Christ admonishes the people to follow the good doctrine, not the bad example of the scribes and Pharisees. He warns his disciples not to imitate their ambition and denounces divers woes against them for their hypocrisy and blindness.

¹ Then Jesus spoke to the crowds, and to his disciples,

² saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees have sat down in the chair of Moses.

³ Therefore, all things whatsoever that they shall say to you, observe and do. Yet truly, do not choose to act according to their works. For they say, but they do not do.

⁴ For they bind up heavy and unbearable burdens, and they impose them on men’s shoulders. But they are not willing to move them with even a finger of their own.

⁵ Truly, they do all their works so that they may be seen by men. For they enlarge their phylacteries and glorify their hems.¹

1. 23:5Phylacteries: that is, parchments, on which they wrote the ten commandments, and carried them on their foreheads before their eyes: which the Pharisees affected to wear broader than other men; so to seem more zealous for the law.(Challoner)

⁶ And they love the first places at feasts, and the first chairs in the synagogues,

⁷ and greetings in the marketplace, and to be called Master by men.

⁸ But you must not be called Master. For One is your Master, and you are all brothers.

⁹ And do not choose to call anyone on earth your father. For One is your Father, who is in heaven.¹

1. 23:9Call none your father--Neither be ye called masters, etc: The meaning is that our Father in heaven is incomparably more to be regarded, than any father upon earth: and no master to be followed, who would lead us away from Christ. But this does not hinder but that we are by the law of God to have a due respect both for our parents and spiritual fathers, (1 Cor. 4. 23:15,) and for our masters and teachers.(Challoner)

¹⁰ Neither should you be called teachers. For One is your Teacher, the Christ.¹

1. 23:10This passage refers to the Trinity, with the First Person as Father, the Second Person as Teacher (the Christ), and the Third Person as Master (or Leader or Guide).(Conte)

¹¹ Whoever is greater among you shall be your minister.

¹² But whoever has exalted himself, shall be humbled. And whoever has humbled himself, shall be exalted.

¹³ So then: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you close the kingdom of heaven before men. For you yourselves do not enter, and those who are entering, you would not permit to enter.

¹⁴ Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you consume the houses of widows, praying long prayers. Because of this, you shall receive the greater judgment.

¹⁵ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you travel around by sea and by land, in order to make one convert. And when he has been converted, you make him twice the son of Hell that you are yourselves.

¹⁶ Woe to you, blind guides, who say: ‘Whoever will have sworn by the temple, it is nothing. But whoever will have sworn by the gold of the temple is obligated.’

¹⁷ You are foolish and blind! For which is greater: the gold, or the temple that sanctifies the gold?

¹⁸ And you say: ‘Whoever will have sworn by the altar, it is nothing. But whoever will have sworn by the gift that is on the altar is obligated.’

¹⁹ How blind you are! For which is greater: the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift?

²⁰ Therefore, whoever swears by the altar, swears by it, and by all that is on it.

²¹ And whoever will have sworn by the temple, swears by it, and by him who dwells in it.

²² And whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by him who sits upon it.

²³ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you collect tithes on mint and dill and cumin, but you have abandoned the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, while not omitting the others.

²⁴ You blind guides, straining out a gnat, while swallowing a camel!

²⁵ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you clean what is outside the cup and the dish, but on the inside you are full of avarice and impurity.

²⁶ You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the dish, and then what is outside becomes clean.

²⁷ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed sepulchers, which outwardly appear brilliant to men, yet truly, inside, they are filled with the bones of the dead and with all filth.

²⁸ So also, you certainly appear to men outwardly to be just. But inwardly you are filled with hypocrisy and iniquity.

²⁹ Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, who build the sepulchers of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the just.¹

1. 23:29Build the sepulchres, etc: This is not blamed, as if it were in itself evil to build or adorn the monuments of the prophets: but the hypocrisy of the Pharisees is here taxed; who, whilst they pretended to honour the memory of the prophets, were persecuting even unto death the Lord of the prophets.(Challoner)

³⁰ And then you say, ‘If we had been there in the days of our fathers, we would not have joined with them in the blood of the prophets.’

³¹ And so you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of those who killed the prophets.

³² Complete, then, the measure of your fathers.

³³ You serpents, you brood of vipers! How will you escape from the judgment of Hell?

³⁴ For this reason, behold, I send to you prophets and wise men, and scribes. And some of these you will put to death and crucify; and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city,

³⁵ so that upon you may fall all the blood of the just, which has been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the temple and the altar.¹

1. 23:35That upon you may come, etc: Not that they should suffer more than their own sins justly deserved; but that the justice of God should now fall upon them with such a final vengeance, once for all, as might comprise all the different kinds of judgments and punishments, that had at any time before been inflicted for the shedding of just blood.(Challoner)

³⁶ Amen I say to you, all these things shall fall upon this generation.

³⁷ Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and stone those who have been sent to you. How often I have wanted to gather your children together, in the way that a hen gathers her young under her wings. But you were not willing!

³⁸ Behold, your house shall be abandoned to you, having been deserted.

³⁹ For I say to you, you shall not see me again, until you say: ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”