Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!The word "woe" in Greek is "ouai," a term expressing deep sorrow or denunciation. It is a prophetic lamentation, often used in the Old Testament to pronounce judgment. Here, Jesus uses it to express both grief and condemnation towards the religious leaders. The "scribes and Pharisees" were the religious elite, known for their strict adherence to the law. However, Jesus calls them "hypocrites," from the Greek "hypokritēs," meaning actors or pretenders. This highlights their outward show of piety, which masks their inner moral and spiritual corruption. You give a tenth of your mint, dill, and cumin
The practice of tithing, or giving a tenth, is rooted in the Old Testament (Leviticus 27:30). "Mint, dill, and cumin" are small garden herbs, indicating the Pharisees' meticulousness in tithing even the smallest produce. This reflects their legalistic approach to the law, focusing on minute details while missing the broader, more significant principles. The emphasis on these herbs underscores their misplaced priorities, valuing ritual precision over genuine righteousness. but you have disregarded the more important matters of the law justice, mercy, and faithfulness
The phrase "more important matters of the law" points to the weightier, foundational principles that underpin the entire law. "Justice" (Greek: "krisis") refers to fairness and righteousness in dealing with others, a central theme in the prophetic writings (Micah 6:8). "Mercy" (Greek: "eleos") is the compassionate treatment of others, a reflection of God's own character (Hosea 6:6). "Faithfulness" (Greek: "pistis") implies loyalty and trustworthiness, both towards God and fellow humans. These virtues are the essence of the law, reflecting God's heart and intention for His people. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former
Jesus acknowledges the importance of tithing ("the former") but emphasizes that it should not overshadow the "latter"—justice, mercy, and faithfulness. The Greek word for "practiced" is "poieō," meaning to do or to make, suggesting active engagement in these virtues. This statement calls for a balanced approach, where external religious practices are harmonized with internal moral and spiritual integrity. Jesus advocates for a holistic faith that encompasses both the letter and the spirit of the law, urging believers to embody God's love and righteousness in all aspects of life. Persons / Places / Events 1. ScribesJewish scholars and teachers of the Law who were responsible for copying and interpreting the Scriptures. They were influential in religious and legal matters. 2. PhariseesA religious and political group known for strict adherence to the Law and traditions. They were often criticized by Jesus for their hypocrisy and legalism. 3. JesusThe central figure of the New Testament, who is addressing the religious leaders in this passage, highlighting their hypocrisy and misplaced priorities. 4. TithingThe practice of giving a tenth of one's income or produce, which was a requirement under the Mosaic Law. Here, it refers to the meticulous tithing of small herbs. 5. Justice, Mercy, and FaithfulnessThese are described as the "weightier matters of the law," emphasizing the moral and ethical demands of the Law over ritualistic practices. Teaching Points Prioritizing the Heart of the LawThe essence of God's commandments is found in justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Believers should focus on these core values rather than merely external observances. Avoiding HypocrisyTrue righteousness is not about outward appearances but about aligning one's heart and actions with God's will. We must examine our motives and ensure they reflect genuine faith. Balancing Law and GraceWhile following religious practices is important, they should not overshadow the greater call to love and serve others. Both should be practiced in harmony. Reflecting Christ's CharacterAs followers of Christ, we are called to embody His character, which includes being just, merciful, and faithful in all our dealings. Self-ExaminationRegularly assess whether your religious practices are leading you closer to God and others or if they have become empty rituals. Bible Study Questions 1. How can we ensure that our religious practices do not become mere rituals but reflect the heart of God's law? 2. In what ways can we practice justice, mercy, and faithfulness in our daily lives, and how do these practices reflect our relationship with God? 3. How does the message of Matthew 23:23 challenge our understanding of what it means to live a righteous life? 4. What are some modern-day examples of focusing on minor religious details while neglecting the more important aspects of faith? 