Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
Christ first commands the Jews to follow the teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees, but not their life and manners — seeing that they are wicked, inhuman, boastful, and arrogant. Secondly, at verse 13, He hurls at them the "woe" of malediction on account of their hypocrisy, avarice, superstition, and the other crimes which He enumerates. Thirdly, at verse 32, He foretells that His faithful and Apostles will be slain by them; and therefore He threatens the final destruction of Jerusalem and Judaea by the Romans.
This seems to be the last and swan-song oracle of Christ, by which He presages the cross and death now imminent upon Him — indeed, He prepares for it and courts it. For by this sharp and free chastisement of their vices, He so offended the Scribes and Pharisees that they now prepared for Him, not words, but blows: whence after three days (for all these things were done and said by Christ on the Tuesday after Palm Sunday, as I have said in the Chronotaxis) they seized Him and crucified Him. Christ foresaw this, but He was unwilling — and ought not — to spare their malice, but reproved it sharply, as being the lawgiver and censor of morals sent into the world by God, even though He knew that on this account He would be slain by them, because He desired to offer this death to God the Father for the salvation of men, that in this way the marvelous providence of God — by which He had decreed to save men through the Cross of Christ — might be fulfilled in Him and through Him. Saint Stephen imitated Christ's freedom of speech, who by his sharp rebuke paved his own way to the martyrdom so longed for, Acts 7.
Vulgate Text: Matthew 23:1-39
1. Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, 2. saying: The Scribes and the Pharisees have sat on the chair of Moses. 3. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do; but according to their works do not; for they say, and do not. 4. For they bind heavy and insupportable burdens, and lay them on men's shoulders; but with a finger of their own they will not move them. 5. And all their works they do for to be seen of men; for they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge their fringes. 6. And they love the first places at feasts, and the first chairs in the synagogues, 7. and salutations in the marketplace, and to be called by men Rabbi. 8. But be not you called Rabbi; for one is your Master, and all you are brethren. 9. And call none your father upon earth; for one is your Father, who is in heaven. 10. Neither be you called masters; for one is your master, Christ. 11. He that is the greatest among you shall be your servant. 12. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled, and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. 13. But woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you yourselves do not enter in, and those that are going in you suffer not to enter. 14. Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour the houses of widows, praying long prayers: for this you shall receive the greater judgment. 15. Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you go round about the sea and the land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, you make him the child of hell twofold more than yourselves. 16. Woe to you, blind guides, that say: Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but he that shall swear by the gold of the temple, is a debtor. 17. You foolish and blind: for which is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifies the gold? 18. And whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gift that is upon it, is a debtor. 19. You blind: for which is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift? 20. He therefore that swears by the altar, swears by it, and by all things that are upon it. 21. And whosoever shall swear by the temple, swears by it, and by Him that dwells in it; 22. and he that swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by Him that sits thereon. 23. Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you tithe mint, and anise, and cummin, and have left the weightier things of the law: judgment, and mercy, and faith. These things you ought to have done, and not to leave those undone. 24. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel. 25. Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you make clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but within you are full of rapine and uncleanness. 26. You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, that the outside may become clean. 27. Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you are like whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones, and of all filthiness. 28. So you also outwardly indeed appear to men just, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. 29. Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, that build the sepulchres of the Prophets, and adorn the monuments of the just, 30. and say: If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been their fellows in the blood of the Prophets. 31. Wherefore you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of them that killed the Prophets. 32. Fill up then the measure of your fathers. 33. You serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell? 34. Therefore behold, I send to you Prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them you will put to death, and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city: 35. that upon you may come all the just blood that has been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even unto the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachias, whom you slew between the temple and the altar. 36. Amen I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation. 37. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the Prophets, and stones them that are sent to you, how often would I have gathered together your children, as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not? 38. Behold, your house shall be left to you desolate. 39. For I say to you, you shall not see me henceforth until you say: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Verse 1: Then Jesus Spoke to the Multitudes and to His Disciples
"Then," namely, when by His most wise replies, questions, and arguments He had now repeatedly refuted the errors and ignorance of the Scribes and Pharisees, and had proved to them by many signs — even by miracles — that He was the Messiah, the Son of God, and when He saw that the Scribes were so little moved by these to faith in Him that they were rather exasperated all the more to destroy Him — "then," I say, He crushes their brazen obstinacy with this forceful and pathetic speech, by which He uncovers the outward and feigned mask of their sanctity (lest the people imitate it), and exposes the wickedness that lay hidden beneath it, so that the common folk may shun it.
Verse 2: Upon the Chair of Moses the Scribes and Pharisees Have Sat
By "chair," by metonymy He understands the honor, rank, dignity, and authority of teaching and commanding which among the Jews Moses had had, and which the Scribes had received after Moses. It is a catachresis. For that the Scribes taught not only sitting but also standing is sufficiently gathered from Luke 4:16 and Acts 13:16. Thus the chair of Saint Peter is called the very power and Pontifical authority of teaching and ruling all the faithful of the whole world, in which the Roman Pontiffs succeed Saint Peter: for otherwise no Pontiff now sits in that wooden chair in which Saint Peter sat, but it is preserved for the sake of religion, and is shown to the people each year on the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter in his basilica to be venerated. Hence Saint Jerome says to Damasus: "I am joined in communion with Your Beatitude, that is, with the Chair of Peter." For the Pontiff, although as a private man he may err, yet when he defines anything from the chair — that is, by Pontifical authority — cannot err, on account of the assistance of the Holy Spirit.
Note: the Scribes were the doctors and interpreters of the law, who set forth and expounded the law to the people; the Pharisees, however, governed the people, and were chosen for the magistracy, the Sadducees being rejected, as Josephus sufficiently suggests in book 18 of the Antiquities, chapter 2 — wherefore the Sadducees are not here named. Moreover, many of the Scribes and Pharisees were priests or Levites: for it was their duty to teach the people, Malachi 2:7. But Christ did not wish to name them priests, out of honor for the priesthood, lest He should derogate from it.
Verse 3: All Things Therefore Whatsoever They Shall Say to You, Observe and Do
"All," namely, such as are not contrary to Moses and the law. For contrary to the law which says: "Honor your father and your mother," was the teaching of the Scribes, who taught to say "corban" to parents — as Christ taught in chapter 15:4. So contrary to the law which says: "You shall not swear falsely," was the teaching of the same men, that if anyone swore by the temple or the altar, he was not bound by the oath — which Christ censures here at verse 16. Likewise contrary to the law and to Moses was to teach that Jesus was not the Messiah or the Christ, which the Scribes taught: for Jesus was performing those signs and miracles which had been foretold by Moses and the prophets as to be performed by the Messiah; and whoever performed them was to be received as Messiah. Whence at chapter 16:12 Christ commanded: "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees" — namely, of their doctrine, that is, their own private doctrine, contrary to Moses and the law. In these matters, therefore, the people could not follow the teaching of the Scribes, nor obey them; but in the rest — which for the most part they taught in accordance with Moses and the law — they could obey them, and often were obliged to. Christ here therefore admonishes them, that all the other teachings of the Scribes which are not repugnant to the law, even if vain and futile, and therefore not binding (for a law, in order to bind, must prescribe something honorable and useful, not trifling, as the jurists and theologians teach in the treatise De Legibus, and Saint Thomas, I-II, question 95, article 3) — such as were the frequent washings and purifications of hands and body — they should nevertheless observe, for the merit of blind and simple obedience, and out of reverence for the sacerdotal and doctoral order. So Jansenius, Francis Lucas, and others — although Maldonatus restricts "all" to only those things which were prescribed by Moses in the Law, which Christ certainly here chiefly has in mind. Whence the Syriac renders it: Whatsoever they shall say to you that you should observe, observe and perform.
For they say (command) and do not. — As if to say: they teach and command well, but live ill, both because they violate the law and because by their example they scandalize their subjects and drive them likewise to violate the law. For, as the poet says, "The whole world is fashioned after the example of its king (and teacher)." For men believe deeds more than words. Let Christians observe this precept and warning of Christ when they at times see some bishops, pastors, and magistrates not living according to the law of Christ, to which they themselves compel their subjects.
