Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye pay tithes of mint and anise and cummin, and ye have left aside the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy and faith these ye ought to have done and not have left those aside.
Jesus is near the end of His public clash with the religious leaders of Jerusalem. He stops answering their questions and starts passing sentence. This fourth "woe" exposes a religion that counted garden seeds and ignored justice. It raises a question every careful religious person must face: how do you tell a small duty from a great one?
By this point in Matthew the arguing is over, and the tone changes from debate to verdict.
The pleadings were now closed — the Jews convicted and silenced. There was no counsellor among them who, when asked, could answer a word. As a religion and a nation, they stood condemned. The Lord then takes the place of a judge. He sets out the evidence against them, and pronounces the solemn sentence.
The charge is not that they broke the law openly. It is that they became specialists in its fine print.
They put forward the fine points of hair-splitting experts and neglected the essential things of God's law. They were exact about the smallest details of the tithes the law of Moses demanded. Yet they neglected justice, mercy, and faith — everything that truly mattered in the eyes of God.
These are not crops. They are kitchen herbs from a back garden. Cumin, for example, is "a plant yielding a small aromatic seed, used as a flavouring and for medicines" (Morrish Bible Dictionary). Even so, they measured out a tenth of it for God. (Older translations read "anise"; the ESV reads "dill".)
Their record on the herbs was flawless. That is what makes the gap glaring.
A claim to complete integrity could hardly go further than paying tithes on the very mint and anise and cumin, the least product of their fields. Yet on the other side, they failed entirely to give what they owed. The moral elements, the weightier matters of the law, were exactly the things that carried no weight with them. In such things they strained out the gnat with care, but they swallowed the camel with ease!
Justice, mercy and faithfulness are not vague virtues. Each one names something the leaders had dropped.
To them, fair judgment between good and evil did not matter at all next to tithing the smallest, most trivial items of income. They also ignored mercy toward others in need. And they forgot faith, the one principle of any true relationship with God. They should have stressed these things far more. Of course they should not have neglected the small things either — but small things should not have come first.
One writer traces these weighty matters back to the prophet Micah, and mercy is the one Jesus kept returning to.
I would judge the "weightier matters of the law" here to be a reference to Micah 6:8. There you find the principle… The Lord often pointed out in His talks that they did not understand mercy. "If you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless."
Why herbs rather than justice? Luke's account of the same woe names the root:
It was really the same root of self, fallen human nature under a religious veil. Why did they want to stand out from others like this? Others gave the tithes they honestly owed to God. The Pharisees seized on the tiniest points, which cost them little, and won credit from men no wiser than themselves. But they slighted judgment and the love of God.
Jesus does not cancel the tithing of herbs. He refuses to let it stand in for obedience.
We know the Lord has said, "One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much." And so we get, "These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others." We must not be careless about little things. But the Lord was speaking of reality. It did not cost them much to tithe the little herbs in their gardens, and they got a good name by it. They had their reward.
This is not a museum piece about an extinct group.
Their self-righteousness and piety consisted in being very careful about minor things, while they ignored the important matters altogether. They strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel. It is not different today. People make far too much of small, unimportant details in religious practice, and ignore the important matters.
- Weight — the whole verse turns on one word. The weightier matters of the law were, to these men, the things with no weight at all.
- Weight measured — God's scale weighs justice, mercy and faithfulness. Theirs weighed mint, dill and cumin, the smallest produce of a garden.
- Weight chosen — they picked the light duties because those were cheap and won them a good name. That is self wearing a religious veil.
- Weight kept — Jesus does not delete the small duty; He refuses to let it replace the great one. Do these, without neglecting those.
- Weight today — wherever people magnify small religious details and ignore the serious matters, they still strain out the gnat and swallow the camel.
Blind guides, who strain out the gnat, but drink down the camel.
Jesus is judging Israel's religious leaders, and He gives them a picture absurd enough to make a crowd laugh: men filter a tiny insect out of their drink, then swallow a camel. They were careful people, but the verse asks whether care about small religious rules can sit beside blindness to what God counts as weighty.
The image is a proverb, and its point is the gap between what people fuss over and what God values.
The proverb of a camel being swallowed when a gnat was carefully strained out, Matt. 23:24, shows how people can neglect the weightier precepts of God while paying great attention to trivial things.
Older Bibles read "strain at a gnat." The action is filtering a drink, not choking on it.
