Matthew 23:29-36

TEXT: 23:29-36

29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and garnish the tombs of the righteous, 30 and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we should not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. 31 Wherefore ye witness to yourselves, that ye are sons of them that slew the prophets. 32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. 33 Ye serpents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall ye escape the judgment of hell? 34 Therefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: some of them shall ye kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city: 35 that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of Abel the righteous unto the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the sanctuary and the altar. 36 Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS

a.

Do you think Jesus intends to condemn the Pharisees for building the sepulchers of the prophets and garnishing the tombs of the righteous? Should they have done that? If not, why not? If so, what spirit?

b.

Why is the confident affirmation of the Pharisees, If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets, just another hypothesis contrary to fact?

c.

What is so damning about the Pharisees-' use of the expression our fathers? Jesus sees it as the basis for driving home His accusation.

d.

Why do you think the ancient prophets, whose tombs these hypocrites beautified, were hated in their own day? Why were they honored by succeeding generations, who, according to Jesus, really shared the same attitude as those who killed them originally? Explain how this really exemplifies a typical characteristic of human nature, hence repeatable in our own times.

e.

If, according to Jesus-' argument, the Pharisees confessed themselves worthy heirs of the slayers of God's prophets, how can Jesus order them to fill up, then, the measure of your fathers? Is this not inciting them to further evil? Why would Jesus Christ saying anything so provocative? What could possibly be gained by this?

f.

Jesus termed the Pharisees serpents, offspring of vipers. Is this a nice way to talk to people one hopes to win to one's cause? Or did Jesus have any such hope now? Who had already used this language to describe this crowd?

g.

How do you account for Jesus-' vehement, judgmental language: You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?? What does HE know about their final fate?

h.

How does Jesus-' promise to send Israel prophets, wise men and scribes become a tacit declaration of His deity?

i.

Do you see Jesus-' prediction that Israel would kill and crucify, scourge and persecute His messengers as a prophecy or as an astute observation about the probabilities? If He knew the Pharisees were persecuting Him, could He not have guessed, with considerable accuracy, that they would do much the same to His followers?

j.

If Jesus found the scribes to be constantly opposing His teaching and mission, how could He justify sending scribes to Israel? What was the position of the scribe in ancient Jewish life? What modern term(s) would you use to paraphrase what Jesus meant? To what function in the New Testament Church is Jesus here referring?

k.

Jesus said, Therefore I send you prophets, some of whom you will kill. that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth.. What logical connection is there between the multiplied blood guiltiness for all the righteous ever slain and the mistreatment of Jesus-' messengers? Is He sending these messengers for the purpose of increasing Israel's guilt? Or would this be but an undesired, however, inevitable, result of His sending them? Why does He begin by saying, Therefore. ?

l.

Just how many righteous people murdered do you think Jesus meant in this reference to all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah?

m.

Do you not think it unjust of God to bring the guilt of the murders of all the righteous upon the Jewish people, since they had not personally committed them? Is Jesus ignoring the ancient law of personal accountability: The soul that sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself? (Cf. Ezekiel 18; Deuteronomy 24:16; Jeremiah 31:30.)

n.

Jesus refers to a Zechariah, son of Barachiah, slain between the sanctuary and the altar. But the only Zechariah murdered in Biblical history is son of Jehoida, not Barachiah. (Cf. 2 Chronicles 24:20 ff.) The only Zechariah son of Barachiah is the writing prophet about whose death nothing is known. Luke (Luke 11:51) omits the father's name altogether. Worse yet, Jesus accuses the Pharisees of having slain him (whom you murdered.). How do you deal with this problem?

o.

In what sense do you think Jesus meant the expression this generation in His warning, All these things will come upon this generation?

p.

Do you think some modern Christians are tempted to boast of the great, spiritual accomplishments of past spiritual giants, while at the same time cutting down their own contemporaries who teach the same message and manifest the same righteousness as the past heroes themselves? Explain. If you think people do this, what is wrong with them? What makes them do this?

PARAPHRASE

How terrible for you text doctors and sectarians, false faces! You erect funerary monuments for the prophets and embellish the burial places of good men. Piously you assert, -If WE had lived in our fathers-' day and time, we would not have joined with them in killing the prophets.-' So you do admit that you are sons of the very men who assassinated God's spokesmen! Now it is your turn: go ahead and finish what your fathers began! You poisonous snakes, hatched by murderous reptiles: how can you escape being condemned to hell? But take notice that I, on my part, am therefore going to send you prophets, sages and Biblical scholars. Some of these you will slay, even crucify. Some you will flog in your synagogues and hunt down from one town to another. In the plan of God this is so that you will become guilty of all those innocents whose blood has been shed on earth, beginning with the murder of innocent Abel and ending with the assassination of Zechariah, Barachiah's son, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. I can tell you for sure that all the punishment of this guilt will be borne by the generation now living!

SUMMARY

Men sanctimoniously boast of the monumental moral achievements of past spiritual giants, while cutting down their own contemporaries who preach the same truth and uphold the same standards as those ancient heroes. Such hypocrisy is punishable in hell. Nevertheless, such conduct would not deter Jesus from dispatching His messengers to save Israel, even though He clearly foresees their maltreatment. But just as clearly He announces the impending judgment to fall upon the generation then living as punishment for the guilt of slaughtering God's spokesmen.

