Matthew 23
Jesus is in the temple courts in the last week of His life, and this is His final public discourse before the cross. He turns to the crowds and to His own disciples and speaks about the scribes and Pharisees - the recognized teachers and interpreters of the law. He does not deny their seat of authority; He says plainly, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do (vv. 2-3). The problem is not the law they teach. The problem is the gap between their words and their lives: but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. They bind heavy burdens on others and will not lift a finger to help carry them; they widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels to be seen; they love the best seats and the public greetings and the title Rabbi.3
Against the whole hungry pull toward status, Jesus sets one rule that quietly dismantles it: But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren… he that is greatest among you shall be your servant (vv. 8-11). Then He pronounces a series of woes - the cry Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! falling again and again like a tolling bell. He is not raging at a people; He is exposing a way of being religious. They shut up the kingdom and will not go in; they devour widows' houses behind long prayers; they cross sea and land to make a convert and make him worse; they are blind guides straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel, scrubbing the outside of the cup while it is foul within, beautiful as whitewashed tombs and full of death inside.
But the chapter does not end where the woes leave it. After the thunder comes grief. Jesus speaks of the prophets sent and slain across the generations, and then His voice breaks open into lament over the city He came to save: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! (v. 37). The same lips that pronounced the woes now ache with longing. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate (v. 38) - and yet the very last word is not the closing of a door but a promise that it may yet open: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord (v. 39).2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.

Matthew 23:1-12They Say, and Do Not
1Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, 2Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: 3All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. 4For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. 5But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, 6And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, 7And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. 8But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. 9And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. 10Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. 11But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. 12And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.
The discourse opens with a careful, even-handed word. Jesus does not begin by attacking the scribes and Pharisees as persons; He begins by granting them their place: The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do (vv. 2-3). To sit in Moses' seat was to occupy the recognized office of teaching and interpreting the law of Moses to the people. Jesus tells the crowd to do what these teachers say when they faithfully pass on the law - the office itself is not the trouble. The trouble lands in the very next clause: but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. Here is the wound at the center of the whole chapter, named in five plain words. The fault is not bad doctrine but a fatal gap - a life that contradicts the lips, teaching one thing and living another. It is a danger no office can shield a person from, and one to which every teacher of God's word, in every age, is exposed.3
Jesus presses the charge into something the crowd can feel: For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers (v. 4). The picture is of a packer loading a beast or a labourer past what it can carry - and then standing back, unwilling to ease the weight by so much as a fingertip. Their rules multiply on other people; their compassion does not. Then He names the engine driving it all: all their works they do for to be seen of men (v. 5). The whole performance is aimed at an audience. They make broad their phylacteries - the small leather cases holding Scripture, worn larger so the devotion would show - and enlarge the borders of their garments, lengthening the tassels meant to remind a person of God's commands. Even the marks of piety become props. The aim has quietly shifted from being godly to looking godly, and once that shift is made, every good thing can be bent to serve the watching eye.
The hunger to be seen reaches for its rewards: And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi (vv. 6-7). Notice how ordinary and how human this list is. It is not gross wickedness; it is the love of being important - the best place at the table, the front seat in the assembly, the deferential greeting in the public square, the honored title repeated. Jesus puts His finger on the appetite that hides inside respectable religion: the craving for status, for recognition, for a name. It is the same appetite that lives in every human heart, dressed here in religious clothes. And it is precisely against this appetite - not against the law, not against reverence, but against the love of being exalted - that He now sets a single, dismantling rule.
Jesus answers the whole craving for status with one rule, stated three ways: be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren… Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant (vv. 8-11). The point is not a wooden ban on every title - Scripture itself calls some men fathers and teachers. The point is the dismantling of a whole way of relating to one another. If there is one Master and one heavenly Father, then no follower stands above another as a little lord; all ye are brethren. The ladder everyone was climbing simply collapses. And then He inverts the entire economy of honor: he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted (vv. 11-12). In the kingdom, greatness is not measured by who is served but by who serves; the way up is down. It is the precise reversal of everything the scribes and Pharisees were chasing - and, as the chapter will show, it is the way of the One who spoke it.