Verse 4: They Bind Heavy and Insupportable Burdens
"They bind," Greek δεσμεύουσι, that is, they tie, they gather together, and as it were heap up into piles — as if to say: both in the multitude and in the greatness and weight of their precepts and exactions, they burden, press down, and almost crush the people.
Insupportable. — Greek δυσβάστακτα, that is, difficult to carry: for if they had been wholly impossible to carry, they would not have bound their subjects; for no one is bound to the impossible, or to that which he cannot do. Such were the rigid interpretations of the law, and moreover very many other things which, beside the law, they themselves prescribed to the people, especially concerning oblations, tithes, first-fruits, etc., which they themselves exacted from the people most rigidly. Consider just their rigid observance of the sabbath alone, as prescribed by them: so that they would not permit Christ to heal the sick on the sabbath, nor His hungry disciples to pluck and eat the ears of grain, Matthew 12:2 and following.
But with their own finger they will not move them. — The Syriac, touch. "For they used to say," says Arias Montanus, "that they knew what they ought to do." Whereupon Saint Chrysostom says: "He shows their twofold wickedness: both because, granting no indulgence, they wish the multitude to live by the most exact standards, and because, being too indulgent toward themselves, they take great license. The opposite of these qualities are required in the best prince: namely, that toward himself he grant no indulgence, but show himself a severe judge of himself, while toward his subjects he is milder and more inclined to grant pardon."
Verse 5: They Do All Their Works to Be Seen by Men
(Greek φαίνωνται, that is, that they may be beheld; so the Syriac) by men. — He notes the vain ostentation of their sanctity, by which they prayed in the public squares, and when about to give alms sounded a trumpet, and when fasting disfigured their faces, as Christ said in chapter 6. Christ touches on the root of the Scribes' unbelief, as to why they do not believe in Christ — namely, because they sought vainglory, ostentation, and the applause of the people. "For it is impossible," says Saint Chrysostom, "that one should believe Christ proclaiming heavenly things, who covets the earthly glory of men."
For they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge their fringes. — The Syriac: They lengthen the fringes of their cloaks. Note that the Jews, interpreting the words of Deuteronomy 6:8 too literally — "You shall bind them (the precepts of God) as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be and shall be moved before your eyes" — wore certain parchment strips around their arms and forehead (whence they were called arm-pieces and frontlets), so that these should continually beat against their eyes and forehead, and by beating remind the mind to think upon and keep the divine law. On these they inscribed those words of Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God. You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole strength." These they called phylacteries, as if to say preservatives (from φυλάττω, that is, "I guard, I preserve"), because they continually admonished them to the observance of the law. See what has been said at Deuteronomy 6:8 and Exodus 13:9 and 16.
For the same reason the Lord commanded, Numbers 15:38 and Deuteronomy 22:12, that the Jews should wear fringes, or certain threads hanging from the lower hem of their garment, and these of hyacinth color (that is, of a heavenly hue), as if professing and leading a heavenly life in the keeping of the law. Saint Jerome adds that the more pious Jews inserted very sharp thorns into these fringes, so that as they walked they might constantly be reminded of the divine law by their pricking. All these the Pharisees wore larger and broader than the rest, so that they might appear to all more religious and stricter keepers of the law — though in their own mind they made far too little of them and did not keep them. "Not understanding," says Saint Jerome, "that these things ought to be carried in the heart, not on the body; otherwise cupboards and chests also have books, yet they have no knowledge of God." Furthermore, Saint Chrysostom understands by "phylacteries" amulets for health: for such the Scribes considered the aforementioned parchments of the law to be. Just as some Christians hang the Gospel of Saint John around their neck, as it were an amulet and preservative of health.
Verse 6: They Love the First Places at Banquets and the First Chairs in the Synagogues
As if to say: they seek the first places everywhere, and for this reason broaden their phylacteries and make a show of their prayers and alms, so that all may give them the first places as to holy and wise men.
Verse 7: Greetings in the Market Place, and to Be Called Rabbi
Greek ἐν ταῖς ἀγοραῖς, that is, in the market places and squares — as if to say: they seek that all may salute them as saints with deep reverence, with uncovered head and bended knee. Whence Chrysostom: "They love the first salutations, not only in time, that we should be the first to salute them; but also in voice, that we should cry out: Hail, Rabbi; and in body, that we should bow down to them with bent heads; and in place, that they may be saluted in public — whence He says: And greetings in the market place." Wisely R. Matthias in Pirkei Aboth, chapter 4: "Be first in saluting, that you may be the first to greet anyone at all. Be the tail of lions and not the head of foxes," that is, be the lowest among the good and noble, not the highest among the fraudulent, proud, and impious.
And to be called by men Rabbi. — רב Rab (whence rabbi) is the same as "many," that is, great, because a great man is worth as many men, such as is the Rabbi or doctor of the law, since he excels the rest in learning, authority, and virtue: "They wish," says Chrysostom, "to be called Rabbi, and not to be so; they desire the name and neglect the office." Prudently R. Ben Zoma in the same Pirkei Aboth, chapter 4: "Who is wise? He who gladly learns from all men, according to that passage: I have had understanding above the ancients, because I have sought Your commandments, Psalm 118. Who is powerful? He who governs his anger and his spirit, according to that: Better is the patient man than the valiant; and he who rules his spirit, than he who takes cities, Proverbs 16:32. Who is rich? He who is content with his own, according to that: For you shall eat the labors of your hands: blessed are you, and it shall be well with you, Psalm 127. Who is honored? He who honors others, according to that: Whoever glorifies Me, him will I glorify; but those who despise Me shall be ignoble," 1 Samuel 2:30.
Verse 8: Be Not Called Rabbi, for One Is Your Master
He forbids the ambition and arrogance by which the Scribes and Pharisees, courting popular favor, wished to be eminent above the rest, to be honored, and to be called Rabbi in preference to Christ — nay, to the exclusion of Christ. Otherwise it is permitted to seek the grade of doctor, as a testimony of knowledge, so that by means of it one may acquire for himself the authority of teaching and preaching among the people, and thus effect greater fruit therein by teaching and preaching. Hence the Council of Trent, session 24, chapter 12, commands "that all dignities, and at least half of the canonries in distinguished Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, should be conferred only upon Masters and Doctors, or else upon Licentiates in Theology or Canon Law." Wherefore Christ does not say: Do not be, but: "Do not be called Rabbi."
Christ, therefore, does not forbid the degree of doctorate, but the proud ambition of the title, the haughtiness and arrogance by which one is pleased with the name of Doctor, surveys himself magnificently above others, vainly exalts himself, nay despises the rest, as if he had knowledge and doctrine from himself and not from Christ — as the Scribes were doing. Whence He subjoins the reason: "For One is your Master, and you are all brethren;" as if to say: There is one supreme Rabbi, that is, Master, and He is Christ, of Whom all the rest are disciples, equal to one another as brethren: let no one of them therefore proudly exalt himself above the rest, nor arrogantly wish to be called Rabbi, as though he were of himself a doctor and master of others: for this is an injury to Christ, Who alone of Himself has all knowledge, and is alone the supreme teacher of all, even constituting them teachers and teaching them. For if by nature and by grace you are brethren, and therefore equal, then you are not masters one over another, proudly commanding and lording it over one another, as the Scribes do. Otherwise Paul himself, says Saint Jerome, modestly calls himself the teacher of the Gentiles, Ephesians 3.
Verse 9: Call No Man Your Father Upon Earth
He passes from master to father, because in the preceding verse He had said that we are all brethren, namely sons of the same God the Father. He says therefore: Do not call anyone upon earth "Father," namely as though he were the principal author of your life, and the provider of nourishment and inheritance, so that you should depend upon him entirely, or at least as much as upon God — as the Gentiles and atheists and others do, trusting not in God but in men. That this is the meaning is plain from the reason He subjoins: "For One is your Father, Who is in heaven," "from Whom all paternity in heaven and on earth is named," Ephesians 3:15. See what has been said there. God alone, therefore, is truly and fully Father of all, since He alone breathes into each one his soul and life, creates them, preserves, increases them — in comparison with Whom earthly fathers, says Saint Jerome, are fathers only abusively and in shadow; and therefore they ought not insolently to command their children, but with their children humbly to submit themselves to the Most High God, the Father of all. "For," says Saint Chrysostom, "we do not have the beginning of life from our parents, but we receive through them only the transmission of life."