NOTES
A Rancorous and Persecuting Spirit, Guilty of Murdering God's Witnesses

Matthew 23:29 Woe unto you. for ye build the sepulchers of the prophets, and garnish the tombs of the righteous. (Cf. Luke 11:47 f.) How these words must have stung the shocked hearers! Israel owed so much to the ministry of its prophets and to the moral grandeur and fearless proclamation of men whose very lives reproved Israel's transgressions and called the nation back to God. The nation ostensibly wished to express its thanks by honoring these valiant spiritual warriors of God by erecting monuments in their memory or by replacing ruder, previous structures with finer, more ornate ones. Such high tribute, by reflection, appeared to honor Him who sent them. For its promoters to hear Jesus define the seemingly laudable tomb projects as a gross lack of honesty or sincerity, could be no less than offensive. But our Lord nonetheless correctly terms it hypocrisy, because, although they may be blind to the true significance of their deeds, their actions are quite out of harmony with their professed principles. Their two-facedness lies in claiming to be troubled by the assassination of God's messengers in the past, while they were even then scheming to snuff out a living Prophet who reproached them for their own darling sins. Because it morally costs them nothing (no need to repent or change), Jesus-' contemporaries willingly pay their respects to the courageous prophets whose voice for God was not silenced by the angry bellowing of their contemporaries. Rather than honor those worthies by reproducing their godliness and submitting to their doctrine, these hypocrites erected monumental mausoleums only to perpetuate their memory, while crucifying those ancients-' modern colleagues.

Note the association: prophets and righteous men. (Cf. Matthew 10:41; Matthew 13:17; study the use of prophets and saints in reference to God's people martyred for their testimony, in Revelation 11:18; Revelation 16:6; Revelation 18:20; Revelation 18:24). Righteous men belong right beside the prophets, because their lives testify to their recognition of the will of God and accuse the bad conscience of the wicked, as much as do the verbal testimonies of the prophets. Life, character and godly example all count! This explains why Jesus put this climactic woe last. It exposes the root problem that accounts for all the others. Israel's unconscionable indifference to God's men was tantamount to rebellion against Him to whom the godly were uncompromisingly faithful. (See notes on Matthew 10:40 ff.; cf. Luke 10:16; John 12:44; John 13:20; Acts 16:15; Galatians 4:14; 1 Thessalonians 2:13.) It was because the Traditionalist Theologians of Israel really cared little about honoring God that they could act as Jesus described in this entire chapter. Further, while other sins were bad enough, the sin of despising God's heralds, scoffing at His prophets and murdering innocent people who refuse to go along, recreates the same moral climate that led to the Babylonian captivity: there was no remedy (2 Chronicles 36:16) and the Lord was not willing to forgive (2 Kings 24:3 f.; cf. Jeremiah 15:1 ff.). If it be thought hard to believe that God's people could so cruelly mistreat His prophets, consider the evidence. Constantly harassed, Jeremiah was tried and barely acquitted, but poor Urijah fell victim to the sword of Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 26; cf. Jeremiah 32:1 ff; Jeremiah 36; Jeremiah 37:16 ff; Jeremiah 38). Amos was a persona non grata in Israel (Amos 7:10 ff.). The uncompromising Micaiah was imprisoned by Ahab (1 Kings 22:1-28). King Asa jailed Hanani (2 Chronicles 16:7 ff.). Jesus will mention Zechariah's assassination (2 Chronicles 24:20 ff.). Not the least are the countless rebellions against the great Moses (Exodus 14:11 f; Exodus 16:1-12; Exodus 17:1-7; Exodus 32:1 ff.; Numbers 11:1 ff; Numbers 12:1 ff; Numbers 14:1 ff; Numbers 16:1 ff; Numbers 20:2-13; Numbers 21:4 ff.). Remember Stephen's charge against the Sanhedrin in Acts 7:52!

A Nice Speech, but a Glaring Admission

Matthew 23:30 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. Psychologically, they may well have persuaded themselves of their greater readiness to hear and obey the now-dead prophets. They could protest that these monuments intended to signal their definite, spiritual dissociation from their cruel ancestors who had brutalized the prophets. They could argue that their actions evidenced their approval of the prophets-' pronouncements and their own conscientious decision to carry out what the prophets had preached and for which they were eliminated. Resentful, they could counter Jesus-' indictment: How can you charge us with hypocrisy in giving respect and recognition to the prophets, when, today we are really practicing what they preached? After all, we are not crude idolaters; we worship the one, true God! But in this profusion of devotion, Jesus discerns a glaring admission:

Matthew 23:31 Wherefore ye witness to yourselves, that ye are sons of them that slew the prophets. The words that will convict you are your own and are sufficient to show you to be their true, spiritual heirs. In what ways did these sectarians inadvertently betray themselves?

1.

They confessed without shame to being sons of the prophet-killers. Their highly revealing choice of language is hardly accidental. Their attitude was not that our prophets were killed by the fathers, but our fathers killed the prophets. (Contrast Stephen's language: YOUR fathers, Acts 7:51 f.).

2.

