Matthew 23:16-28

CRITICAL NOTES

Matthew 23:16. Gold of the temple.—The exact meaning of this expression is uncertain; but the probability is that it refers to money offered as a gift to God, to which the scribes and Pharisees ascribed peculiar sanctity (Mansel). See R.V., margin.

Matthew 23:18. Guilty.—A debtor (R.V.) as in Matthew 23:16.

Matthew 23:23. Ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin.—The language of Deuteronomy 12:17 seems to recognise only corn, wine, and oil, among the produce of the earth, as subject to the law of tithes. The Pharisee, in his minute scrupulosity (based, it may be, on the more general language of Leviticus 27:30), made a point of gathering the tenth sprig of every garden herb, and presenting it to the priest. So far as this was done at the bidding of an imperfectly illumined conscience our Lord does not blame it. It was not, like the teaching as to oaths and the Corban, a direct perversion of the law. What He did censure was the substitution of the lower for the higher (Plumptre). Mint was grown for its pleasant odour; anise, or dill, and cummin for their aromatic flavour. These were cultivated, not for food, but for scents and relishes; and only a small quantity of each would be grown in a private garden for the use of a household (Fraser).

Matthew 23:25. Full of extortion and excess.—From (R.V.). The two words point

(1) to the source from which the viands and the wine came—the cup and the platter were filled with, or out of, the proceeds of, extortion;
(2) that to which they tended—they overflowed with unrestrained self-indulgence (Plumptre).

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Matthew 23:16

The blindness of error.—Five times in succession in these verses we find the epithet “blind”; and every time as a description of those professed “guides” whom the Saviour is addressing. In justifying this application of the term, the Saviour confines Himself to one general line. These men are thus “blind,” according to Him, because they begin in their teaching where they ought to conclude; and treat the important, for the sake of the unimportant, as though it did not exist. In three directions especially, He goes on to show that this description holds good. It does so, first, in the way of reverence and worship; secondly, in the way of duty and observance; and, thirdly, in the way of holiness and sanctification.

I. In the way of reverence and worship.—The true state of things in regard to this part of the question is manifestly as follows. God Himself is to be reverenced first and most; then that, of course—according to its nearness—which is nearer to Him. Amongst such “nearer” things, up above, is heaven itself as His throne (Matthew 23:22). Amongst such “nearer” things, here below, are His temple and altar. The one of these last having been appointed by Himself as His special “dwelling” on earth, and the other as a means of enabling men to approach Him in worship, they both, in consequence, had about them a certain derivative glory and awe. Full of the thoughts of God, they were, in their way, full of His majesty also. Even that, also, which appertained to them—such as the “gold,” for example, which adorned the one, and the “gifts” which were placed on the other—had a certain sacredness in their turn. They also were to be treated with reverence because of the reverence due to that which they touched. First, the Source, in fact; then that which grew out of it; then what grew out of that. This was the reasonable—this, apparently, the only—way to compute. Yet this, at the same time, was the exact opposite of that adopted by these guides (Matthew 23:16). Anything bound by the stronger, according to them, need not be kept. Anything bound by the weaker must not be loosed. So they said in effect (Matthew 23:16; Matthew 23:18).

II. In the way of observance and duty.—Here again the true order of value is not difficult to perceive. The moral, e.g., was before the ceremonial; matters of conscience before those of ritual; and that by a very long way. Also, amongst questions of conscience, some are of greater importance than others. What will make a difference is of more consequence than what will make none. What God expressly requires of us (Matthew 23:23, Micah 6:8; Psalms 15) than what we devise for ourselves. Discrimination of His will, imitation of His love, belief in His existence—in other words, “judgment, mercy, and faith”—cannot be made up for by any amount of scrupulosity as to “the dust of the balance.” So it is that both wisdom and sincerity teach—both truth of discernment and truth of aim. But so it was, exactly, that these teachers not only did not teach, but denied. As one has quaintly said, they thought more of the “condiment than of the dish”; they “magnified the little and belittled the great”; they treated the non-essential as though it were all; they “strained out” the “gnat” and left the “camel” behind (Matthew 23:24). What could be worse than such double blindness as this? Only to see what was insignificant; not to see what was huge?