Verse 10: Neither Be Called Masters, for One Is Your Master, Christ
Neither be called (do not seek to be called) masters (Greek καθηγηταί, that is, instructors, masters, governors, moderators; the Syriac, rectors; the Arabic, governors), for one is your master (Greek καθηγητής, that is, the instructor of the way and of life, the leader and governor; the Syriac, rector; the Arabic, governor), Christ. — For He, first, teaches us by Himself, goes before us and leads us along the way of virtue to heaven, to happiness, and to glory: while the rest teach only after having been first taught by Him. Secondly, others in teaching only sound forth words and voices outwardly in the ears, like a tinkling cymbal; but Christ opens up their meaning inwardly to minds, and illumines them with the light of His doctrine: "For man," says Saint Chrysostom, "does not bestow understanding upon man by teaching, but exercises what has been bestowed by God through admonition." Thirdly, others only show what the law commands and what God demands from us; but Christ infuses grace into the will, so that we who hear the things to be done may in fact fulfill them in deed bravely and constantly.
On this matter Saint Augustine wrote the book De Magistro, concerning which he himself says in book 3 of the Confessions, chapter 2: "Some time ago I wrote the book De Magistro, in which it is disputed, sought out, and found that He who teaches man knowledge is no other master than God, according to that which is written in the Gospel: One is your Master, Christ." Whence in chapter 11 he demonstrates this same point thus: "Of all the things we understand, we consult not one who speaks and sounds forth outwardly, but the truth presiding inwardly over the mind itself — being perhaps admonished by words to consult it. But He Who is consulted, and Who teaches, is said to dwell in the interior man: He is Christ, that is, the unchangeable power of God and the eternal wisdom; which every rational soul indeed consults, but to each only so much is opened as he is able to receive, on account of his own will, whether good or evil."
Verse 11: He Who Is Greatest Among You Shall Be Your Servant
The Syriac: let him become servant among you. "The disease of vainglory," says Saint Chrysostom, "which He had said must be fled, He teaches must be fled through humility." And Origen: "If anyone ministers the divine words, knowing that Christ bears fruit in him, in no way does he profess himself a master, but a servant. Whence it follows: He who is greatest among you, etc., since Christ Himself also, though He was truly master, professed Himself a servant, saying: I am in the midst of you as one who serves. And rightly, after all the things by which He had forbidden the desire of vainglory, did He add, saying: He who shall exalt himself shall be humbled; and he who shall humble himself shall be exalted."
Shall be servant. — Let him go before, says the Gloss, by serving, not by proud lording. Let piety display in him a mother and discipline a father; and care must be taken that neither strictness should be rigid nor piety remiss.
Verse 12: Whoever Exalts Himself Shall Be Humbled
The Syriac: Whoever lifts himself up, shall be brought down; and he who has abased himself, shall be lifted up, before God, says Remigius, and also before men: for these lift up the humble and humble the proud. "For glory follows those who flee from it, and flees those who follow it." "Insolence," says Saint Hilary, "God shall make humble, and humility He shall raise up into glory." See what has been said at James 1:9 and 1 Peter 5:5 and 6. The practice of this axiom of Christ was shown by the humble disciple — nay, teacher — of the Gospel, Saint Francis, through all the actions of his life, as Saint Bonaventure shows in his Life.
Further, just as every virtue has three degrees — the first of which is the resolution by which a man firmly proposes to take up the virtue and carry it out in act; the second, fortitude, by which he bravely overcomes and constantly transcends all the temptations, adversities, and impediments that arise in the execution of the virtue; the third, eagerness, by which he performs these actions eagerly and desires them, and rejoices, exults, and triumphs in them — so likewise the first degree of humility is to acknowledge oneself and one's own worthlessness, and therefore to despise oneself; the second, bravely to bear contempt wherever it may come from; the third, to rejoice and exult in it.
Blessed Peter Damian recounts a memorable example in Epistle 15 (in another edition, 36). A certain audacious and warlike cleric, he says, became great by his pride and arms, and therefore had a dispute concerning certain estates: he resolved to settle it by battle with another powerful man; and so on both sides the cohorts were drawn up in battle array. Before the battle the cleric entered a church and was hearing Mass; and when it was read: "He who shall exalt himself shall be humbled," etc., he insolently said, nay blasphemed: "This saying is false in my case: for if I had humbled myself, I should never have become so great." Soon afterward, when the battle had been joined, as his horse, thirsty, ran of its own accord against his will to the nearby water, and he struck his shield against the horse to recall it to the battle line, behold, there the enemy's sword like a thunderbolt transfixed his blasphemous mouth and killed him — so that it might humble and lay low the proud man, and show the saying of Christ to be true.
Verse 13: Woe to You, Scribes and Pharisees, Who Shut the Kingdom of Heaven Against Men
Note: just as Christ marked out the eight beatitudes as so many blessings of the godly, eight times repeating the word beati, and saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who mourn," etc. (Matthew 5), so conversely He here assigns eight maledictions of the impious Scribes, and eight times repeats the word vae. Christ, the new lawgiver, imitates Moses, the old lawgiver, who promises very many blessings to those who keep the law, and threatens as many curses upon those who do not keep it, Deuteronomy 27:12. So Origen.
Further, the vae of Christ is partly that of one foretelling, as Origen would have it, the grievous punishment hanging over the crimes of the Scribes; partly that of one sympathizing and commiserating. Whence Basil, cited in the Catena, at Luke 11:52: "This word 'woe,' which is uttered under intolerable sufferings, fits those who shortly after are to be thrust down into a grievous punishment," namely into death and destruction, both present and future in hell. "Woe," therefore, presupposes mortal guilt; for He threatens them with the menaces of eternal damnation and of hell, as Christ explains at verse 33.
Because you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. — As if to say: I am now opening the kingdom of heaven to each one, for I preach: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." For this kingdom, which had been shut up for four thousand years by the sin of Adam, I — expiating Adam's sin by My death — am now about to open, so that whoever believes in Me and follows My life may enter into it as through an open door. Whence many of the Jews, stirred up by My preaching, are striving to enter it. But you, O Scribes, turn them away and shut heaven against them: both by your vain and perverse traditions with which you imbue them — for, as Saint Chrysostom says, the kingdom of heaven is Sacred Scripture, or the beatitude to which it leads; the gate is the understanding of Sacred Scripture, or Christ; the key-holders are the Scribes and priests; the key is the word of knowledge; the opening is its interpretation — and also because you scandalize them by your crimes and draw them into the same by your example; and finally because by calumniating and persecuting Me, you draw them away from Me and from My faith, which is the way to heaven; for I am the door, because only through Me is there an open entrance into heaven, John 10:9. Tropologically Origen says: "They shut the kingdom of heaven who excommunicate someone without reason."
For you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those entering to go in. — As if to say: your malice and damnation are not enough for you, but you are eager to drag others along into the same. This is a grave crime. For if it is the duty of a teacher (such as the Scribes were) to call back those who err, says Saint Chrysostom, then he who leads those who are striving after salvation into error is altogether lost and plague-bearing — nay, is plague itself; wherefore the teacher brings upon himself as many hells as he corrupts and destroys souls, because he is not a teacher and promoter of salvation, but a betrayer, says Saint Chrysostom.
Verse 14: Woe to You Who Devour the Houses of Widows Under Pretext of Long Prayers
As if to say: Woe to you, Scribes, because you devour — and, as the Syriac has it, eat up — that is, you exhaust the substance of widows, while you wring money from them, selling them, namely, your long public prayers under a show of sanctity. For this is what He means by adding in explanation: "Praying long prayers;" in Greek, προφάσει μακρὰ προσευχόμενοι, that is, praying long under a pretext, that is, under the pretext that you pray at length. Whence Mark has, "under the pretense of long prayer;" the Arabic, on account of the length of your prayers. So Saint Chrysostom, Jansenius, and others.
