES MISTAKES. When Samuel saw the handsome eldest son of Jesse, he said, "Surely the Lord"s anointed is before him." But he was reproved. "The Lord seeth not as man sooth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart". (1Sa_16:7)

1. Man can only judge by the help of appearances, because he cannot read the heart.

2. Man is disposed to judge of religion by appearances, because he is daily judging everything in this way.

3. Man is always liable to make mistakes, because appearances often accidentally, and more often intentionally, fail to present realities. The peril of trusting to appearances may be illustrated by the way in which goods are dressed up to attract sale. The same thing is found in religious spheres. Credit is gained by the show of piety; and the hypocrite is ever overanxious about his external observances. Our Lord"s figure of the cup is common to every age; his figure of the "whited sepulchres" belongs to the East. Sepulchres were whited so that Jews might not unconsciously walk over them, seeing that this involved ceremonial defilement. The outsides of burial places were whitewashed once a year. It is not enough to see a man"s devoutness at church. See him at home. See him in business. See him in private prayer. See him as God sees him.

II GOD JUDGES BY THE INWARD REALITY, AND MAKES NO MISTAKE. He looks inside the cup. He knows what is inside the sepulchre. He reads the secret life of the fastidiously devout Pharisees. He finds David right hearted, and chooses him rather than his handsome brother. St. Paul intimates that the Christian man should be so absolutely sincere and true, that he could readily stand out in the sunshine, and let it look him through and through, and round and round. See how the good man comes altogether to prefer the Divine appraisement, and to say, "Search me, O God, and know my heart." Impress that when the man is heart right with God, he is properly anxious about his appearance before men. He wants that to tell, as fully as possible, the truth of his inner life. R.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The seventh woe:

v. 27. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.

v. 28. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

It was a custom among the Jews, derived by the Rabbis from Eze 39:15, and said to extend back to the time of Joshua, that every year on the fifteenth of Adar, one month before the Passover, the graves of such as were buried on the hillsides or near the highways had to be whitened with a sort of chalk. They thus became conspicuous both by day and night, and the pilgrims to the great festival that were not acquainted with the country could avoid Levitical contamination by going around such graves, for the contact with a grave would defile a Jew. Exactly like such graves, according to Christ’s judgment, are the scribes and Pharisees. Their life, as they present it in the view of the multitude, was fair, inviting nothing but commendation, but its actual loathsomeness, when one penetrated beyond the outside shell and examined the heart, was so great as to provoke nothing but condemnation. Hypocrites they are, whose very boast of the Law is resolved into lawlessness and opposition to the Law.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Here we have a woe denounced against the Pharisees for cheating and deceiving the people with an outward shew, and external appearance of piety and religion: their lives were seemingly very religious but their hearts were full of hypocrisy and all impurity, like sepulchres painted without, and full of rottenness within.

Whence, Learn, That the great design of hypocrisy is to cheat the world with a vain and empty shew of piety. The ambition of the hypocrite is to be thought good, not to be so; he is the world’s saint, not God’s.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

27. For ye are like unto whited sepulchres. It is stated that on the 15th of the month of Adair, before the Passover, the Jews whitewashed all the spots where graves were situated. This was done both to beautify them and to mark the spots as to prevent any one from passing over them, which would occasion Levitical defilement. For this practice, Num. 19:16 and Ezek. 39:15 were cited. This custom gave the basis for the Savior's figure. In plain view of the Savior and his hearers, as they stood in the temple court, could be seen the whitened tombs along the western slope of Olivet, some of which are still seen to this day. Beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones. A powerful figure to show forth the contrast between the sanctimonious professions of the Pharisees and their unholy lives.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

you are like whitewashed tombs ... unclean

This is a simile that means the scribes and Pharisees may appear to be pure on the outside, but they are wicked on the inside. (See: Simile)

whitewashed tombs

"tombs that someone has painted white." The Jews would paint tombs white so that people would easily see them and avoid touching them. Touching a tomb would make a person ceremonially unclean. (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

translationWords

woe

scribe

Pharisee

hypocrite

grave

die

clean

righteous

hypocrite

iniquity

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

27. τάφοις κεκονιαμένοις. In Luke the comparison is to ‘graves that appear not,’ by walking over which men unconsciously defile themselves. To avoid this ceremonial defilement the Jews carefully whitewashed the graves or marked them with chalk on a fixed day every year—the fifteenth of Adar. The custom still exists in the East. One of the spiteful devices of the Samaritans against the Jews was to remove the whitewash from sepulchres in order that the Jews might be contaminated by walking over them.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

27. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like to whitened tombs, which outside appear beautiful, but inside are full of dead bones, and all uncleanness.] Luk 11:44 has: “Woe to you! for ye are as sepulchres that are unseen, and the men who walk over them do not know it.” It was customary on the 15th of the month Adar to whitewash graves, that people might not unintentionally touch them and contract ceremonial defilement; B. Moed Qat. 1 a, Schequal, i. 1. Moed Qatan, 5a, bases this on Eze 39:15.—κεκονιαμένοις] The tombs were whitened with chalk or lime. The Talmudic verb is ציין = to mark, distinguish. κεκονιαμένοι occurs in Pro 21:9, where it apparently means plaistered, i.e. luxurious, dwellings. There is no need to suppose that οἵτινες μὲν φαίνονται ὡραῖοι, which is omitted in S1, is a later gloss by someone who thought that the purpose of the whitening the tombs was to beautify them. ὡραῖος might seem to suggest an æsthetic purpose for the whitening. But the original Aramaic may have been a more colourless word. The saying in Luk_11 has a different turn. There the Pharisees are likened to unwhitened tombs, which therefore defile those who unwittingly pass over them. The difference is not favourable to the theory of a common Greek source for Mt. and Lk.

(L)

27. S1 has: “Graves that on the outside are whitened, and inside,” etc., omitting οἵτινες μὲν φαίνονται ὡραῖοι. Merx regards the words as a gloss added by someone who misunderstood the purpose of the whitening of the graves. But this is quite unnecessary. Our Greek text simply states that graves when whitened appear outwardly beautiful, and does not say that they were whitened in order to beautify them. S1 has probably taken offence at the word ὡραῖοι as too strong a term to express the result of the whitening, and consequently omitted the clause.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Whited sepulchres [ταφοις κεκονιαμενοις] . Not the rock - tombs, belonging mostly to the rich, but the graves covered with plastered structures. In general, cemeteries were outside of cities; but any dead body found in the field was to be buried on the spot where it had been discovered. A pilgrim to the Passover, for instance, might easily come upon such a grave in his journey, and contract uncleanness by the contact (Num 19:16). It was therefore ordered that all sepulchres should be whitewashed a month before Passover, in order to make them conspicuous, so that travelers might avoid ceremonial defilement. The fact that this general whitewashing was going on at the time when Jesus administered this rebuke to the Pharisees gave point to the comparison. The word kekoniamenoiv (whitened, from koniv, dust) carries the idea of whitening with a powder, as powdered lime.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.