5. How can we apply the principles of justice, mercy, and faithfulness in our interactions within our communities and workplaces? Connections to Other Scriptures Micah 6:8This verse emphasizes what the Lord requires: to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God, paralleling the "weightier matters" Jesus mentions. Hosea 6:6God desires mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings, highlighting the priority of inner righteousness over external rituals. Matthew 9:13Jesus quotes Hosea, emphasizing mercy over sacrifice, reinforcing the message of prioritizing compassion and understanding. Luke 11:42A parallel passage where Jesus similarly rebukes the Pharisees for neglecting justice and the love of God while being meticulous about tithing. People Abel, Barachias, Berechiah, Hen, Jesus, Zachariah, Zacharias, ZechariahPlaces JerusalemTopics FALSE, Anise, Aside, Behoved, Cumin, Cummin, Curse, Dealing, Dill, Faith, Faithful, Faithfulness, Former, Hypocrites, Important, Judgement, Judgment, Justice, Kindness, Latter, Law, Leave, Matters, Mercy, Mint, Neglect, Neglected, Neglecting, Omitted, Ones, Ought, Pay, Pharisees, Plants, Practiced, Provisions, Requirements, Righteousness, Scribes, Sorts, Spices, Sweet-smelling, Teachers, Tenth, Tithe, Tithes, Undone, Weightier, Wo, Woe, YetDictionary of Bible Themes Matthew 23:23 1025 God, anger of
1657 numbers, fractions
2042 Christ, justice of
2333 Christ, attitude to OT
4466 herbs and spices
5037 mind, of Christ
5360 justice, God
5361 justice, human
6021 sin, nature of
6691 mercy, human
7402 offerings
7540 Judaism
7551 Pharisees, beliefs
8142 religion
8245 ethics, incentives
8252 faithfulness, relationships
8306 mercifulness
8409 decision-making, and providence
8488 tithing
8774 legalism
8783 neglect
8844 unforgiveness Matthew 23:1-32 8767 hypocrisy Matthew 23:1-33 5381 law, letter and spirit
8749 false teachers Matthew 23:1-36 5379 law, Christ's attitude
7552 Pharisees, attitudes to Christ Matthew 23:2-33 7464 teachers of the law Matthew 23:13-33 9250 woe Matthew 23:13-39 2318 Christ, as prophet Matthew 23:23-24 8824 self-righteousness, nature of Matthew 23:23-26 8307 moderation Matthew 23:23-28 8761 fools, in teaching of Christ Matthew 23:23-33 2009 Christ, anger of
5943 self-deception Library The Morality of the Gospel.
Is stating the morality of the Gospel as an argument of its truth, I am willing to admit two points; first, that the teaching of morality was not the primary design of the mission; secondly, that morality, neither in the Gospel, nor in any other book, can be a subject, properly speaking, of discovery. If I were to describe in a very few words the scope of Christianity as a revelation, [49] I should say that it was to influence the conduct of human life, by establishing the proof of a future state …
William Paley—Evidences of ChristianityJesus' Last Public Discourse. Denunciation of Scribes and Pharisees.
(in the Court of the Temple. Tuesday, April 4, a.d. 30.) ^A Matt. XXIII. 1-39; ^B Mark XII. 38-40; ^C Luke XX. 45-47. ^a 1 Then spake Jesus ^b 38 And in his teaching ^c in the hearing of all the people he said unto ^a the multitudes, and to his disciples [he spoke in the most public manner], 2 saying, ^c 46 Beware of the scribes, ^a The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat: 3 all things whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe: but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel Christianity Misunderstood by Believers.
Meaning of Christian Doctrine, Understood by a Minority, has Become Completely Incomprehensible for the Majority of Men-- Reason of this to be Found in Misinterpretation of Christianity and Mistaken Conviction of Believers and Unbelievers Alike that they Understand it--The Meaning of Christianity Obscured for Believers by the Church--The First Appearance of Christ's Teaching--Its Essence and Difference from Heathen Religions-- Christianity not Fully Comprehended at the Beginning, Became More and …
Leo Tolstoy—The Kingdom of God is within you First Attempts on Jerusalem.
Jesus, almost every year, went to Jerusalem for the feast of the passover. The details of these journeys are little known, for the synoptics do not speak of them,[1] and the notes of the fourth Gospel are very confused on this point.[2] It was, it appears, in the year 31, and certainly after the death of John, that the most important of the visits of Jesus to Jerusalem took place. Many of the disciples followed him. Although Jesus attached from that time little value to the pilgrimage, he conformed …
Ernest Renan—The Life of Jesus For which Cause Our Lord Himself Also with his Own Mouth Saith...