Of widows. — For widows, says Chrysostom, since they lack a husband as it were as a counselor, are more easily deceived, and are more inclined to lavish their goods upon hypocrites who put forward and promise sanctity.
For this you shall receive the greater judgment. — that is, a greater condemnation. Whence the Syriac renders it, "you shall have the supreme judgment:" both because you plunder poor widows; and because you feign sanctity while being criminals; and because, as Chrysostom says, "you paint over your avarice with the color of religion, so that iniquity may be loved while it is thought to be piety;" and because you imbue widows with your errors and crimes. On which account you owe both the punishment of your own sin and the guilt of another's ignorance, says Saint Hilary.
Verse 15: You Compass Sea and Land to Make One Proselyte
Instead of "hypocrites," the Syriac here and in what follows always renders it as receivers of faces (i.e., respecters of persons). Proselyte in Greek is the same as advena or adventitius in Latin — namely, one who, having been converted from paganism to Judaism, comes over to the Jews, their Church, and their religion. In Hebrew they are called גרים, gerim. Christians call such people neophytes. For the Scribes busied themselves to make many Gentiles into Jews, both from ambition and from avarice, in order to increase their own offerings. "Sea and dry land," that is, the whole world, "that you may make one," because since they were ineffective for the salvation of others, they needed great labor for the conversion of even a single one, says St. Chrysostom.
You make him a son (that is, guilty, deserving, liable) of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves. — In Greek διπλότερον ὑμῶν, that is, doubly more than you; because, as Euthymius says, it is so arranged by nature that in vices disciples easily surpass their masters. "Because," as Chrysostom says, "being provoked by the evil example of their masters, they become worse than they, especially when they are stirred up to such things by their masters' word or example." Again, because many proselytes, when they see your vices, turn back to paganism and idolatry. So says St. Jerome. For this relapse is a greater and, so to speak, double sin.
Truly Origen says: "Just as the righteous man is increased in glory according to the number of his just deeds, so the sinner is increased in punishment according to the number of his sins."
Verse 16: Woe to You, Blind Guides: Whoever Swears by the Temple, It Is Nothing
Woe to you, blind guides, who say: Whoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing (he is bound to nothing); but whoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, is a debtor — he must pay the gold which he swore and vowed. The Arabic, instead of is a debtor, renders it has sinned, namely if he does not perform what he swore. Others render it: He is guilty of his oath.
Note, from what was said on Matthew 5:34, that the Scribes, from the fact that God had commanded that oaths be made by Himself (by God) alone, supposed that an oath made by creatures was not an oath and did not bind; but blinded by greed, they made an exception for those things which, being offered to God, filled their own coffers, as if these alone were counted most holy: whence they are rightly called by Christ "blind guides." For He accuses them of stupidity and fraudulence, says St. Jerome, because they thought that the gold was more sanctified than the temple which sanctifies, says the Interlinearis.
Furthermore, the Scribes used to say that the offerings were holier than the temple itself, to make people readier to make offerings than to pray, says the Glossa. He calls "gold of the temple" the gold that is offered and cast into the temple's treasury, to feed its ministers — namely the priests, such as the Scribes were. So say St. Jerome, Bede, Jansenius, Maldonatus, and others. Truly the Glossa says: "He who swears by a creature, swears by the Divinity that presides over the creature."
Verse 17: Foolish and Blind: Which Is Greater, the Gold, or the Temple That Sanctifies the Gold?
This argument of Christ is clear, and convicts and refutes the stupidity of the Scribes. Properly, holiness is an interior virtue and grace sanctifying the soul. But the temple is called holy by metonymy, because it was dedicated to holy things — namely, to the prayers and sacrifices to be offered to God within it. This therefore was only an external holiness, which the temple communicated and, as it were, breathed upon the other things offered to God within it; wherefore the temple was holier than its own offering, and consequently the oath made by the temple was holier and more binding than one made by the gold offered in the temple.
Verse 18: Whoever Swears by the Altar, It Is Nothing
And whoever shall swear by the altar (through the altar), it is nothing (he swears nothing, and is bound to nothing); but whoever shall swear by the gift (through the gift) that is upon it, is a debtor — he must pay the gift which he swore and vowed; for he who swears that he will offer a hundred pieces of gold on the altar, by that very fact vows to God, whose the altar is, a hundred pieces of gold. The reasoning concerning the altar is the same as that already stated concerning the temple.
Verse 19: Which Is Greater, the Gift, or the Altar That Sanctifies the Gift?
The Syriac, instead of sanctifies, here and in what follows renders it consecrates; for a gift offered to God is not properly sanctified in such a way that it is made just and holy in itself, but is said to be sanctified extrinsically — namely, because it is offered and consecrated to God.
Verse 20: He Who Swears by the Altar, Swears by It and by All Things That Are Upon It
He therefore who swears by the altar (through the altar), swears by it, and by all things (through all things) that are upon it; — and consequently by the gold and the gift offered on the altar. Therefore he is more bound by his oath than the one who swore only by the gold of the temple.
Mystically: St. Augustine, Quaestiones Evangeliorum, Book I, ch. 34: "The temple and altar is Christ; the gold and the gift are the praises and sacrifices offered in Him and through Him." Origen: "The altar is the heart; the gifts are prayer, fasting, and so on, which make the heart holy."
Verse 21: Whoever Swears by the Temple, Swears by Him Who Dwells in It
That is to say: He who swears by the temple swears by God who dwells in the temple. For he swears by the temple as by the house and throne of God; that is, he swears by God, who has His throne in the temple, so that He may be worshiped and honored there. For the sacred majesty and holiness of God is reckoned by men to dwell in the temple. Whence Blessed Nilus says: "Enter the church (the temple) as you would heaven."
Verse 22: He Who Swears by Heaven, Swears by the Throne of God
And he who swears by heaven (through heaven — for the Hebrews use ב, i.e. in, for by, especially in oaths), swears by the throne (through the throne) of God, and by Him (through Him, that is, God) who sits upon it. — For, according to the common usage and sense of men, whoever swears calls God, who alone is infallible and uncreated Truth itself, as a witness to what he says or promises. Therefore whoever swears by heaven, swears by God the king and ruler of heaven, and calls Him as a witness.
Verse 23: Woe to You Who Tithe Mint, Anise, and Cummin, and Have Left the Weightier Matters of the Law
For tithes are sanctioned by God in the Law. Whence Rabbi Akiva in Pirke Avoth, chapter 3, says: "Tithes are a fence for wealth (because they protect and preserve it); tradition is a fence for the Law; a vow is a fence for abstinence; silence is a fence for wisdom." But the Pharisees were too minute and exacting in demanding tithes of herbs which were not expressly mentioned in the Law, and this Christ here tacitly rebukes.
Mint. — It is a well-known herb, of good scent, warm and savory, with which the people beyond the mountains (the Transalpines) season meat in broth.
Anise (Dill). — It is a fragrant herb, of which Pliny, Book XVIII, ch. 20, writes: "Anise moves belching, eases gripes, and stops the bowels."
And you have left the weightier matters of the Law (namely), judgment (that is, right and equity in judging — for you render an unjust sentence in order to favor friends or those who bring gifts, and adjudicate the case in their favor; for they themselves were judges, as I said at chapter 5, verse 22), and mercy (because rigidly and cruelly you extort tithes, offerings, and victims from widows and the poor), and faith — that is, faithfulness in one's words, pacts, and agreements; or "faith" in God and in Christ sent by Him; for you deny Him, and therefore you are faithless ones lacking faith, hope, and charity, which are of far greater importance and which God requires of you far more, according to that of Micah 6:8: "I will show you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: namely, to do judgment, and to love mercy, and to walk carefully with your God." "These" — namely the weightier things: judgment, mercy, faith — "you ought to have done" before all else, "and those" (the tithings of herbs) nevertheless "not omitted," inasmuch as they were commanded or permitted by the Law.