Down under the veneer of high devotion, Jesus sees the same superficiality and ceremonialism, the same sinful attitudes characteristic of preceding ages. Complacently and gratuitously they claim to be better men than their ancestors: Matthew Henry (V, 339f.) wrote:

The deceitfulness of sinners-' hearts appears very much in this, that. they fancy. that, if they had had other people's opportunities, they should have improved them more faithfully; if they had been in other people's temptations, they should have resisted them more vigorously; when yet they improve not the opportunities they have, nor resist the temptations they are in.

Their swaggering boast of greater piety, presumably evident in their properly entombing the prophets, betrays the same unjustified self-esteem their conceited fathers possessed. More appropriate than their self-praise would have been the contrite admission, We have sinned, we and our fathers (Alford, 232).

3.

Further self-incriminating evidence lies in their confession that the men whose blood was shed were the prophets. On what reasonable basis could they justify their calling them prophets?Did they know it because these men of God had furnished the true prophetic signs as their credentials? (Deuteronomy 18:15-22; Deuteronomy 13:1-5; Isaiah 8:19 f.; 1 Kings 22:28; Jeremiah 26; etc.) And, precisely as their fathers had done when rejecting the true prophets in their day, the scribes and Pharisees did not utilize these same standards to test Jesus-' claims honestly so as to recognize (or discredit) Him.

4.

Because Jesus-' contemporaries had not learned the lessons of their national, prophetic heritage, they would repeat its errors. In verse 34 Jesus will demonstrate just how truly these sons are typical of their fathers. They will repeat the dark history of their grandfathers almost literally. He had already predicted the harassment of His disciples by those who persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew 5:12), as if the persecutors of all ages belonged to but one monstrous class.

5.

You confess the guilt of your fathers? Then you know the standard against which they sinned! But if you pretend to condemn their sin, and yet permit yourselves to repeat itand repeat it you will!you testify against yourselves by proving your more excellent opportunity to know and do better, and consequently condemn yourselves for your greater inexcusability! (Cf. Romans 1:32 to Romans 2:29.)

So, If we had been. we would not have.. is but a hypothesis contrary to fact, because even during this Last Week of Jesus-' ministry Israel's religious and political elite had been waging an all-out smear campaign to crush this Prophet whose spectacular credentials established His divine authority more concretely than all who had preceded Him (Matthew 12:14; John 5:18; John 7:1; John 7:25; John 7:30; John 7:44; John 8:59; John 10:31; John 10:39; John 11:49-53). The treatment they accorded Jesus, their living Prophet, unerringly established what kind of treatment they would have accorded the martyred prophets, had they lived in their time.

Jesus-' thorough refutation of their pretense to do homage to the prophets exposes an unfortunately typical human trait evident in their practice. They venerated the prophets merely because they were idealized, emptied of meaning and gone. While eulogizing them and turning their tombs into national shrines, by hating the prophets of their own day these hypocrites were motivated by the same spirit that goaded their fathers to murder. Why is this true?

1.

They were unwilling to come to grips with truth that was new to them and unapproved by official consent.

2.

Their traditional concepts, their selfish interests could not tolerate their contemporary prophet's forceful, pointed application of unwelcome truth to their personal immorality and to their own social evils.

3.

They shared no deep yearning to know God's judgment on their personal lives. Their heart was not in harmony with God Himself. They were not open to anything He might say without their prior approval.

4.

They did not realize why they, the successive generation, were really honoring their fallen prophets. Like their fathers, they did not fear the dead prophet. He no longer threatened their comfort or convenience by troubling their conscience with embarrassing truth and accusing questions. The dead prophet no longer confronts them like an accusing conscience, calling attention to THEIR corruption or prodding THEM to action. It simply costs far less morally to make a national hero of an unthreatening, dead prophet, than to have to live with and listen to a living one. (Study 1 Thessalonians 2:14 b - Th 2:16.)

5.

They undervalued the witness that the ancient prophets had already given to Jesus as the Christ. Were they really sensitive to that testimony in its entirety, they would have seen in the program of the Galilean Prophet the marvelous fulfilment of God's testimony to His real identity.

HOW MAY WE EXTRICATE OURSELVES FROM THIS HYPOCRISY?

1.

We must not be content merely to produce a wooden copy of the mannerisms, speech patterns, cultural distinctives and other superficial characteristics of God's great leaders of the past. We must savor their spirit and love the Spirit who made them what they are, following His leading in our time and life.

2.

Nor must we try to remain staticly rooted to the cultural distinctives of their era, as if these represented a superior holiness. We must faithfully preach their timeless message to living people in our own culture and in our own era.

3.

We must embrace all that is true and unquestionably from God, regardless of who says it, whether we ever believed it before or not, whether our fathers ever heard of it or not. We must hold it fast, simply because we love the God who revealed it.

4.

We show our true respect for God's prophets by our treatment of those who speak His messages to us today, not by the empty praise we express for those long-dead.

When God Gives Up On People

Matthew 23:32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. This measure, according to one view, is the standard of wickedness set by your fathers. Your forefathers have set a high mark in ungodliness and, with unreasoning consistency, you have accepted their misguided philosophy. Meet their mark! This surprising challenge provokes this scolding reproof: How can a person who claims to lead men to God provoke these bitter enemies to further brutality? What could He possibly hope to gain by egging them on to further evil? Several rebuttals are possible:

1.