The Greek word here is thought to refer to any species of gnat or mosquito. Matt. 23:24 should read 'strain out' in contrast to 'swallowing.'
One writer works through the list of what they neglected: justice, mercy and faith.
Judging fairly between good and evil meant nothing to them next to tithing the smallest, least important items of income. They also ignored mercy toward people in need. And they forgot faith, the one principle of any true relationship with God... It is evident that blind guides are worse than none at all. But the Pharisees had no excuse. They could find the gnat and strain it out of their diet. Yet they never noticed the camel, and swallowed it.
Why be so exact about tiny garden herbs? One writer traces the choice back to its root.
It was really the same root of self, fallen human nature under a religious veil. Why did they want to stand out from everyone else? Others gave the tithes they honestly owed to God. The Pharisees seized on the tiniest points, which cost them little. They took credit for it in the eyes of men no wiser than themselves, but they slighted judgment and the love of God.
The title Jesus gives them is not "careless guides" but "blind guides" — a self-appointed authority with no sight.
Blind guides! They thought themselves guides, but did not know that they were blind.
Jesus does not tell them to stop tithing herbs. He tells them not to leave the other things undone. That balance matters.
The moral elements, the weightier matters of the law, were exactly the things that had no weight with them. They carefully strained out the gnat in such matters, but they easily swallowed the camel!
Another writer draws out the other half of the Lord's sentence, and warns against overcorrecting.
"These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others." We must not be careless about little things. But the Lord was speaking of reality. It did not cost them much to tithe the little herbs in their gardens, and they got a good name by it. They had their reward.
The same men proved this true at the trial of Jesus.
The religion of the flesh is always marked by straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. They had no scruple about staining their hands with the blood of the Innocent One. Yet, as John tells us, they would not go into Pilate's judgment hall. They feared defilement would keep them from eating the Passover.
One writer warns that zeal for detail can itself become the disobedience.
Nothing is so good and safe and pleasing to God as full and unquestioning obedience to His Word. It holds every instruction the man of God needs, as 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says. So we may disobey by going beyond it, just as we may by falling short of it. We can easily become a little fanciful. We think we are maintaining the testimony, or honouring the Lord, when we are only straining at gnats. And we end by swallowing the camel of clear disobedience to what the Word of God most plainly says.
- Strain — the picture is a filtered drink, not a choking man. They pick the gnat out; the camel goes down unnoticed.
- Weigh — justice, mercy and faith are what God weighs. With them, these carried no weight at all.
- Cost — they picked the points that cost little and won a good name. That name was their whole reward.
- Blind — they took the guide's place without the guide's eyes. Blind leaders are worse than no leaders at all.
- Swallow — the same men feared defilement at Pilate's door but not innocent blood. The danger returns whenever fuss over detail replaces obedience.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but within they are full of rapine and intemperance.
The Lord is partway through a series of "woes" spoken over the religious leaders of Israel. Here He picks a picture from an ordinary kitchen. A cup is scrubbed on the outside while what is inside stays foul. Can a life kept clean for public view ever satisfy the God who sees inside it?
Two words carry the charge: "greed and self-indulgence" (older translations read "extortion and excess"). One appetite reaches for what belongs to other people. The other reaches for its own pleasure. A spotless religious surface hid both.
The fifth woe rebukes the Pharisees for a purity that was only on the outside. They kept the correct forms of religion, while inside they were full of extortion and excess. They dealt dishonestly with others and gave themselves to lustful self-indulgence. So He tells them to clean the inside of the cup and dish first, since that matters most. Then He adds, "that the outside also may be clean." He does not mean that washing the inside of a cup makes its outside clean. He means that a clean outside follows when a person cleanses his inner motives. True spiritual cleansing inside will have a proper result outside.
The problem was not one bad habit. It ran through the whole system these men had built.
Whatever they claimed, their religion was a religion of the outside. Far from being clean, they were full of plunder and wickedness — they plundered others and were wicked themselves… They had forgotten Him. They cared only about what men could see. The Lord looks upon the heart. They did not think of this. Unbelief is always blind. Where things differ in importance, it fixes on the least important. The reason is clear: it seeks the praise of men and not that of God.
The clean outside was not just a failure to deal with the inside. It worked in the inside's favour.