Verse 24: Blind Guides, Straining Out a Gnat, but Swallowing a Camel
Blind guides, straining out (Greek διϋλίζοντες, that is, clarifying, defecating, purging of lees; just as through a strainer — for example through a linen cloth — wine, milk, honey, or oil is strained drop by drop and purged of the gnats and other dregs lying in them; whence Apuleius in the Florida, on the Gymnosophists: "They do not know how to till a field [colere arvum] or to strain gold [colare aurum]") a gnat, but swallowing a camel. — Cajetan wrongly puts "an ass" in place of "camel," by which he means a kind of insect that emits a horrible-sounding noise, which the Belgians call horselen (a horsefly). For all the Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic codices have "camel," which is rightly opposed to the gnat as the largest to the smallest. That is to say: If a little gnat falls into your wine or drink, you strain out the wine by dripping it through a filter, and you catch and discard the gnat in the strainer, lest you swallow it by drinking. But meanwhile you gulp down a huge camel, with a monstrous gape of your mouth and throat dilated. It is a proverb, as if to say: The smallest things — such as tithings of herbs, seeing that they are lucrative for you — you attend to exactly, lest anyone defraud you in the least; but meanwhile injustices, rapines, and other crimes great and grave like a camel of the way (of road), you commit without scruple; and as though by drinking you swallow them down, according to that saying of Job 15:16: "Who drinks in iniquity like water." "Therefore Christ mocks," says Hilary, "the diligence of the Scribes in straining out gnats, whose carelessness was in swallowing camels." He mocks, I say, the preposterous zeal of the Scribes in that they committed the greatest offenses while guarding against the smallest, says Origen — that they were meticulous in the smallest things, carefree in the greatest; scrupulous in trifles, free and bold in solid crimes; superstitious in their ceremonies and washings, but empty of true religion and charity, flaying widows and the poor. Such are even now found among the faithful, who scrupulously recite the Rosary, fast in honor of the Blessed Virgin, etc.; but meanwhile, without scruple, live luxuriously, plunder, steal, and so on.
Similar proverbs, meaning nearly the same thing, are: You draw water from a fountain to fill the sea; You strip a naked man to clothe one already clothed; You take away the light of a candle to add it to the sun; You hunt a dog with a lion, and a hare with an ox.
Mystically: St. Gregory takes the "gnat" to mean Barabbas, and by the "camel" Christ Himself. For so he says in Moralia, Book I, ch. 6: "Straining out the gnat, but swallowing the camel: for the gnat wounds by its buzzing, while the camel willingly bends down to take up its burdens. The Jews, therefore, strained out the gnat, because they demanded that the seditious robber be released; but they swallowed the camel, because they tried by their shouting to destroy Him who had voluntarily come down to take up the burdens of our mortality."
Verse 25: You Clean the Outside of the Cup and the Dish, but Within Are Full of Rapine
"Paropsides" are dishes and platters on which food is set upon the table. It is a parable in which Christ calls man a cup and a dish; the body and external goods He calls that "which is on the outside of the cup and dish," and the soul and conscience He calls what is within, or the interior part of the cup and dish. That is to say: You, O Pharisees, diligently wash and cleanse your hands, bodies, plates, and cups, from which you eat and drink; but you fill your conscience with rapine and with the filth of every crime, whereas above all the purity of conscience ought to be cared for, since it alone makes us clean before God, and from it flows forth all purity of works and of all things; for from conscience flows all goodness or malice of all actions. Therefore when conscience is cleansed, everything else is cleansed, and all things are clean to him. Thus the Apostle often distinguishes the interior man from the exterior, as I said on Romans 7:22.
It could secondly be explained briefly and simply thus: You are eager to cleanse the external dishes and cups from which you eat and drink; but the internal cups — of conscience, stinking and putrid with crimes — you neglect to wash out and to cleanse by penance; you want to have plates that are clean but a mind that is unclean. This sense comes back to the same as the previous one, even if one takes "cup" and "dish" properly. But that they are to be taken here improperly and parabolically is clear from verse 26.
You are full of rapine. — "This very thing," says St. Chrysostom, "the Prophets also often preached — that their princes were rapacious, companions of thieves, who in judging followed no consideration of justice, but gifts and rewards." Read Isaiah 1:23 and 24.
And uncleanness. — The translator read in the Greek ἀκαθαρσίας ("uncleanness"), but some now read ἀδικίας, that is, "injustice," or ἀκρασίας, that is, "intemperance." As if to say: You consider yourselves polluted if you drink from an unclean cup; but you do not consider yourselves polluted by intemperance when you get drunk — although intemperance pollutes the mind, whereas an unclean cup does not.
Verse 26: Blind Pharisee, Clean First That Which Is Within the Cup
That is: O Pharisee, you who teach others but are blind in yourself, first cleanse your mind and your internal conscience; then all your external things will also become clean to you. For from the purity of the mind all actions and external things draw their own purity and moral goodness; but external things — such as clean cups — cannot cleanse an internal mind stained and unclean with drunkenness, rapine, or any other crime. See what was said on verse 25.
Verse 27: You Are Like Whitewashed Sepulchres
[Lapide treats verses 27 and 28 together; see commentary on verse 28.]
Verse 28: Outwardly You Appear Just, but Within Are Full of Hypocrisy and Iniquity
In Greek ἀνομίᾳ, that is, "transgression of the law" — as if to say: Outwardly you feign zeal for the Law, while inwardly you despise and transgress it. Aptly the Author of the Opus Imperfectum, cited in Chrysostom: "Tell me, O hypocrite, if it is good to be good, why do you not wish to be what you wish to seem? For what is shameful to seem is more shameful to be; but what is beautiful to seem is indeed beautiful to be."
Furthermore, "very many today are like the Pharisees," says St. Chrysostom, and after him Titus of Bostra, on Luke 11:44, "who take the utmost care of outward cleanness and adornment, but none at all of the beauty of the soul; indeed, they fill the soul with worms and pus and indescribable stench — that is, with absurd and wicked desires."
Verse 29: You Build the Sepulchres of the Prophets and Adorn the Monuments of the Just
Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who (in Greek ὅτι, that is, "because") build the sepulchres of the Prophets, and adorn the monuments of the just. — For although this in itself is holy and religious, yet in the Scribes it was vicious and impious. St. Chrysostom gives three causes: First, He accuses not the work, but the intention; for they did it for ostentation — but what does it profit them to be praised in ostentation where they are not, and to be tormented where they are (in Gehenna)? Secondly, because he who scorns justice honors the just without cause, nor can the Saints be friends of those to whom God is an enemy. Thirdly, because the Martyrs do not rejoice to be honored with monies over which the poor weep; namely, because the Scribes extorted these from the poor whom they afflicted and from whose destitution they forced weeping, in order to build for themselves magnificent tombs for the Prophets, and rather monuments of glory for themselves.
Add, fourthly and above all, that Christ here reproaches the Scribes for building sepulchres to the Prophets, because while they were doing this, they were at the same time killing — or contemplating the killing of — other greater Prophets, namely Christ and His followers. And by this reasoning they themselves appeared to imitate the homicides, indeed the sacrileges, of their fathers, and tacitly to consent to them, while with a like desire to kill Christ, they buried the Prophets slain by their fathers. As if to say: You bury the Prophets killed by your fathers; you have a similar desire to kill Me and to bury Me: therefore it is fitting that you bury the Prophets whom your fathers killed — just as the sons of robbers bury the men killed by their parents, so that the robbery may be hidden. For in a similar way you consent to the crime and the prophet-slaying of your parents, while you intend to kill and bury Me, who am the Prince of the Prophets: for you do the very thing which your fathers did. So say Origen, St. Jerome, Euthymius, and others, and it is clear from what follows, especially verse 32, where, in explaining, He says: "And fill you up the measure of your fathers."
Add that the word "hypocrites" suggests that they built the sepulchres of the Prophets not out of true piety but out of feigned piety and hypocrisy — namely, that by this they might cover up their own crimes, and might appear to be just and religious guardians of the Law, and therefore zealously (as for justice) pursue Christ to death, as though He were a violator of the Law and an enemy. This was a greater, indeed a double iniquity: first, the plotting of Christ's death; second, the hypocrisy, that they feigned to inflict it on Christ piously, in order to vindicate the Law and the Prophets from the injury and contempt (as they themselves said and lied) of Christ. So says Toletus on Luke 11:48, where Luke suggests this sense, saying: "You truly testify that you consent to the works of your fathers, for they indeed killed them, but you build their sepulchres" — with this end in view, that you may appear religious, and therefore piously persecute and kill Me.