His is a call to end their hypocrisy by dropping their mask of sham piety: Act according to your true character for once, so people can see how truly you really are like your fathers!

2.

It is a revelation that He fully knows their dark plotting: Get on with your bloody business! This is the week, this is the city and you are the men. Since I am your target, finish what your fathers began! (Cf. John 13:27; Matthew 26:50 taken as a command.)

3.

Jesus concedes them their will. Fill ye up (plçròsate, aorist imperative). Although imperative in form, His words do not necessarily order His enemies to act, because imperative verbs may sometimes express a concession. (See note on Matthew 19:12 and citation from Blass-Debrunner; cf. Hosea 4:17; Revelation 22:11.) If you are firmly resolved to tread the path marked out by your fathers, go ahead, but do not complain that I did not warn you! (Cf. John 2:19 also imperative.) Because these Jews did not like to retain the love, the knowledge, the honor and the messages of God in their hearts (John 5:23; John 5:38; John 5:41; John 5:44; John 8:42; John 8:47; John 12:43; John 15:24 f; John 16:3), Jesus gives them up to do what ought not to be done. (Study Romans 1:24; Romans 1:26; Romans 1:28.) He openly recognizes their God-given freedom to act either to receive or reject Him, and concedes them the right to the latter option, however much it pains Him.

4.

This is persuasive reverse psychology that powerfully pushes them to face the logical extremes of their insane plotting, before they actually carry it out. If pointed parables cannot awaken their seared conscience, perhaps blunt, plain-spoken exposure of the monstrousness of their planned sin would shake them. Thus, His love continues to work at their salvation, despite their determination to remain irreclaimable. To the tough He becomes tough, that by all means He might save some. (Cf. 1 Corinthians 9:19-23.)

Another, more threatening interpretation may lie behind the words, Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. In this case, the measure of your fathers is a figurative, divine measuring vessel in the hand of God into which one generation after another pours the dreadful responsibility for its sinfulness. In fact, God is keeping score, whether people know and believe it or not. (Cf. Amos 1:3; Amos 1:6; Amos 1:9; Amos 1:11; Amos 1:13; Amos 8:7.) When God deems it full to overflowing (cf. Genesis 15:16), He pours out judgment on the sinners. Jesus means, accordingly, In the same manner your fathers filled their measure to overflowing and God poured out His wrath on them, you too might as well go ahead and fill the divine measure, and pay the moral consequences for your guilt! This interpretation emphasizes their ripeness for judgment in contrast to God's limit for tolerating their sins. (Cf. Jeremiah 44:22; Revelation 14:17 f.) Some might see the measure of your fathers as the measure begun by your fathers. In this case, each succeeding generation of wicked unbelievers adds to the final overflow by doing its part, hence Jesus challenges His generation to run the cup over, bringing divine wrath upon the nation that rejected God's mercy. He often brings punishment of one generation upon the next, Whether He does so or not often depends upon whether or not the sons follow the wicked example of their parents (Ezekiel 18). But where they do, He justly punishes the children for willingly repeating the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him (Deuteronomy 5:9 f.).

Notice how Jesus interwove His scathing denunciation of the Pharisees with concepts introduced earlier the same day. The bloody repudiation of the prophets here reflects the attitudes of the Tenant Farmers in the Vineyard (Matthew 21:33-39).

Matthew 23:33 Ye serpents, ye offspring of vipers: by repeating nearly word-for-word John the Baptist's searing censure of these religious pretenders expressed years before this (Matthew 3:7; cf. Luke 3:7), and His own verdict uttered in mid-ministry (Matthew 12:34), Jesus forcefully reminds them what little effect all this prophetic preaching of repentance had produced in them. John had challenged their motives: Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Now, Jesus three and a half years later, convincingly closes all doors to escape, asking, How shall ye escape the judgment of hell?

THEIR CHARACTER explains the severity of His attack. They are serpents, offspring of vipers. (Cf. notes on Matthew 3:7.) Like those reptiles full of venom, they are poised to strike without warning. (Cf. Paul's unfigurative language that expressed approximately the same sense, (Acts 13:10). Not unlikely, Jesus-' words also reveal their spiritual parentage. (Cf. John 8:44; 1 John 3:8-10.)

THEIR CONDEMNATION: the judgment of hell, i.e. the judgment that God pronounced that condemns them to suffer there. Jesus Christ does not hesitate to preach hell and damnation nor to point the way of escape therefrom nor to expose the character of those who just suffer there. However blistering Jesus-' sentence may sound, it does not here expose the relative severity involved: They shall receive the greater condemnation! (Mark 12:40 = Luke 20:47). Not merely in hell, they face a greater degree of punishment there, because of their superior chance to know and to do God's will (Jeremiah 16:11 f.; notes on Matthew 11:22; Matthew 11:24).

THEIR QUANDARY: how shall we escape? Given their present course and character, they could not. Although His question is formally rhetorical, the literal form of His question should cause at least some of the more meditative among them to reflect. If God sees you in your present, hell-inspired role, can He welcome you? If not, what plans are you making to avert His inexorable wrath? But His deliberative question is really a rhetorical substitute for an assertion: You shall not escape being consigned to Hell! So long as they remain impenitent, their destiny is inflexibly decided.