They cleansed the cup and dish on the outside. Inside they could keep them full of plunder and indulgence. With a correct outside, they kept the lusts within and approved them.
A well-kept surface can satisfy an audience. The question is what God makes of it.
Is this going to satisfy God? He is not deceived. It deeply offends God when someone indulges evil in the heart and keeps a fair exterior. There is no real happiness apart from holiness… But we need to be holy inside. The word of God is our standard for judging everything… If the word of Christ lives in us richly, we should be quick to judge an evil thought. Believers know so little of spiritual joy because they leave these things unjudged.
This habit is not limited to one group. It grows where inward life is fading.
A soul that has drifted from God often keeps up the outward forms of religion, sometimes with even more zeal. As life decays, attention turns to rites and ceremonies. The soul deceives itself this way and slides into ignorance of its real condition. It loses all sense of its relationship with God and leans on performing the required ceremonies exactly. The Pharisees, for example, took great care to clean the outside of the cup and the dish. They were completely indifferent about being cleansed inside.
Behind the habit sits a hope: that a clean surface will make the heart clean, and that God will accept the result.
He hopes that cleaning the outside of the cup will make the inside clean. He wants to be "not like other men," to stand out by some superior religiousness and good works, and by these things make himself acceptable to God.
The rules the Pharisees loved could reach the rim of a cup and no further.
In the law there were many ceremonial defilements, each with its appointed purification. The scribes and Pharisees added more, such as washing the hands before eating, and washing cups and plates (Mark 7:2-8). They were very zealous about these things, while inside they were full of extortion and excess. In Christianity the purification required extends further: to the heart (Acts 15:9; James 4:8), to the soul (1 Peter 1:22), and to the conscience through the blood of Christ (Hebrews 9:14).
- Outside — They kept the correct forms of religion. The clean surface covered dishonest dealing with others and self-indulgence.
- Inside — The clean surface did more than leave the evil alone. It kept the lusts within and approved them.
- Deceived — Appearances satisfy onlookers. God is not deceived, and a fair exterior over an indulged heart offends Him.
- Decay — Zeal for forms rises as inward life falls. The soul then slides into ignorance of its true condition.
- Cleansed — The Lord's order is inside first. Real cleansing reaches heart, soul and conscience through the blood of Christ, and then shows on the outside.
Blind Pharisee, make clean first the inside of the cup and of the dish, that their outside also may become clean.
The fifth of the Lord's woes ends not with an accusation but with an instruction: start at the other end. He calls the man blind, tells him what to clean first, and adds a promise: deal with the inside, and the outside will follow.
The Pharisees were not careless. Their care ran the wrong way, and the Lord turns the order around.
The fifth woe condemns the outward purity the Pharisees put on. They kept up correct, formal religion, while inside they were full of extortion and excess — dishonest dealings with others, and lustful self-indulgence. So He tells them to clean the inside of the cup and plate first, which is by far the most important; but He adds, "that the outside also may be clean." He does not mean that literally washing the inside of a cup will make the outside clean. He means that a clean outside follows when a person cleanses his inner motives. True spiritual cleansing inwardly will have a proper outward result.
Cleaning only the outside of a vessel is not just incomplete work. It protects what is inside from any real change.
They cleaned the cup and dish on the outside; inside they could keep them full of plunder and self-indulgence. With a correct outside, they held on to the lusts within and approved them.
The concern behind it is how a man looks to others.
Next He exposes their effort to look right on the outside, whatever the impurity within. This showed in their work, and in their own lives and persons, which were full of deceit and self-will.
Washing the rim of a cup does nothing to the water it holds. The same holds in a person: the outside only shows what the heart is already producing.
The Pharisees made the outside of the cup and plate clean, but that did not cleanse the inside. What comes from within is what defiles a man. The stream was bitter because the fountain was bitter; and the fruit was bad because the tree was bad. The fountain of a man's defilement lies in his own heart. Going through a religious ritual could be of no value. Doing that alone only made men hypocrites. The Pharisees could wear an appearance of holiness and goodness like an outer garment — and they had — while the seat of the disease stayed untouched.
A clean outside may satisfy onlookers. God is another matter.
Is this going to satisfy God? He is not deceived. Giving in to evil in the heart while keeping a fair outside offends God deeply. There is no real happiness apart from holiness. God was living among them, so He required holiness. But we need to be holy inside, and we have the word of God as our standard to judge everything by.