Thus Antoninus Caracalla, the Emperor, when he had killed his brother Geta in his mother's lap, was urged by his attendants, in order to veil and dignify this parricide, to enroll Geta among the gods. To whom he said: "Let him be a god, provided only he be not alive," as Spartianus testifies. So the Scribes did not want Christ and the Prophets to be alive, lest their own crimes should be censured by them. They therefore preferred to kill them and, to hide their crime, magnificently to bury those killed, and to enroll them among the gods. Whence the Author of the Opus Imperfectum says: "The Jews were always venerators of past Saints, but despisers — indeed, even more, persecutors — of those present." Such are even now found among Christians, who venerate the Saints who have finished this life, but turn away from the living ones, inasmuch as by their words and examples these rebuke their wicked morals. Hence this verse:
Pascitur in vivis livor, post fata quiescit. (Envy feeds upon the living; after death it finds rest.) [Ovid, Amores I.15.39]
Verse 30: If We Had Been in the Days of Our Fathers, We Would Not Have Been Their Partners
And you say: If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been (in Greek οὐκ ἂν ἦμεν, i.e. "we would not have been") their partners in the blood of the Prophets. — That is, we would not have killed the Prophets, nor would we have consented or cooperated with our fathers who killed them. They are deceived and they lie: for just as they killed Christ, the Prince of the Prophets, because He rebuked their vices, so would they surely have killed the Prophets too, who used to rebuke the same things.
Verse 31: You Are Witnesses to Yourselves That You Are the Sons of Those Who Killed the Prophets
That is: You yourselves, about yourselves and against yourselves, bear witness that you are the sons of murderers — indeed, of prophet-slayers — and consequently that you have the same disposition as your fathers, the same nature, the same inclination and propensity, namely, to kill the Prophets who are the censurers of your vices. For "the offspring follows its father," for the father is wont to transmit to his son, along with his seed, his own inclinations, talents, and vices. Hence sons take after their fathers. Add to this the training and examples of parents, by which they provoke and drive their children to do the same things. Therefore sons are accustomed to imitate the acts of their parents, in order to complete what their parents began. Whence Christ adds:
Verse 32: Fill You Up the Measure of Your Fathers
And fill you up (Arabic: "you fill up") the measure of your fathers, — namely by killing Me and the Apostles, just as your fathers killed the Prophets, so that you may fill up the measure of crimes and slaughter of the Prophets begun by them. This saying of Christ is not that of one commanding, but of one permitting and foretelling. That is to say: I do not command, but I permit and I surely foretell that you, O Scribes and Jews, by killing Me and mine, shall fill up the measure of the prophet-slaying crimes which your fathers committed; wherefore when this measure is filled, God will punish all the crimes, both of your fathers and of yourselves, at one and the same time, by the final destruction which He will inflict on Jerusalem and Judea through Titus and Vespasian. So St. Chrysostom: "He secretly hints at the likeness of their malice."
From this verse, and from verses 35 and 36, theologians teach that God has set and decreed a fixed measure of sins for kingdoms, commonwealths, cities, and for private individuals, before He will fully and perfectly punish them; but as soon as that measure is filled, He then punishes everything at once and most fully. So here Christ waited for His own slaying and that of His Apostles, before He overthrew Jerusalem. So, in Genesis 15:16, God said to Abraham: "The iniquities of the Amorites are not yet complete," but they will be filled up after 400 years, and then through Moses and Joshua I will destroy them, and bring the Hebrews into their land. "For," says the Author of the Opus Imperfectum, "every nation or city, God does not punish immediately when they have sinned, but He waits through many generations, and now commands, now threatens, and sometimes chastises in part, so that the longer He has waited for them, the more just is God's judgment, and the more deserved their punishment. And when it pleases God to destroy that city or nation, He seems to render to them the sins of all preceding generations, because what all those generations deserved, this one alone suffers."
So God commanded Saul to destroy the posterity of Amalek, because of the crimes of their parents and their perpetual enmity against the Jews, 1 Samuel 15:16. The reason is that sons and descendants are reckoned, in civil estimation, as one with their parents; hence the merits or demerits of the parents redound upon the children — namely, when the sons imitate the crimes and habits of their parents: then, when the measure of crimes predetermined by God has been filled, they pay for both their own and their fathers' sins. So say the interpreters, and in particular Abulensis in Quaestiones 253 and 259.
But note here that the sons are not then punished more severely than their own sins deserve; but because they imitate the sins of their impious parents, and thus fill up the heap of sins defined and designated by God, hence it happens that God's wrath rages upon them, which otherwise would not have raged upon them so heavily, had not their fathers' sins preceded to complete and make up this heap. And in this sense, and for this reason, sons are then said to pay for the sins of their parents, because God looks upon both, and upon the demerits of both, in punishing — according to that of Deuteronomy 5:9: "The Lord is a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, and showing mercy unto many thousands of those who love Me." See what is said there.
Verse 33: Serpents, Offspring of Vipers, How Will You Flee from the Judgment of Gehenna?
On that day of judgment I will judge you as christ-killers and god-killers, and will condemn you to Gehenna. He calls the Scribes "serpents" and "vipers" because of their serpent-like and viperish nature, cunning, malice in harming, and their zeal to kill Me and My Apostles. For "just as vipers are born of vipers, so from murderous fathers you are born murderers," says St. Jerome. See what was said on chapter 3, verse 7.
Verse 34: Behold, I Send You Prophets, and Wise Men, and Scribes
Note the word "therefore," which is drawn as an effect from its cause in the preceding verse, as if to say: Because you, like serpents and vipers, will kill Me, your Messiah — on account of which crime you shall be cut off and condemned to Gehenna — I, having pity on you, in order to turn this destruction and condemnation away from you, will after My death send to you My disciples and Apostles, that they may stir you up to penance and faith in Me; but I foresee that you will kill them also, and in this way you will fill up the measure of your fathers, as I foretold in verse 32. When this is done, God will cut you off through Titus, and will condemn you to Gehenna, as I have already threatened and foretold as future. This is clear from what follows.
I send. — Luke, chapter 11, verse 49, says: "The Wisdom of God said: I will send to them." "The Wisdom of God," namely, I Myself, Christ, who am the Wisdom of God, inasmuch as I am the Word of the Father.
Prophets, and wise men, and scribes. — Luke says: "Prophets and Apostles." Thus Christ calls His disciples. "He marks," says St. Jerome, "the various gifts of Christ's disciples: Prophets, who foretell things to come; wise men, who know when they ought to deliver a discourse; scribes, learned in the Law." And Hilary says: "The Apostles: by the revelation of future things, Prophets; by their recognition of Christ, wise men; by their understanding of the Law, scribes."
And some of them you will kill — as when they stoned St. Stephen, beheaded with the sword James the Greater (Acts 12), and threw James the Less from the pinnacle of the temple, as Eusebius testifies, Book II, ch. 23.
And you will crucify — as they did St. Simeon, bishop of Jerusalem, the successor of St. James, as Eusebius testifies in his History, Book II, ch. 32.
And some of them you will scourge — as they did Peter and the Apostles, Acts 4 and 5.
And you will persecute from city to city — as they did Saul (Paul) and Barnabas, Acts chapters 13 and 14.
Tropologically: Origen, Homily 23 on Numbers, says: "And I today, if I do not hear the words of the Prophet, if I scorn his warnings, stone the Prophet, and, as far as in me lies, kill him — him whose words I do not hear, as though he were dead."
Verse 35: That Upon You May Come All the Just Blood Shed Upon the Earth
That is: Thus it shall come to pass through your malice and obstinacy, that the punishment and vengeance shall rebound upon your own head.