Matthew 23:13-22Ye Shut Up the Kingdom · Blind Guides
13But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. 14Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. 15Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. 16Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! 17Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? 18And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. 19Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? 20Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. 21And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. 22And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.
The woes begin, and the first cuts deepest, because it names the worst possible damage a religious teacher can do: woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in (v. 13). The men entrusted with the keys of God's word have used them to lock the door. They will not enter the kingdom themselves, and - worse - they stand in the doorway and block those who were on their way in. This is the tragedy of teaching that obscures rather than reveals: people who came hungry for God are turned away by the very ones meant to bring them near. The word hypocrite tolls over this and every woe that follows - the actor's mask now fixed firmly in place - and it sets the key for the whole passage.1 The charge is grave, and Jesus does not soften it; but its target is exact - this teaching, this blocking, this hollow performance - not the people standing in the doorway longing to get in.
The second and third woes expose what the religious performance costs the vulnerable. Woe unto you… for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation (v. 14). A widow in that world was among the most defenseless of people, with no husband to protect her property or her future. To devour her house was to consume the little she had - and to do it under cover of piety, with long prayer as the respectable front. Few things in the Gospels draw a sharper word from Jesus than religion that preys on the weak while looking holy. Then the third: ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves (v. 15). The zeal is real - they will cross sea and land for a single convert. But the thing they pass on is their own corruption, doubled. Energy and effort are not the issue; the issue is what is being reproduced. A counterfeit, eagerly multiplied, only spreads the counterfeit.
The fourth woe turns to a tangle the scribes had spun around the swearing of oaths: Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! (v. 16). They had built an elaborate system sorting oaths into binding and non-binding - swear by the temple and you may wriggle out; swear by its gold and you are held. The practical effect was a machinery for evasion: a way to sound solemn while leaving yourself an escape. Jesus cuts straight through it with a child's logic: ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? (v. 17). The gold is only holy because the temple makes it so; the gift only sacred because the altar consecrates it. And ultimately every oath reaches past the object to God Himself - he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon (v. 22). You cannot invoke the lesser thing to dodge the greater One who stands behind it. The whole scheme was an exercise in missing the point on purpose - which is exactly why He calls them blind guides: men leading others while unable to see what is plainly there.3
It is worth pausing on the phrase Jesus keeps reaching for: blind guides (v. 16), fools and blind (vv. 17, 19). A guide's one essential qualification is sight - he is trusted precisely because he can see the road others cannot. A blind guide is therefore a contradiction that endangers everyone who follows. The image gathers up the whole indictment of the chapter: these are not wicked outsiders but trusted leaders, and the catastrophe is that the people entrusted with sight have lost it - straining over the precise wording of an oath while blind to the God it invokes. Jesus had warned elsewhere that if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch (Matt. 15:14). The danger named here is not ignorance in the pew but blindness in the pulpit - confident teaching that leads confidently in the wrong direction. And the only remedy is the One who came so that they which see not might see (John 9:39): sight given by Him to guides and followers alike.
Matthew 23:23-33Within Full of Dead Men's Bones
23Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. 24Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. 25Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. 26Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. 27Woe 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. 28Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. 29Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, 30And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. 31Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. 32Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. 33Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
This woe states the whole problem with a precision worth dwelling on: ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith (v. 23). They were scrupulous to the last leaf - tithing even the tiny garden herbs, the mint and dill and cumin from the kitchen plot. That zeal for detail is not what Jesus condemns. What He condemns is what the detail crowded out: the weightier matters of the law - judgment, mercy, and faith. Justice for the wronged, mercy for the hurting, faithfulness toward God - the great load-bearing beams of the law - had been quietly dropped while the herb-tithes were counted leaf by leaf. And notice how carefully Jesus speaks: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. He does not sneer at the small obediences; He says do them - but not at the cost of the great ones. The fault is a sense of proportion gone catastrophically wrong: meticulous about the trivial, careless about the things that matter most to God.