4. For which cause our Lord Himself also with His own mouth saith, "Cleanse what are within, and what are without will be clean." [1813] And, also, in another place, when He was refuting the foolish speeches of the Jews, in that they spake evil against His disciples, eating with unwashen hands; "Not what entereth into the mouth," said He, "defileth the man: but what cometh forth out of the mouth, that defileth the man." [1814] Which sentence, if the whole of it be taken of the mouth of the body, …
St. Augustine—On Continence Relation of the Pharisees to the Sadducees and Essenes, and to the Gospel of Christ
On taking a retrospective view of Pharisaism, as we have described it, there is a saying of our Lord which at first sight seems almost unaccountable. Yet it is clear and emphatic. "All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do" (Matt 23:3). But if the early disciples were not to break at once and for ever with the Jewish community, such a direction was absolutely needful. For, though the Pharisees were only "an order," Pharisaism, like modern Ultramontanism, had not only become …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life Among the People, and with the Pharisees
It would have been difficult to proceed far either in Galilee or in Judaea without coming into contact with an altogether peculiar and striking individuality, differing from all around, and which would at once arrest attention. This was the Pharisee. Courted or feared, shunned or flattered, reverently looked up to or laughed at, he was equally a power everywhere, both ecclesiastically and politically, as belonging to the most influential, the most zealous, and the most closely-connected religions …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life The General Service to a Prophet.
At the Vespers, for O Lord, I have cried, the Stichera, Tone 4. Similar to: Called from above... Thou that hast in the purity of thy mind received the reflex of the God-emitted light and wast the herald of the divine words and seer and divine prophet, thou appearedst as the God-moved mouth of the Spirit, conveying that which was shewn by Him unto thee, O all-honoured (mentioned by name), and declaring unto all the peoples the salvation that was being granted and the Kingdom of Christ; do entreat …
Anonymous—The General Menaion Of the Power of Making Laws. The Cruelty of the Pope and his Adherents, in this Respect, in Tyrannically Oppressing and Destroying Souls.
1. The power of the Church in enacting laws. This made a source of human traditions. Impiety of these traditions. 2. Many of the Papistical traditions not only difficult, but impossible to be observed. 3. That the question may be more conveniently explained, nature of conscience must be defined. 4. Definition of conscience explained. Examples in illustration of the definition. 5. Paul's doctrine of submission to magistrates for conscience sake, gives no countenance to the Popish doctrine of the obligation …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion Hints to Teachers and Questions for Pupils
Teacher's Apparatus.--English theology has no juster cause for pride than the books it has produced on the Life of Paul. Perhaps there is no other subject in which it has so outdistanced all rivals. Conybeare and Howson's Life and Epistles of St. Paul will probably always keep the foremost place; in many respects it is nearly perfect; and a teacher who has mastered it will be sufficiently equipped for his work and require no other help. The works of Lewin and Farrar are written on the same lines; …
James Stalker et al—The Life of St. Paul On Attending the Church Service
"The sin of the young men was very great." 1 Sam. 2:17. 1. The corruption, not only of the heathen world, but likewise of them that were called Christians, has been matter of sorrow and lamentation to pious men, almost from the time of the apostles. And hence, as early as the second century, within a hundred years of St. John's removal from the earth, men who were afraid of being partakers of other men's sins, thought it their duty to separate from them. Hence, in every age many have retired from …
John Wesley—Sermons on Several Occasions Machinations of the Enemies of Jesus.
Jesus passed the autumn and a part of the winter at Jerusalem. This season is there rather cold. The portico of Solomon, with its covered aisles, was the place where he habitually walked.[1] This portico consisted of two galleries, formed by three rows of columns, and covered by a ceiling of carved wood.[2] It commanded the valley of Kedron, which was doubtless less covered with debris than it is at the present time. The depth of the ravine could not be measured, from the height of the portico; and …
Ernest Renan—The Life of Jesus The Early Ministry in Judea
113. We owe to the fourth gospel our knowledge of the fact that Jesus began his general ministry in Jerusalem. The silence of the other records concerning this beginning cannot discredit the testimony of John. For these other records themselves indicate in various ways that Jesus had repeatedly sought to win Jerusalem before his final visit at the end of his life (compare Luke xiii. 34; Matt. xxiii. 37). Moreover, the fourth gospel is confirmed by the probability, rising almost to necessity, that …
Rush Rhees—The Life of Jesus of Nazareth The Crossing of the Jordan
THE CROSSING OF THE JORDAN Just how did you feel at the time you were sanctified? I have heard some tell of how the holy fire of the Spirit seemed to go all through them. Others have told of a deeper, more complete peace. Some have shouted for joy. Others have wept for joy. And I am wondering how one ought to feel. Can you tell me? And how can I know that I am consecrated? Every teacher of entire sanctification that I ever heard says that the consecration must be complete; but how am I to know when …
Robert Lee Berry—Adventures in the Land of Canaan Subjects of Study. Home Education in Israel; Female Education. Elementary Schools, Schoolmasters, and School Arrangements.