All the just blood — that is, the blood of the just ones, as the Syriac renders it; who, namely, exhorted the rest of mankind to live justly and holily, by words as well as by examples. Whence Luke has "the blood of the Prophets;" for in Scripture "Prophet" is often the same as "a just and holy man," especially one who strives to make others also just and holy — as the Prophets used to do. St. Augustine gives the reason in Tractate I on Psalm 118: "For the imitation of the wicked brings it about that one receives not only one's own merits but also those of the ones one has imitated." Furthermore, St. Chrysostom says: "Just as the blessings which each of the preceding generations merited have been bestowed on those who received Christ, so too the sufferings which the earlier wicked merited have come upon the last Jews."
Which has been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, to the blood of Zechariah. — Because although Cain, who killed his brother Abel, was not a Jew by race and lineage, he was nonetheless a Jew in malice and in the example of an evil life: for by killing the just Abel, he gave an example to the Jews — who were most inclined to follow this — to kill in a similar way the just Prophets. Thus therefore Cain the fratricide was not the natural, but the moral and symbolic father of the Jews who killed their own brothers, namely Christ and the Prophets. By a similar analogy, the devil is called the father of all the proud and impious.
Because therefore the Jews most fully and most perfectly imitated the fratricide of Cain — even after they had learned from Scripture of the divine vengeance upon him — and also the prophet-slayings of others who killed the just and the Prophets; indeed, they surpassed and far exceeded them, by killing Christ the Son of God and His Apostles; and not only did they surpass them, but they consummated and fulfilled them in every way. Hence, as their spiritual and mystical sons, they are said to pay for the crimes, as it were, of their mystical parents, in the manner I explained at verse 32, though not so properly as natural sons are said to pay for the sins of their carnal parents.
Add that, although Cain was not a father, he was nonetheless an uncle of the Jews; for he was the brother of Seth, from whom Abraham and the Jews descended. Indeed, Cain was truly a grandfather of the Jews through his daughters. For the descendants of Seth married the daughters of Cain (Genesis 6:2), from whom the Jews were born, as Abulensis says in Quaestio 260. This is probable, but not certain. For Scripture says only that the giants, who were the cause of the Flood in which they perished, were born of them; but it does not deny that others also were born of them. The Jews therefore, because they imitated not the holiness of Seth but the parricide of Cain, who killed his just brother Abel for rebuking his impiety (as I said on Genesis 4), are hence called not the sons of Seth but the sons of Cain. Whence Tertullian, Against the Jews, ch. 5, teaches that Cain was a type of the Jews and Abel of the Christians; and St. Augustine discusses this at length in Against Faustus, Book XII, ch. 9.
Finally, there were those who praised the fratricide of Cain, and from this they were called Cainites; concerning whom St. Augustine, in his work De Haeresibus, chapter 18, says: "The Cainites were so called because they honor Cain, saying that he was of a very great virtue; at the same time they reckon Judas the traitor to be something divine, and consider his crime a benefit, asserting that he foreknew how profitable the Passion of Christ would be for the human race, and that for this reason he handed Him over to the Jews to be killed; they also honor those who made schism in the first people of God, and perished when the earth opened up — Korah, Dathan, and Abiram — and the Sodomites, they are said to worship."
Of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the temple and the altar. — You will ask: Who is this Zechariah? There are three opinions here. The first is that of St. Chrysostom in his homily On St. John the Baptist, of Vatablus, Arias Montanus, Gaspar Sanchez, and of Francis Ribera in his Preface to Zechariah, who judge that this Zechariah is the one who is the penultimate among the twelve (minor) Prophets; for he was the son of Berechiah. But that he was killed between the temple and the altar, we nowhere read.
The second and truer and more certain opinion is that this Zechariah was the son of Jehoiada the high priest, who was killed by the ungrateful king Joash, by a monstrous sacrilege, in the most holy place — namely in the court of the priests, which was between the temple (or the Holy Place) and the altar of holocausts; for this altar was in the court of the priests (2 Chronicles 24:21). So say Abulensis in Quaestio 215; St. Jerome, Bede, and many others along with Jansenius and Maldonatus; Tertullian in the Scorpiace, ch. 8, whom hear: "Zechariah is slaughtered between the altar and the temple, affixing the perennial stains of his blood to the stones." For although other Prophets were killed by the Jews after this Zechariah, yet this one is the last whom Sacred Scripture mentions, or whose death it records. Add: Scripture expressly records the vengeance of only Abel's and this Zechariah's blood: Abel's, in Genesis 4:10: "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries to Me from the ground;" and Zechariah's, in 2 Chronicles 24:22: "Who, when he was dying, said: Let the Lord see, and require it." "He mentions Abel," says Chrysostom, "to show that they would kill Christ and the Apostles out of envy, just as out of envy Cain killed Abel; but Zechariah, because as a holy man he was killed in a holy place."
You will say: This Zechariah was the son of Jehoiada, not of Berechiah. St. Jerome replies that Jehoiada was called by another name, Berechiah — perhaps because "Berechias" in Hebrew means "blessed of the Lord;" and it is clear that Jehoiada was such a most holy man. Whence St. Jerome adds: "In the Gospel which the Nazarenes use, in place of 'son of Berechiah' we find it written 'son of Jehoiada.'"
The third opinion is that this Zechariah was the father of John the Baptist, whom they relate to have been killed by the Jews, because he had preached the coming of Christ, saying in his Canticle: "And you, child, shall be called the Prophet of the Most High: for you shall go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways;" and because he withdrew from death and hid his son John, who was sought for slaughter by Herod the infanticide, on account of the wonders which had happened at his birth. For this Zechariah was the last of the Prophets: for John his son was rather an indicator of the Christ present, than a Prophet of one to come. Again, that this Zechariah was the son of Berechiah is attested by St. Hippolytus the Martyr, cited by Nicephorus in History, Book II, ch. 3.
St. Jerome rejects this opinion as apocryphal; but nevertheless the same thing is handed down and asserted by St. Cyril Against the Anthropomorphites, Peter of Alexandria in the Ecclesiastical Canons, canon 3; St. Epiphanius in his work On the Lives and Deaths of the Prophets; Baronius in his Apparatus to the Annals; St. Thomas in the Catena; Dionysius the Carthusian, and Franciscus Lucas here, and Christophorus a Castro in his Preface to Zechariah. Origen, Theophylact, Euthymius here, and St. Basil in his homily On the Human Generation of Christ, add that this Zechariah was killed by the Jews because, after the birth of Christ, he had placed the Virgin Mary as though she were a virgin among the virgins in the temple. If this is true, Zechariah was a victim of virginity, because he died a martyr for the virginity of Blessed Mary. This, however, is hard to believe, for the reasons which Baronius and Abulensis adduce here in Quaestio 255.
Verse 36: Amen I Say to You, All These Things Shall Come Upon This Generation
That is to say: The vengeance for these crimes shall seize upon the Jews of this age, who in a few days will kill Me and will persecute My Apostles; and therefore, after a few years, they will be destroyed by Titus and the Romans.
Verse 37: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Who Kills the Prophets
He repeats "Jerusalem" to express the vehement pathos of compassion, grief, and lamentation. The doubling belongs to one who is merciful and loves greatly. As if to say: O Jerusalem, city of God, chosen and beloved by Him above all cities, which He Himself adorned with so many graces and benefits — endowed with the Law, the temple, doctrine, the priesthood, the kingdom, the Prophets, and miracles — you have always been ungrateful for all these things, have killed His Prophets, and soon will kill Me, the Son of God, and My Apostles. Wherefore it has become a wicked and lost city, destined by God for destruction and burning by the Romans. By "city" He means the citizens, or the body of citizens, and especially the magistrates and priests (for these killed the Prophets and Christ); for He does not lament the stones, but the men, with the affection of a father, says St. Jerome.
Who kills the Prophets. — That is, you who wish to kill them, says Chrysostom; who in this title — as much as in the crime — surpass other cities and nations, indeed glory that you kill the Prophets sent by God to reprove your morals and vices. Whence Christ, in Luke 13:33, says: "It cannot be that a Prophet perish outside Jerusalem," as if to say: It is the proper work of Jerusalem to kill the Prophets.