The typically Pharisean response would be, I shall escape the judgment of hell by virtue of my prayer and tithing, and where these do not suffice, by the merits of the fathers, as if ANY amount of human effort possessed sufficient merit to earn escape from punishment. This constitutes self-deception, because this very accumulation of religious pretenses proves that the hypocritic knew about our holy God, hence could have recognized his own imperfection because of its striking contrast to God's glorious righteousness, and so could have doubted the value of all his own human goodness, and finally surrendered all claim to his self-justifications and cast himself on the all-sufficient mercies of God.

Murderers of Contemporary Prophets

Matthew 23:34 Therefore, behold, I send unto you prophets. (Cf. Luke 11:49-51.) Behold: watch for the unexpected in what I am about to say. Rather than deny you further light and opportunity on the grounds of what you have any normal right to expect, I will do the astonishingly unpredictable! Therefore, i.e. in light of your wilful, headlong plunge into self-destruction in hell because of your moral agreement with your fathers who assassinated the prophets, I send unto you some more prophets!What incredible mercy, patience and love!

1.

The clearly foreseen, murderous project of these wicked men would not deter the Son of God from commissioning His heralds. The hatred and rejection that His people would confront are no good reason to abandon His plan to evangelize Israel and the world. To the very end Jesus is faithful minister to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 10:6; Matthew 10:23; Matthew 15:24; Acts 13:46), sending one servant after another (Matthew 21:36) to harvest the fruits of righteousness in Israel, only to see them go down, mistreated and martyred one by one.

2.

But our Lord is not simply furnishing more cannon fodder for the malice of His detractors. Rather, He is graciously redoubling His efforts to expose these killers to the LOVE OF GOD! Incredibly, the martyrs-' merciful mission to unbelieving Judaism was to begin at Jerusalem, the stronghold of these prophet-slayers (Luke 24:47 f.; Acts 1:4; Acts 1:8)!

Behold, I send you prophets: Who does He think He is anyway? Only the Lord God sends prophets (2 Chronicles 36:15 f.; Nehemiah 9:26; Nehemiah 9:30; Deuteronomy 18:15; Deuteronomy 18:18; Amos 3:7)! Here the divine majesty of God's Son breaks through the veil of the earthly flesh of Jesus of Nazareth, revealing Him as the Sender of the prophets. Further, He kept His word. (John 20:21, Matthew 28:18 f.; see notes on Matthew 5:12.) Earlier Jesus had promised, I will send them prophets and apostles (Luke 11:49 f.), but here, I send unto you prophets, wise men and scribes. Following the death of the last genuine prophets, Israel's teachers had been uninspired sages and theologians, the wise men and scribes. So, the Kingdom of the Messiah is to be led by its Nebhiim, Hakamim and Sopherim too, as was God's Kingdom of Israel. In using this terminology to speak of Christian teachers, the Lord is not merely copying the Jewish economy to give His Church a pseudoclassic structure and an unearned prestige. Rather, by using this language, He achieved two purposes:

1.

He indicated His intention to equip His people with Christian teachers and missionaries who would announce and expound God's will and wisdom. In contrast to the theologians of the old order, the new covenant scholars would be sent by and loyal to the Messiah, proclaiming His Gospel.

a.

Prophets, as distinguished from the other offices, wrote or spoke God's message by direct inspiration or mandate. Among these are the Apostles and Spirit-led men like Stephen and Philip (Acts 7:8), Agabus and others (Acts 11:27 f.), those at Antioch (Acts 13:1), Judas and Silas (Acts 15:32) and Philip's daughters (Acts 21:9).

b.

Wise men (sophòs) in Israel were not simply what is implied by this word in the Greek world. Instead, they were teachers of wisdom (hakamim) whose function was to develop practical applications of what, in Israel, was considered the Wisdom par excellence, the Law. Not necessarily inspired, the Christian wise men would be experienced, devout disciples qualified to teach, like Barnabas and Apollos (Acts 18:24 ff.).

c.

Scribes in Israel were not merely secretaries who copied Scripture, but men whose expertise in expounding it made them the recognized theologians in Israel. Although Paul was primarily a missionary (apòstolos), his undying mark on Christian history was made by his theological writing in the form of New Testament epistles which explain Christian doctrine and its applications. Many others, too, would fit this category. (See notes on Matthew 13:52.) Mark and Luke are not merely Gospel scribes who limited themselves to chronicling, but men who, like the Apostles, Matthew and John, arranged their materials in didactic form so as to communicate the true sense of Jesus Christ. While these latter Evangelists were Apostles by mandate, they also functioned as scribes in the sense Jesus-' original hearers would have understood Him here.

It is well to notice, however, that the functions of wise men and scribes overlapped historically in Judaism, so that these titles referred sometimes to the same person. (Cf. Bowker, Jesus and the Pharisees, 40.)

2.

Jesus verbally associates His Christian teachers with the Old Testament prophets and righteous men, so as to introduce a parallel between their respective ministries for which they were cruelly ill-treated. By specifying how His Pharisean opponents would retrace the well-worn pattern of victimizing God's ambassadors, He established the formers-' spiritual kinship to the bloody fathers whose ruthlessness they claimed to repudiate.

a.

