Luke 11:52

Ver. 52: The Monopoly of Theology. “ Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered. ” The religious despotism with which Jesus in the third place charges the scribes, is a natural consequence of their fanatical attachment to the letter. This last rebuke corresponds to the third which He had addressed to the Pharisees the pernicious influence exercised by them over the whole people. Jesus represents knowledge (γνῶσις) under the figure of a temple, into which the scribes should have led the people, but whose gate they close, and hold the key with jealous care. This knowledge is not that of the gospel, a meaning which would lead us outside the domain of the scribes; it is the real living knowledge of God, such as might already be found, at least to a certain extent, in the O. T. The key is the Scriptures, the interpretation of which the scribes reserved exclusively to themselves. But their commentaries, instead of tearing aside the veil of the letter, that their hearers might penetrate to the spirit, thickened it, on the contrary, as if to prevent Israel from beholding the face of the living God who revealed Himself in the O. T., and from coming into contact with Him. The pres. part. εἰσερχόμενοι denotes those who were ready to rise to this vital knowledge, and who only lacked the sound interpretation of Scripture to bring them to it.

Matthew, in a long discourse which he puts into the mouth of Jesus in the temple (chap. 23), has combined in one compact mass the contents of those two apostrophes addressed to the Pharisees and lawyers, which are so nicely distinguished by Luke. Jesus certainly uttered in the temple, as Matthew relates, a vigorous discourse addressed to the scribes and Pharisees. Luke himself (Luke 20:45-47) indicates the time, and gives a summary of it. But it cannot be doubted that here, as in the Sermon on the Mount, the first Gospel has combined many sayings uttered on different occasions. The distribution of accusations between the Pharisees and lawyers, as we find it in Luke, corresponds perfectly to the characters of those two classes. The question of the scribe (Luke 11:45) seems to be indisputably authentic. Thus Luke shows himself here again the historian properly so called.