Jesus crystallizes the whole distortion in one unforgettable image: Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel (v. 24). The picture is deliberately absurd, and meant to make the hearer laugh and wince at once. A scrupulous person would filter his drink through a cloth to avoid swallowing a tiny unclean insect - the gnat - and in the same gulp swallow a camel, the largest unclean animal he knew, and the funniest thing imaginable to choke down. That is what misplaced religious zeal looks like from the outside: enormous care spent screening out the microscopic, total blindness to the monstrous going down whole. The diagnosis is not that they cared too much but that they cared about the wrong sizes of thing. It is a mercy that Jesus draws it as comedy, because the temptation is so easy to fall into and so hard to see from inside. We are all capable of filtering gnats while camels slide past - agonizing over a small scruple while a great injustice or a hard heart goes unnoticed.
Two images now drive the charge home, and both work the same way - a fair surface over a foul interior. First the cup: ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess (v. 25). A dish scrubbed bright on the outside and filthy within is worse than useless; whatever you pour into it is defiled. Then the tomb: ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness (v. 27). Tombs were whitewashed so that no one would brush against them unawares and be defiled by contact with death - the whitewash was a warning sign. Jesus turns the image inside out: their gleaming exterior is a whitewashed warning that there is death inside. He says it plainly: outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity (v. 28). This is the actor's mask in its starkest form - a beautiful face painted over a grave. The whole burden of the chapter gathers here: God looks not on the gleaming outside but on what is within, and a clean surface over a corrupt heart is not piety but its most dangerous counterfeit.
The last woe is the most searching, because it exposes a self-deception the men could not see in themselves: ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets (vv. 29-30). They honor the dead prophets with fine monuments and assure themselves they would never have joined the killing. But Jesus turns their own words into testimony against them: Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets (v. 31). By calling the murderers their fathers, they confess whose line they are in - and they are about to do to the greatest Prophet what their fathers did to the rest. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers (v. 32) - a grave, prophetic word, for within days they would. Then the sharpest language in the chapter: Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? (v. 33). It is the language of a prophet confronting deadly self-deception - not the casual dismissal of a people, but a last, alarming attempt to break through to men persuaded of their own righteousness while heading toward the very sin they condemned. Even here, the door is not slammed; the question how can ye escape still hangs in the air, as if pleading for an answer.
Matthew 23:34-39O Jerusalem, Jerusalem
34Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: 35That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. 36Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. 37O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! 38Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. 39For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
Before the lament, one more solemn word about the long story Jerusalem keeps repeating: Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city (v. 34). God will keep sending messengers; the pattern is that they keep being rejected, and worse. Then Jesus reaches back across the whole sweep of Scripture: from the blood of righteous Abel - the first murder, in Genesis - unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar (v. 35). From the first righteous man slain to the last martyr named in the Hebrew Scriptures, the long account of rejected messengers is being summed up. All these things shall come upon this generation (v. 36). It is the gravest of warnings - but read it carefully, for it is a charge against a pattern of violence toward God's messengers, a refusal that runs from Cain onward, not a verdict against a people for being who they are. The very next breath will reveal what is actually in the heart of the One pronouncing it.2
And now the thunder of the woes breaks into tears. The voice that has been pronouncing judgment suddenly aches: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! (v. 37). The repeated name - Jerusalem, Jerusalem - is the cry of grief, the way you say a name you love when your heart is breaking over it. And the image He reaches for is not a lion or a judge but a mother bird: a hen spreading her wings to gather her chicks beneath her, to cover them, to shelter them from every danger with her own body. That is what He says He longed to do, and not once but again and again - how often. Across all the generations of sent prophets, the heart behind the sending was this: a yearning to gather and protect. The grief here is genuine and personal; the One who wept is days from giving His life for this very city. What meets the longing is the refusal - and ye would not - and the chapter does not rush past it or explain it away. It lets both stand: His real desire to gather, their real refusal to come. The wings are spread; the chicks run from the only shelter that could save them.1
Out of that refusal comes a heavy consequence: Behold, your house is left unto you desolate (v. 38). Your house - the temple, the very dwelling where God had set His name - is now spoken of as yours, no longer my Father's house, and it is left… desolate, abandoned, emptied of the Presence. There is something terrible in the plainness of it: where the gathering wings are refused, only desolation is left. And yet - and this is the astonishing turn - even this is not the last word. The chapter that began with the harshest language in the Gospels does not end with a slammed door. It ends with a horizon and a promise: Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord (v. 39). The word till is everything. There is an end appointed to the not-seeing. A day is coming when the cry the crowds had raised at His entry into the city - Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord - will be raised again, and this time in welcome. The One they would not receive will yet be greeted so. Even the desolation is bounded by a hope.