Since the trouble is inside, the cure cannot be a change of clothes.
The cleansing is not an outward change, as a Pharisee might cover the blackest of hearts with a white robe and blue fringe; but an inward work that truly judges evil and forms new desires. The man must be born again.
Where faith is real, the cleansing reaches both sides of the vessel. That is the promise in the second half of the verse.
This faith cleanses within; it makes the inside of the cup and plate clean. It also beautifies the outside; it makes the outward conduct and the inner motive clean. So the man, if his faith is true and real, becomes from then on a different man from what he was before.
A dish exists to be used. That is where this lands for the reader today.
You and I — and we want to make this practical — would rather drink from a clean penny clay mug than from a filthy gold goblet covered with diamonds. So we get in 2 Timothy 2, "If anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel... useful to the master of the house." There is something very blessed in this. I, a poor weak thing, yet He will stoop to use me if I am clean!
- Blindness. The Pharisees kept the outside correct while they held on to the lusts within. It was a double life, with the polished surface guarding the filth it hid.
- Fountain. Scrubbing the rim never reached the water. The stream was bitter because the fountain was bitter, and outward religion left the seat of the disease untouched.
- First. The Lord's word "first" turns the order around. Cleanse the inner motives, and a proper outward result follows.
- Inside. That inner cleansing is not a white robe over a black heart. It is an inward work that judges evil and forms new desires. The man must be born again.
- Useful. A clean penny mug beats a filthy jewelled goblet: the clean vessel is the one the Master will use.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye are like whited sepulchres, which appear beautiful outwardly, but within are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.
Jesus is partway through a series of woes against the religious leaders of Israel, and this one moves from what they did to what they were. He points to a grave: bright on the outside, full of death inside.
Each woe cuts deeper than the last. One writer places this one in the series:
In the third woe, He had condemned their corrupt teaching. Here, in the fourth, He condemns their corrupt practice, and, in the next, we get, under a correct exterior, the corrupt affections of the natural heart. Again, they were more anxious to appear right before men than to be right before God. It was outward paint to cover inward pollution. The grass grown green on the sides of the volcano, snow lying white on a manure heap.
The verse says the inside is full of uncleanness. Another writer names what filled it:
They worked hard at outward cleanness, while they were full of robbery and excess. If they could only look righteous on the outside, they were not afraid to be full of hypocrisy and lawlessness within.
A whitewashed tomb holds a corpse, not just dirt. Israel had plenty of religious activity. One writer describes what the Lord saw under it:
This could not deceive the eyes of the Holy One who searches the heart. There was much outward religion: a careful round of fasting, of tithing, of holy days. But in all of it there was nothing for God, no fruit of divine life. There was good reason to call the Pharisees, the religious and orthodox leaders, "whitewashed tombs" (Matt. 23:27) and unmarked "graves" (Luke 11:44) — homes of death, like the body when the spirit has left it.
People choose outward religion for a reason. It costs them no change of heart, and it pays well in reputation:
Outward things are easy to do. Man likes to make his religion of them, because they do not need a pure heart. He likes to do them, to exalt himself, and to set himself apart from others in doing them. By them man boasts of great piety in front of other men, and gains a great reputation for it. But he can be bad at the same time. These outward acts do not bring him into the presence of God, who searches the heart. By these acts man is religious without possessing holiness, and he finds that this just suits him. Pharisees did not exist only in our Lord's time; they are found in every age.
This danger is not only for the Pharisees. One writer turns the warning toward believers:
A grave might be walked over without anyone knowing it. The grave is a heart that chooses to hide its inner corruption beneath a fair exterior. Such were the Pharisees whom the Lord blamed. And what crowds of God's children meet such graves in daily life! They accept the principles of the world's religion, and settle for a religion of forms that the state of their heart in no way matches. Sad to say, a grave may defile a Christian. He may also be, in this sense, a hypocrite himself.
The remedy is not a fresh coat of paint. One writer met the same excuse in the form of church membership:
A lady in Florida told me the other day that a man could live in drunkenness and immorality — anything he liked — if only he belonged to a church. That whitewashes him. But remember, to whitewash is not to wash white. People whitewashed the tombs of the dead, and they still do it today in a moral sense. But only the blood of Jesus washes white — yes, whiter than snow.
- Paint. This woe hits religion built for men to see: outward paint over inward pollution, snow lying white on a manure heap.