Some of them you will kill and crucify. These are not necessarily the same people suffering, first, death, and then the added humiliation of exposure on a cross. Rather, some would be put to death by stoning (Acts 7:54 to Acts 8:1; Acts 26:10) or perhaps by the sword (Acts 12:1 ff.); others by being nailed to a cross. (Cf. Matthew 21:35.) Because crucifixion was normally a method used by the Romans, the Lord is predicting some executions by Romans instigated by Jews (Peter? John 21:18 f.).

b.

Some of them you will scourge in your synagogues. (Cf. Matthew 10:17; Acts 5:40 f; Acts 22:19; Acts 26:11; 2 Corinthians 11:24, the notorious 39 lashes.)

c.

Some you will persecute from city to city. (Matthew 10:23; 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16; Acts 13:45; Acts 13:50; Acts 14:2; Acts 14:5; Acts 17:5; Acts 18:5 f., Acts 18:12; Acts 19:33; Acts 20:3; Acts 21:27; Acts 23:12; Acts 24:1 ff.; Acts 26:11, and the Acts accounts of Paul's harassment by Jews who, not content to see him leave their town, pursued him to other cities as well, in order to hinder his ministry (Acts 14:19; Acts 17:13).

However, Jesus-' mentioning this outrage preannounced unbelieving Israel's final response to His last, merciful invitations to accept His grace. So doing, they justified the judgment He must announce next:

Answering for the Murder of the Martyrs

Matthew 23:35 that upon you may come all the righteous blood. To which verb is Jesus-' clause to be connected in the mind of the reader?

1.

I send you prophets. that upon you may come all the blood. ? OR

2.

You will kill, crucify, scourge ... and persecute. that upon you may come all the blood ... ?

In the former case, He appears to commission His prophets so as to increase unbelievers-' guilt. In the latter, it appears that Jewish leaders desired to bring this condemnation upon themselves. From God's perspective, is the clause, that upon you may come.. an expression of purpose or result? That is, did Jesus send His messengers with the purpose of increasing Israel's guilt for rejecting them, or did it just turn out that way?

1.

PURPOSE. Sending more emissaries was the only way to save anyone. He planned it that way, because, although He clearly risked raising the guilt-level of the obstinate and unrepentant, He contemporaneously multiplied the gracious opportunities to accept His generous invitation to the long-awaited banquet of God! (Cf. Matthew 8:11 f.) Even if it meant the sacrifice of His heralds, He was offering complete amnesty to anyone who would surrender. By the convicting power of apostolic preaching He intensified their sense of guilt and so left the salvageable among them so deeply conscience-stricken that their repentance became real and lasting. (Cf. Acts 2:37 as a case in point of just such self-reproach produced by Peter's hammering home the fact that Israel had murdered their longed-for Messiah.)

2.

RESULT: Nobody was forced, no one's freedom compromised. Everyone could cast his personal vote, for, or against, Jesus of Nazareth, but no one could escape the inevitable consequences of his individual decision. Jesus left open two free options, and, if anyone selected one of the two choices, no one would stop him. But, once the die was cast, nothing could halt the resulting avalanche of judgment plunging down on those who turned Jesus down. Thus, human freedom and divine sovereignty are respected to the very last.

Three questions remain to be considered: (1) Why should all this guilt be required of one single generation of Jews? (2) What is involved in the great time-span from Abel to Zechariah? (3) Who is this Zechariah and what has Abel to do with Jesus-' basic point? These questions find their solution in a correct understanding of what Jesus means by all the righteous blood shed on the earth. This expression appears to be absolutely universal. Does Jesus-' broad condemnation apply to literally every innocent victim of violence, i.e. must the vengeance of God rain down upon Jesus-' own generation to vindicate all these? To this, the premature reaction is: Injustice! To blame one generation for all the world's innocent victims is unworthy of God! But Jesus-' concept in this paragraph (Matthew 23:39 ff.) is a unit. He began discussing the tombs of the prophets and of the righteous (dikaìôn, Matthew 23:29). It is the prophets-' blood that was shed (Matthew 23:30). Jesus-' generation is composed of the sons of those who murdered these witnesses for God (Matthew 23:31). Unless compelling reasons lead us to refer the righteous blood to some distant victims yet unmentioned, we must regard it as referring to that of God's witnesses who were martyred for their testimony to God's truth. (Cf. Matthew 10:40 ff.; John 15:20.) Not the least of this righteous blood would be that of Jesus Himself (Matthew 27:25; Acts 3:14 f.; 1 Peter 3:18). Jesus includes the righteous right along with the prophets, because every righteous man who ever lived is a witness for God, living proof that God's will is knowable, just as surely a witness as a living prophet. Therefore, the suppressing of the righteous proves that their slayers reject the norm that God's people stand for,

This, then, explains why Jesus began with Abel the righteous. For, while that ancient saint did not relay an inspired message from God to man, as did the prophets, yet he became the first recorded witness for God when he stood firm in sacrificing what God required, notwithstanding the older brother's insistence on bringing something else (Hebrews 11:4). So, by humbly offering his sacrifices in faith, he testified to the knowability and rightness of God's will. His is the first recorded example of a man's trusting God, doing what was right and being commended by God for it (Genesis 4:4 f.). However, for this testimony he was murdered by the jealous hate of his brother, and thus became the first martyr in the battle between godliness and unrighteousness. His death cries out against anyone who walks in the way of Cain (Jude 1:11), victimizing his brother because his brother's actions are righteous (1 John 3:12).