III. In the way of sanctification and holiness.—Who cannot see here, as in the other verses, where this process begins? It begins, of course, where the thoughts begin, and whence they come out. Be clean there; and it will be hardly necessary to clean the outside. Be foul there; and it will not be possible to clean the outside. On the contrary, to pretend to it while leaving the inside impure, will be to be foul throughout, as it were; and to the original foulness of guilt to add that of hypocrisy, which is very much worse. All this is so plain that one wonders that any one should have ever thought the reverse. Yet that these Pharisees did so, is only too plain from what the Saviour says of them here. He describes them here (Matthew 23:25, R.V.) as being “full from extortion and excess”; that is (apparently), “from” the results of injury to others, on the one hand, and of indulgence to themselves, on the other. He describes them, again (Matthew 23:27), as being like “whited sepulchres”—outwardly righteous, but inwardly guilty—outwardly “beautiful,” but inwardly vile—and as being so “blind,” therefore, as to make this lowest depth of iniquity the highest peak of their aim. To look upon evil as good, in any case, is not to see very well. To regard the worst as being the best is to see nothing at all as it is.

It is important to note, in conclusion, how such blindness as this was produced. These blind leaders were thus blind because they were hypocrites first. This is why the Saviour uses this apparently harsh term so many times over. It is really a very merciful one, because it points to the secret of all. A hypocrite is a man who knowingly blinds himself to some aspect of truth. In some particular he deliberately refuses to see things as they are. So far—in other words—and in that direction, he believes in deceit. Afterwards the instrument employed by him turns, as it were, on himself. Invented originally to hide from him what he did not wish to perceive, afterwards—without his knowing it—it hides from him what he does wish to perceive. Afterwards still, therefore, there is no saying how much it may hide, or how far, consequently, in the way of foolishness and error such a self-deceiver may ultimately go, and yet suppose himself right. There is nothing more perilous, in fact, and nothing more criminal, than trifling with truth. It would ruin the universe, if allowed to prevail.

HOMILIES ON THE VERSES

Matthew 23:16. Hypocritical teaching as to oath-taking.—

1. Corrupt churchmen do corrupt religion and mislead the people fearfully. They become blind guides, whose office requireth that they should be wise and seeing guides; in which case woe to the people, but chiefly woe to the blind guides.
2. Swearing by the creature is no new sin, for these corrupt hypocrites did foster swearing by the creatures, as by the temple, altar, gold, and gifts.
3. Corrupt churchmen make things to be sin or no sin, as it serveth their purpose: as here, they make an oath by the temple to be none, and an oath by the gold of the temple to oblige.
4. To make light of any oath by the creature, as not obligatory, doth open a door to superstition and perjury; for to swear by the temple, they said, it was nothing, and Christ asketh, “Whether is greater, the gold or the temple which sanctifieth the gold?”—David Dickson.

A corrupt casuistry.—It is not easy to trace the currents of thought that run through a corrupt casuistry, but probably the line of reasoning that led to this distinction was that the “gold of the temple”—not the gold used in its structural ornamentation, but that which in coin or bullion was part of the Corban, or sacred treasure (Matthew 15:5)—had received a more special consecration than the fabric, and involved, therefore, a higher obligation, when used as a formula jurandi, than the temple or the altar. Something of the same feeling is seen in the popular casuistry which makes the binding force of an oath depend on “kissing the Book”; or that of mediæval Christendom, which saw in the relics of a saint that which was more sacred than the Gospels. The principle involved in our Lord’s teaching goes farther than its immediate application, and sweeps away the arbitrary distinction of different degrees of sanctity in the several parts of the same structure. Here the line of reasoning is, as in Matthew 5:33, that the temple includes the altar, that the altar includes the gift, that the heaven includes the Throne, and that thus every oath-formula runs up, explicitly or implicitly, into the great thought of God.—E. H. Plumptre, D.D.

Matthew 23:23. The gnat and the camel.—A most effective illustration this of a scrupulousness which is extreme and inconsistent. “Ye strain out the gnat and swallow the camel.” We are supposed to look at one drinking water or wine from an open vessel. A gnat or small fly has got into the liquor—a thing that will occur in hot weather among ourselves, and that is sure to occur in the East if a vessel containing any sweet liquor is left uncovered. He who would drink notices the small insect, and passes the sweetened water or wine through a fine cloth in order to strain it out. With gross inconsistency, however, he takes no notice of a far larger object, but gulps down the camel. The mention of this unwieldy creature is of course an instance of hyperbole, as in the other metaphor of a camel going through the eye of a needle. The Lord implied no censure on the pains taken to strain out the gnat. No person of nice habits could act otherwise. Indeed, a Jew had a special reason for being scrupulous in such a matter, for insects, as “flying, swarming things,” were unclean under his law. But then, the camel was unclean also. The point of the reproof lay in the incongruity or inconsistency evinced by one who was extremely scrupulous in a small thing, and extremely unscrupulous in a great matter. Such was the charge which Christ brought against the Pharisees; and it must be brought still against those who combine a very punctilious Christian profession with a lax or unprincipled morality. It appears that the Pharisees were very punctilious about paying tithes of seeds which were grown in small quantities, and were of comparatively little value. A parallel case now would be for a Christian in good circumstances to present to the church one-tenth of the value of the parsley, pepper, and mustard used in his household. Now the Pharisees were observing the letter of the law (Leviticus 27:30). And the Master recognised this when He said that these minute tithings should not be left undone. But the chief matters of obligation should be placed first. The weightier matters of obligation were, and continue to be, these three:—