- Death. Behind the paint is a corpse, not just dirt: careful fasting, tithing and holy days, with no fruit of divine life in any of it.
- Appeal. Outward religion is popular because it costs no purity of heart and wins a name among men. It never brings anyone into God's presence.
- Contagion. A grave defiles those who touch it. A believer who settles for a religion of forms can become such a grave himself.
- Cleansing. To whitewash is not to wash white. Only the blood of Jesus reaches what the outside hides.
Thus also *ye*, outwardly ye appear righteous to men, but within are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Jesus is speaking a series of woes against the scribes and Pharisees. Here He names the charge: the outside looked right to people, while the inside stayed untouched. Two questions follow — what is hypocrisy, and what does God look at?
One writer defines hypocrisy by its two directions at once:
This opens the way for "hypocrisies" — pretending to be what we are not, and pretending not to be what we are. Hypocrisy is the opposite of sincerity. It is simply playing a part in something that is a mere fable, if it is not the most solemn of realities and the most precious. How awful to make the truth of God a man's game for a little while!
The woes come in an order. One writer traces the movement from corrupt teaching, to corrupt practice, to the heart behind both:
In the third woe, He had condemned their corrupt teaching. Here, in the fourth, He condemns their corrupt practice. In the next, we get the corrupt affections of the natural heart under a correct exterior. Again, they were more anxious to appear right before men than to be right before God. It was outward paint to cover inward pollution. Grass growing green on the sides of a volcano; snow lying white on a manure heap.
The tomb picture from the previous verse carries into this one. One writer applies it past the Pharisees, to believers who meet such graves every day:
The Lord uses the picture of a tomb to show the hypocrisy of a heart. It looks pleasant on the outside, while inside it is full of dead men's bones and every kind of uncleanness. The grave is a heart that hides its inner corruption on purpose, under a fair exterior. Such were the Pharisees whom the Lord blamed. And how many of God's children meet such graves in daily life! They take on the principles of the world's religion. They settle for a religion of forms that the state of the heart in no way matches. Sadly, a grave can defile a Christian. He may also be, in this sense, a hypocrite himself. The apostle Paul had avoided such uncleanness. He did not seek the approval of men, but of God. He said, "What we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience." (2 Cor. 5:11.)
The verse says they were full of something. One writer names six of the evils inside, and marks them as sins of the mind rather than of the body:
These six offences — covetousness, deceit, lust, an evil eye, pride, foolishness — are closely tied to the inward workings of the human heart. If the others previously named may be described as the lusts of the flesh, these are the desires of the mind (Eph. 2:3); if they illustrated the filthiness of the flesh, these show the filthiness of the spirit (2 Cor. 7:1). These inward tendencies are the dead bones. They are the uncleanness of the hypocrisy and iniquity inside the whitewashed tombs the Lord spoke of in another place (Matt. 23:27-28).
These men did look righteous. The problem was whose praise they wanted:
The New Testament often describes the Pharisees and scribes as men whose religious activity was only for show (Mark 12:40), done in front of people. They loved and sought the praise of men more than the praise of God (John 5:44; 12:43). Hypocrisy — the effort to appear better than one really is — was the great sin of the Pharisees. This is why the Lord Jesus speaks of the leaven of the Pharisees as of something totally evil (Luke 12:1). Their righteousness was only an outward one and had no value before God.
The remedy is not a better outside:
The outside should be the true sign of the inside. When it is not, we are leavened with Pharisaism — hypocrisy. … Let us be honest with God and ourselves.
Another writer points to where that honesty comes from:
Whenever we are living before men, instead of before God, there will be restlessness and disquiet. There may be the desire to do many things that are written in the word, but they will not be done in quiet and peaceful joy. Nothing keeps us from hypocrisy except living before God. It is the very best possible cure for the excessive conceit that all of us naturally have of ourselves.
- Outside — hypocrisy is playing a part: pretending to be what we are not, and hiding what we are.
- Inside — the bones under the paint come from the heart itself: covetousness, deceit, pride, an evil eye.
- Audience — they wanted praise from men, not from God, so their righteousness was outward only and worth nothing to Him.
- Contagion — a grave defiles those who cross it. A believer can take in a religion of forms and become a hypocrite too.
- Cure — living before God, not before men, is what keeps the outside a true sign of the inside.