If a faithful picture of society in ancient Greece or Rome were to be presented to view, it is not easy to believe that even they who now most oppose the Bible could wish their aims success. For this, at any rate, may be asserted, without fear of gainsaying, that no other religion than that of the Bible has proved competent to control an advanced, or even an advancing, state of civilisation. Every other bound has been successively passed and submerged by the rising tide; how deep only the student …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life Letter Xliv Concerning the Maccabees but to whom Written is Unknown.
Concerning the Maccabees But to Whom Written is Unknown. [69] He relies to the question why the Church has decreed a festival to the Maccabees alone of all the righteous under the ancient law. 1. Fulk, Abbot of Epernay, had already written to ask me the same question as your charity has addressed to your humble servant by Brother Hescelin. I have put off replying to him, being desirous to find, if possible, some statement in the Fathers about this which was asked, which I might send to him, rather …
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux—Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux Number and Order of the Separate Books.
The number of the books was variously estimated. Josephus gives twenty-two, which was the usual number among Christian writers in the second, third, and fourth centuries, having been derived perhaps from the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Origen, Jerome, and others have it. It continued longest among the teachers of the Greek Church, and is even in Nicephorus's stichometry.(83) The enumeration in question has Ruth with Judges, and Lamentations with Jeremiah. In Epiphanius(84) the number twenty-seven …
Samuel Davidson—The Canon of the Bible Elucidations.
I. (Who first propounded these heresies, p. 11.) Hippolytus seems to me to have felt the perils to the pure Gospel of many admissions made by Clement and other Alexandrian doctors as to the merits of some of the philosophers of the Gentiles. Very gently, but with prescient genius, he adopts this plan of tracing the origin and all the force of heresies to "philosophy falsely so called." The existence of this "cloud of locusts" is (1) evidence of the antagonism of Satan; (2) of the prophetic spirit …
Hippolytus.—The Refutation of All Heresies "The Carnal Mind is Enmity against God for it is not Subject to the Law of God, Neither Indeed Can Be. So Then they that Are
Rom. viii. s 7, 8.--"The carnal mind is enmity against God for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." It is not the least of man's evils, that he knows not how evil he is, therefore the Searcher of the heart of man gives the most perfect account of it, Jer. xvii. 12. "The heart is deceitful above all things," as well as "desperately wicked," two things superlative and excessive in it, bordering upon an infiniteness, such …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning We are not Binding Heavy Burdens and Laying them Upon Your Shoulders...
37. We are not binding heavy burdens and laying them upon your shoulders, while we with a finger will not touch them. Seek out, and acknowledge the labor of our occupations, and in some of us the infirmities of our bodies also, and in the Churches which we serve, that custom now grown up, that they do not suffer us to have time ourselves for those works to which we exhort you. For though we might say, "Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the …
St. Augustine—Of the Work of Monks. Repentance and Impenitence.
In the discussion of this subject I shall show,-- I. What repentance is not. 1. The Bible everywhere represents repentance as a virtue, and as constituting a change of moral character; consequently, it cannot be a phenomenon of the intelligence: that is, it cannot consist in conviction of sin, nor in any intellectual apprehension of our guilt or ill-desert. All the states or phenomena of the intelligence are purely passive states of mind, and of course moral character, strictly speaking, cannot be …
Charles Grandison Finney—Systematic Theology Second Sunday after Trinity Exhortation to Brotherly Love.
Text: 1 John 3, 13-18. 13 Marvel not, brethren, if the world hateth you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death. 15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. 16 Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoso hath the world's goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. III Links Matthew 23:23 NIVMatthew 23:23 NLTMatthew 23:23 ESVMatthew 23:23 NASBMatthew 23:23 KJV
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