Further study
- The Greek text of Matthew 23 word by word, with parsing and lexical entries - useful for hupokrites (vv. 13-29, the stage-actor behind “hypocrite”), for the contrast of ethelesa and ouk ethelesate (v. 37, “I would… ye would not”), and for the verb episunago (v. 37, the gathering of a hen over her brood).
- Matthew 23 ↔ Luke 11 & 13 · 2 Chronicles 24 · John 13Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Matthew 23 to the rest of Scripture - the woes set beside Luke 11:37-52, the lament over Jerusalem beside Luke 13:34-35, the slain prophet Zacharias beside 2 Chronicles 24:20-21, and the command that the greatest be servant (v. 11) beside the towel and basin of John 13.
- Matthew 23 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Matthew 23 - the phylacteries and garment borders of verse 5, the tangle of oath-formulas in verses 16-22, the weightier matters of the law in verse 23, and the gathering imagery of the hen and her chicks in verse 37.
Where this echoes in Scripture
They Say, and Do Not
- Luke 11:43Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets.The same love of status named in verses 6-7 - Luke’s record of the same indictment.
- John 13:14-15If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet... ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.The rule of verse 11 enacted - the one Master taking the servant’s place.
- Philippians 2:8-9he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death... Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him.Verse 12 lived out in Christ - the humbling that was the road to exaltation.
- James 4:10Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.The promise of verse 12 echoed - the way up runs through the way down.
- Matthew 6:1Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them.The warning of verse 5 sounded earlier - religion performed for an audience loses its reward.
Ye Shut Up the Kingdom · Blind Guides
- Luke 11:52ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.The first woe of verse 13 in Luke’s words - the keys of the kingdom used to lock the door.
- John 10:9I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.The answer to verse 13 - where guides shut the kingdom, Christ is the open door.
- Matthew 15:14they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.The <em>blind guides</em> of verse 16 named earlier - the peril of being led by those who cannot see.
- Matthew 5:34-37Swear not at all... But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay.The cure for the oath-games of verses 16-22 - plain, truthful speech that needs no escape clause.
- James 1:27Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.The exact reverse of verse 14 - true religion protects the widow rather than devouring her house.
Within Full of Dead Men’s Bones
- Micah 6:8what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?The <em>weightier matters</em> of verse 23 named by the prophet - justice, mercy, and humble faith.
- 1 Samuel 16:7the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.The principle behind the cup and the tomb (vv. 25-28) - God reads the inside, not the surface.
- Ezekiel 36:26A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you... I will take away the stony heart.The promise that answers verse 26 - the inside made clean by God’s own work.
- 1 John 1:7the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.The cleansing of verse 26 accomplished - the heart washed clean by Christ.
- Acts 7:51-52ye do always resist the Holy Ghost... Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?The charge of verses 29-32 repeated by Stephen - the children continuing the fathers’ resistance.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem
- Luke 13:34-35how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!The same lament in Luke - the gathering wings and the refusal, spoken earlier on the road to the city.
- Luke 19:41-42And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it... the things which belong unto thy peace!The grief of verse 37 made visible - Christ in tears over Jerusalem days later.
- Psalm 91:4He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust.The sheltering wings of verse 37 - the refuge under God’s wings that Jerusalem refused.
- 2 Chronicles 24:20-21they stoned him with stones... in the court of the house of the LORD.The slain Zacharias of verse 35 - a prophet killed in the temple court, summing up the long rejection.
- 2 Peter 3:9not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.The heart behind verse 37 stated plainly - God’s genuine desire that none be lost.