But who is Zechariah? Because the book of Chronicles occurs last in the Hebrew canon, the last martyred prophet of God in the Hebrew Old Testament is the priestly Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, stoned to death in the court of the Temple (2 Chronicles 24:20 ff.) He too had delivered God's Word, but was murdered by order of King Joash. As he lay dying, he gasped, May the Lord see this and call you to account! God DID see it and avenged His prophet's death (2 Chronicles 24:23 ff.). But how could Zechariah son of Jehoiada be called in our text son of Barachiah?Either Matthew wrote these words or he did not.

1.

If Matthew wrote them:

a.

The priestly son of Jehoiada is not intended. Jesus may refer to martyrdom that occurred more recently than the close of the Old Testament, well-known to His hearers, but unrecorded elsewhere. This would compel us to surrender the view that He means all Biblical murders and refers, instead, to all martyrs for righteousness in pre-Christian history.

b.

Jesus may refer to Zechariah son of Jehoiada.

(1)

Barachiah and Jehoiada are possibly different names for the same father. Many Hebrews bore two names, e.g. Jechoniah = Jehoiachin; Gideon = Jerubbaal; Daniel 1:6. However, were this the case with such a famous father like Jehoiada, it is strange that he should never have been called by this other name in the Old Testament.

(2)

Barachiah and Jehoiada are both fathers of Zechariah, however, in different senses, one being the true father and the other the grandfather. Accordingly, Zechariah would be grandson of the famous Jehoiada, but son of an obscure Barachiah whose name was registered in Levitical genealogies, knowable to the Jews and here cited by Jesus. This explanation is less likely, because the Old Testament chronicler lays stress on the martyr's being Jehoiadah's son, as if immediate sonship were meant.

c.

Least likely is the suggestion that Jesus intended a Zacharias son of Baruch, unjustly accused and murdered in the Temple near the end of the Jewish war (Josephus, Wars, IV, 5, 4). The Lord speaks of Zechariah's death as a fact already well-known, not a yet-future martyrdom. He does not say, Whom you will slay, but whom you slew. Further, the names are different: Baruch is not Barachiah, however similar.

2.

If Matthew did NOT write Zechariah son of Barachiah:

a.

Perhaps Matthew wrote only Zechariah, as did Luke (Luke 11:51). If so, a very early copyist, remembering the more famous Old Testament writing prophet's patronymic (Zechariah 1:1), mistakenly supposed that Jesus alluded to him, rather than the almost forgotten son of Jehoiada, and erroneously inserted son of Barachiah, whereas Jeohoiada's son is meant.

b.

Perhaps Matthew originally wrote, Zachariah son of Jehoiada, but an early scribe, forgetting Jehoiada's son, considered Jehoiada a mistake to be corrected by altering it to Barachiah, father of the Minor Prophet (Zechariah 1:1).

c.

But in favor of these hypotheses there is no documentary evidence in the manuscripts, except the omission of son of Barachiah in the original Sinaiticus and Eusebius, and a comment by Jerome in his commentary on our text: In the Gospel which is used by the Nazarenes, in the place of -Son of Barachiah-' we find written -son of Jehoiada.-' These appear to be personal choices of scribes too isolated to affect the textual tradition.

Although a judicial assassination of Jeremiah's contemporary, Urijah (Jeremiah 26:23) took place about 200 years after that of Zechariah, Jehoiada's son, the latter's martyrdom appears literally on the last pages of the Hebrew Old Testament, and perhaps for this reason Jesus mentioned him as the end point.

A MISCARRIAGE OF DIVINE JUSTICE?

Whether or not we have correctly identified Zechariah, Jesus-' point still stands. If He meant Jehoiada's son, then the time span in His mind, from Abel to Zechariah, encompasses all the murders from the beginning to the end of the Hebrew Bible. Otherwise, from the first murder down to the latest assassination of God's prophet. But, regardless of the choice, with what justice can the Lord indict the religionists of His day for the brutal rejection of the prophets and righteous men over such a vast span of time, when His contemporaries did not even exist at the time of those atrocities? Several answers are possible:

1.

In saying, that upon you may come. whom you murdered, the allusion is generically to the entire Jewish nation in all of its ages from its inception down to Christ. While Jesus-' contemporaries could not rightly be indicted for crimes committed by their predecessors centuries earlier, nevertheless, by their hatred for God's servants (Matthew 23:34), they qualify for membership in the one teeming society of those who murder prophets. Between the sanctuary and the altar bespeaks the blind fury of the persecutors who knew nothing sacred, neither the person of God's prophet nor the holiness of His temple. Although this elucidates why the larger part of many generations of Israel is guilty of its personal crimes against God, it does not yet explain why one particular generation should receive the total brunt of the punishments for crimes reaching clear back to Abel, i.e. even before the official birth of Israel at the call of Abraham.

2.

The terrible indictment is unequivocably levelled solely at Jesus-' own generation. Why?

a.

