Verse 1. Then - Leaving all converse with his adversaries, whom he now left to the hardness of their hearts.

Verse 2. The scribes sit in the chair of Moses - That is, read and expound the law of Moses, and are their appointed teachers.

Verse 3. All things therefore - Which they read out of the law, and enforce therefrom.

Verse 4. Luke xi, 46.

Verse 5. Their phylacteries - The Jews, understanding those words literally, It shall be as a token upon thy hand, and as frontlets between thine eyes, Exod. xiii, 16. And thou shalt bind these words for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes, Deut. vi, 8; used to wear little scrolls of paper or parchment, bound on their wrist and foreheads, on which several texts of Scripture were writ. These they supposed, as a kind of charm, would preserve them from danger. And hence they seem to have been called phylacteries, or preservatives. The fringes of their garments - Which God had enjoined them to wear, to remind them of doing all the commandments, Num. xv, 38. These, as well as their phylacteries, the Pharisees affected to wear broader and larger than other men. Mark xii, 38. 8, 9, 10. The Jewish rabbis were also called father and master, by their several disciples, whom they required,

1. To believe implicitly what they affirmed, without asking any farther reason;

2. To obey implicitly what they enjoined, without seeking farther authority. Our Lord, therefore, by forbidding us either to give or receive the title of rabbi, master, or father, forbids us either to receive any such reverence, or to pay any such to any but God.

11. Matt. xx, 26.

12. Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled, and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted - It is observable that no one sentence of our Lord's is so often repeated as this: it occurs, with scarce any variation, at least ten times in the evangelists. Luke xiv, 11; xviii, 14.

Verse 13. Wo to you - Our Lord pronounced eight blessings upon the mount: he pronounces eight woes here; not as imprecations, but solemn, compassionate declarations of the misery, which these stubborn sinners were bringing upon themselves. Ye go not in - For ye are not poor in spirit; and ye hinder those that would be so.

Verse 14. Mark xii, 40; Luke xx, 47.

Verse 16. Wo to you, ye blind guides - Before he had styled them hypocrites, from their personal character: now he gives them another title, respecting their influence upon others. Both these appellations are severely put together in the 23rd and 25th verses; and this severity rises to the height in the 33rd verse. The gold of the temple - The treasure kept there. He is bound - To keep his oath.

Verse 20. He that sweareth by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon - Not only by the gift, but by the holy fire, and the sacrifice; and above all, by that God to whom they belong; inasmuch as every oath by a creature is an implicit appeal to God.

Verse 23. Judgment - That is, justice: Faith - The word here means fidelity.

Verse 24. Ye blind guides, who teach others to do as you do yourselves, to strain out a gnat - From the liquor they are going to drink! and swallow a camel - It is strange, that glaring false print, strain at a gnat, which quite alters the sense, should run through all the editions of our English Bibles.

Verse 25. Full of rapine and intemperance - The censure is double (taking intemperance in the vulgar sense.) These miserable men procured unjustly what they used intemperately. No wonder tables so furnished prove a snare, as many find by sad experience. Thus luxury punishes fraud while it feeds disease with the fruits of injustice. But intemperance in the full sense takes in not only all kinds of outward intemperance, particularly in eating and drinking, but all intemperate or immoderate desires, whether of honour, gain, or sensual pleasure.

Verse 26. Ye build the tombs of the prophets - And that is all, for ye neither observe their sayings, nor imitate their actions.

Verse 30. We would not have been partakers - So ye make fair professions, as did your fathers.