1. Judgment, including equity in judging and rectitude in performing the duties of life.
2. Mercy in unison with justice, as it is in God Himself. The Pharisees gave alms with a blowing of trumpets, but they did not love mercy.
3. Faith or faithfulness, shown in honest dealing and in adherence to truth. Our Lord’s treatment of this grave error suggests two points for emphatic consideration in Christian doctrine and morals:—

I. Inward qualities count for more than outward observances.—Strange to read of those rough-handed Christians in the past who were unjust and rapacious, and yet imagined that by paying tithes, or taking sacraments, or endowing monasteries at death, they could secure the favour of God. But just as delusive the modern assumption that one may be false to his word, unkind in his family, unfair in his dealings, and yet by attention to Christian rites and ceremonies may find his way to heaven.

II. A just sense of proportion is essential to a well-regulated Christian mind.—It must be recognised that, even among things which are right, some are greater and some less. Some are to be done first and foremost, and come what will; others are to come behind, and not to be left undone. If the Pharisees had not lacked this sense of proportion, they could never have preferred the tithing of mint to justice, tithing of dill to mercy, and tithing of cummin to faith; nor would they have condemned the righteous and merciful Saviour because He led His disciples along a path through a cornfield or healed poor people on the Sabbath. It is no infrequent thing to find a person who seems to be very religious curiously deficient in the sense of proportion. He cannot quité see what is great or what is small. If he be disposed to obstinacy and bigotry, he simply regards all that is plain to him as great; and all his tenets and regulations as equally great. If he be merely small-minded, by natural affinity he fastens keenly on small points. These are of the proper size for him; and he takes them to be quite large. Or if he be of a self-regarding mind, considering religion simply with reference to his own safety, he lays all the stress on the truths which are near himself, and has but a faint appreciation of those which are much more vast but more remote. It marks the wisdom of Jesus Christ that He saw the just proportion of things, and, when He spoke of duty, distinguished the greater elements of godly obedience from the less. And as He taught so He lived, entering into no competition with the Pharisees regarding the minutiae of ceremonial and tradition, but exhibiting a righteousness far exceeding that of the scribes and Pharisees, a mercifulness with which their haughty temper had no sympathy, and a fidelity to God and to His own Divine mission from which no temptation could beguile or threat deter Him.—D. Fraser, D.D.

Matthew 23:25. Sanctified meat.—

1. Such as get their meat by extortion, and use it intemperately unto excess, can never sanctify their table, whatsoever ceremonies they use; for the saying grace at meat by such men is no better than if a man should wash the outside of the cup and platter, and eat of the filthiness of the inside.
2. The way to eat our bread with God’s blessing is to sanctify our hands in our conquering, and our hearts in a wise and moderate using the creatures, for the right end, and so our feeding shall be sanctified.—David Dickson.

Matthew 23:27. Whitewashed tombs.—Graves lie thick about Jerusalem. In the valleys and on the hilly slopes about the modern city they everywhere meet the eye. Jews have always buried their dead without, however, lavishing on their tombs such signs of honour and affection as are increasingly conspicuous in Christian cemeteries. But it was an old custom with them to wash sepulchral stones once a year. A day was fixed for the purpose in the month Adar; and at the time when our Lord used this metaphor to characterise the scribes and Pharisees, the tombs about Jerusalem had been recently whitewashed, and so were beautified for a season. As He spoke in the open air, the white stones must have been conspicuous on every side. The object of this whitewashing, however, was not to embellish, but to point out the gravestone to the passer-by, that he might not tread on it or touch it. The law which pronounced unclean him who touched a dead body, or even a dead bone, unwittingly, was extended by the later casuistry so as to count one ceremonially defiled who even stepped unintentionally over a grave or touched a tombstone. The object of Jesus was to mark with emphatic censure the contrast between the outward religious profession of those hypocrites and their inward wickedness. For this end the illustration was most apposite. The Pharisees, like the newly-washed tombs around the city, were fair and white on the surface, but unclean and corrupt within.—D. Fraser, D.D.

Matthew 23:27. Moral whitewash.—Nothing is gained by whitewash or varnish. God is not mocked, and even man is not long imposed on by a vain show of devotion. We once heard Father Taylor, a noted preacher to sailors in America, pray that men who thought themselves good, and were not, might be undeceived; and he cried, “Lord, take off the whitewash!”—Ibid.