Because the past had prepared for the present. It is a fact observable in the history of nations that the catastrophes of a people are often the grim harvest of sins and errors sown long before. It may require generations for these to come to a head. Those who lit the fuse are often long gone before the explosion that blows the mountain of iniquity, burying beneath its weight only the contemporaries who, like their forebears, had shared in amassing the sin. But the past would lose with the present. The ancient, prophet-murdering fathers would now lose all they had so carefully transmitted to posterity, as their equally iniquitous descendants were swept away in the fury of God.

b.

Because the present welcomed the past. By murdering God's Son, persecuting His apostles and other messengers, Jesus-' contemporaries would sin in full light of their own history's lessons. Jesus-' age stood at the end point of God's dealings with men, a period rich in accumulated evidence of the great criminality of this act, since God had shouted protests against the killing of His prophets clear back to the assassination of Abel! In full view of history's vindication of God's prophets, Jesus-' generation would proceed to crucify Him who enjoyed the highest, most complete authentication by God who through Jesus had done the most evident and most numerous miracles. (Cf. John 7:31; John 11:47 f.) Every generation of sons that witness the previous instances of disobedience, hear the many warnings, observe the exemplary punishment of their fathers, and yet repeat the same disobedience, is to be judged more than simply as bad as their fathers. They are far more guilty than their predecessors and must answer for much, much more, because, by duplicating their fathers-' sins in full light of their divine punishment, they concur in their father's acts. The principle of divine justice is clear: the accumulated brilliance of all this light and the force of all the evidence against which they will have sinned multiplies the degree of guiltiness they would incur for having turned against it.

No wonder the wrath of God was timed to explode in that generation! More astonishing yet is the forty years of grace God bestowed on His people before outraged justice lashed Jerusalem in a holocaust of blood in 70 A.D. But here is a lesson: even as in the last days of the Jewish state the patience of God waited while the Church broadcast the Gospel in a final effort to save the savable, but a day came when the ax fell, so also today God's vengeance waits patiently while the number of those to be slain for their witness to His Word moves toward completion (Revelation 6:9-11). But that judgment and their vindication will come at last (Revelation 16:6; Revelation 18:20; Revelation 19:2).

Matthew 23:36 Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation. Here again is the familiar theme of the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen in the Vineyard (Matthew 21:40). This time, however, Jesus reveals the time-schedule for the hurricane of holy wrath that would break over Israel: this generation. He will enlarge upon this ominous threat in the next chapter when He describes the siege and taking of Jerusalem and reiterates the time-schedule (Matthew 24:34). The wrath of God that destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and dispersed the unbelieving Jews among the nations, therefore, was neither unreasonable nor unexpected (Deuteronomy 28).

The expression, this generation, as Jesus often employs it, is loaded negatively to mean this crowd, this people referring to those people who refused to be persuaded of His Messiahship on the basis of the good evidences He furnished. (Cf. Matthew 11:16; Matthew 12:39; Matthew 12:41 f., Matthew 12:45; Matthew 16:4; Matthew 17:17; Mark 8:12; Mark 8:38; Luke 7:31; Luke 9:41; Luke 11:29-32; Luke 11:50 f.; Luke 17:25; cf. Peter's expression: Acts 2:40, or Paul'S, Philippians 2:15.) This common nuance however, does not exclude its literal meaning, the people now living, i.e. all the people born and living at about the same time (cf. Matthew 1:17!) a sense which flows into the other: a group of such people with some experience, belief, attitude, etc. in common, (cf. geneà, Arndt-Gingrich, 153). His antithesis in our text is all previous generations of prophet-murderers, as opposed to this generation.

Ironically, all of Israel's guilt, accumulated from all previous ages was finally and permanently to be borne away by the one perfect sacrifice of the Lamb of God in that one generation (Hebrews 9:15; Revelation 12:5; Revelation 12:9-11)! All those of that generation who would yet embrace this offer to divine mercy could be saved and miss the threatened disaster. (See on Matthew 24:15 ff.) Unbelievers of that same last, characteristic generation (Matthew 24:34), however, would feel the full impact of God's terrible punitive justice. (Deuteronomy 5:9, note God's use of generation.)

FACT QUESTIONS

1.

What is meant by Jesus-' observation that the Pharisees build the sepulchers of the prophets and garnish the tombs of the righteous? What motivated them to do this?

2.

To what prophets and righteous men, now buried in the garnished tombs, does Jesus refer?

3.

Who actually slew the prophets?

4.

In what sense are the Pharisees the sons of the prophet-slayers?

5.

What is the measure of your fathers that the Pharisees are ordered to fill up?

6.

In what sense were Pharisees serpents, a generation of vipers?

7.

Define the judgment of hell that the Pharisees could not escape.

8.

In the New Testament Church identify the personnel referred to by Jesus as prophets, wise men and scribes whom He would send.

9.

Name some messengers of Jesus Christ whom the unbelieving Jewish nation and its rulers (a) killed, (b) crucified, (c) scourged, (d) persecuted from city to city.

10.

What does it mean for the blood of someone to come upon someone else in the phrase: that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth. ?

11.

Identify Zechariah. murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. List three or four Zechariahs in the Bible, one of which may be the man mentioned by Jesus in this section. State the problems connected with any certain identification and furnish solutions to each problem wherever possible.

12.

In what way did Jesus-' prophecy come true that all the blood would come upon that generation?