How often have I willed — both in times past through the Prophets, and now through Me and the Apostles, to "gather" into My bosom, and to bring back to the one God and to His one faith and worship, "thy children," that is, thy citizens scattered into various errors and hurling themselves into the perils of Gehenna: "For nothing so scatters as sin, and nothing so draws together to God as virtue," says Theophylact. "Even as a hen gathereth her chickens," wandering in divers directions, "under her wings" that she may cherish them, warm them, and defend them from kites.
Christ compares Himself and His love, providence, and solicitude for saving the Jews to a hen cherishing her chicks under her wings: First, because hens more than other birds love their chicks with burning affection, and exercise an extraordinary providence and protection over them, says Chrysostom: hence a hen ceaselessly clucks and cackles, so that even if you do not see the chicks, you nevertheless recognize the mother by her voice and crooning; whereas sparrows, swallows, storks and other birds you do not recognize to be mothers except while they brood over their chicks in the nest. So Christ loved us with supreme love, "having at last become as it were an earthly and domestic bird," says St. Hilary, unceasingly solicitous for us throughout His whole life, teaching, grieving and groaning that He might save us.
Secondly, neither sparrows, nor thrushes, nor ducks, nor other birds grow feeble with their chicks as the hen does, in whom "the voice grows hoarse, says St. Augustine on Psalm LVIII, the whole body becomes bristly, the wings droop, the feathers are loosened, and you see about the chicks something I know not how sickly, and that is maternal charity, wherein weakness is found," etc. Thus then Christ gathered together all nations, just as a hen her chicks — He who was made weak for our sake, taking flesh from us, that is from the human race, crucified, despised, struck with blows, scourged, hung on the wood, pierced by the lance. Therefore this belongs to maternal infirmity, not to lost majesty: that by the very fact that He shared weakness with us, He might loose our iniquity.
Thirdly, the same St. Augustine, on Psalm xc, upon the words: "And thou shalt hope under His wings;" and, more at length drawn from St. Augustine by Aldrovandus in his treatise On the Hen: "If a hen protects her chicks under her wings, how much more shalt thou be safe under the wings of God and against the devil and his angels, who, being airy powers, hover around like hawks to snatch away the weak chick! etc. For He shall be to us as a hen protecting her chicks; for the name 'hen' is not injurious. No bird grows so feeble with her chicks as the hen. Let your charity attend: we see swallows, sparrows and storks outside their nests, and we do not know whether they have young: but the hen we recognize by the weakness of her voice and by the loosening of her feathers — she is wholly transformed by bearing her chicks; because they are weak, she makes herself weak. Because therefore we too were weak, the Wisdom of God made Himself weak, because the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, that under His wings we might hope."
Fourthly, the hen with voice broken, shaken, weary and faint, in all things accommodates herself to her little ones. So also Christ. "Let us therefore place our egg — that is, our hope — under the wings of that hen," says St. Augustine, sermon 29 On the Words of the Lord according to Luke, "for truly He hath borne our infirmities, and He hath carried our sins," Isaiah LIII.
Fifthly, in Greek the word here is ὄρνις, a word which signifies both a bird in general and a hen in particular: yet our translator more aptly renders it "hen" rather than "bird." For, as St. Augustine says, "Wonderful is the love of almost all birds for cherishing and protecting their chicks, but especially of hens, which gather their chicks under their wings, that is, they cherish them with supreme desire and solicitude."
Sixthly, a hen with a sprig of rue under her wing is a hieroglyph of safety, says Pierius, and from him Aldrovandus; for indeed Afranius, among the matters of husbandry which Constantine Caesar ordered to be collected, says that hens will be safe from the cat if a little branch of wild rue be placed under her wing. Moreover Democritus also records that, fortified by that safeguard, they are touched neither by foxes nor by any other hostile animal. This security — nay, one far greater — Christ affords to His own.
Seventhly, the hen is a symbol of fruitfulness. For she often lays an egg daily, and sometimes twin eggs on single days, and from a single egg she occasionally hatches out two chicks. What is more fruitful than Christ? Again, the cock and the hen are a symbol of vigilance and watchfulness. What is more vigilant than Christ? Thus far Aldrovandus in his treatise On the Hen.
Tropologically: the hen is the Church and her priests; for, as the Author of the Opus Imperfectum says, "Just as a hen with chicks does not cease to call them, that by her assiduous voice she may correct the wandering of the chicks, so also priests ought not to cease in teaching, that by the zeal and assiduity of their doctrine they may amend the negligence of the erring people. And just as a hen with chicks not only warms her own, but also loves as her own the young of every winged creature that are hatched by her; so too the Church is eager not only to call her own Christians, but, whether Gentiles or Jews, if they have been placed under her, she gives life to them all by the warmth of her faith, and regenerates them in baptism, and nourishes them in the word, and cherishes them with maternal charity."
Eighthly, there exists an emblem of the hen, with the motto: "Nil Christo triste recepto" ("Nothing is sorrowful when Christ is received"), and it is this: Though fierce winter rage, the hen has yielded up her feathers, / That she might drive off the cold from her young, and she has died. / Hence, fierce Medea, hence, Procne, learn: for behold she / Hath twice given life to her chicks, and dies.
Ninthly, that the hen and her eggs are medicinal, and are of avail for checking menses, for bringing forth a dead fetus from the womb, for St. Anthony's fire (erysipelas), for scab, for fistulas, for pains of the eyes, for gout, for burns and other diseases — all this is taught by the same Aldrovandus. Thus Christ is the most efficacious Physician of souls and of all infirmities.
Tenthly, the hen, when her own safety is at stake and she alone fears a kite, a cat, or a dog, flees; but if she fears for her chicks, gathering them under her wings she strives with every effort to defend them from harm, and, beyond what her strength allows, she often fights with wings, beak, feet, and her whole body. Thus Oppian, Book III De Venatione. So Christ contended for us against the devil and sin, even unto death, and the death of the cross.
And thou wouldst not, — because thou dost pursue the Prophets and Me with deadly hatred unto death, and dost not allow thy citizens to be converted to Me and to their God. For He is addressing especially the Scribes and the magistrates, as I have said.
Verse 38: Behold, Your House Shall Be Left Unto You Desolate
"House," that is, the temple, says St. Jerome and Theophylact, or rather the city of Jerusalem and the whole region — namely Judaea — shall, as a punishment for such ingratitude and so many crimes, be cut off and desolated by God through Titus and the Romans, so that it shall become "desolate," and be so left and forsaken — both by its inhabitants and citizens, and by God, and by Me and My protection, says St. Chrysostom; for this last is indicated by the causal particle "for," which follows in the next verse. He alludes to that passage, Jeremiah 12:7: "I have left My house; I have abandoned My inheritance." For Jerusalem, forsaken by God, became a synagogue of Satan, and therefore the prey of the Roman eagle — namely of Titus and Vespasian — who in part slew the Jews, in part led them away captive, and in part scattered them throughout the whole world.
Verse 39: You Shall Not See Me Henceforth Till You Say: Blessed Is He Who Comes in the Name of the Lord
For I say (Luke: "but I say;" for in Scripture "for" and "but" are often interchanged) unto you: ye shall not see Me henceforth (from this time) till ye shall say: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. — The "for" proves what He had said, as if to say: I said that "your house shall be left desolate" by Me, and consequently by God My Father, because, as a punishment for your unbelief — by which you refused to acknowledge Me as the Messiah while I was teaching and working miracles — I shall withdraw Myself from you into heaven, so that you shall not see Me any more upon earth until the day of judgment, on which I shall condemn your unbelief.
Some take this verse of Christ's solemn entry into Jerusalem, when on Palm Day the Jews cried out to Him: "Hosanna, blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." But this cannot be said: for that entry was already past, as is clear from chapter 21, verse 1 and following. For these words were spoken by Christ after Palm Sunday, three days before His death and cross, that is on the Tuesday after Palm Sunday, as I have said in the Chronotaxis. So the Fathers and interpreters in many places.
I say therefore, firstly, that Christ is speaking of the end of the world and the day of judgment — as if to say, say St. Chrysostom, Theophylact, Euthymius, and St. Augustine (Book II On the Consensus of the Evangelists, chap. LXXV): You, O Scribes, who ceaselessly contradict Me and slander Me as not being the Messiah and the Son of God, but as casting out demons in Beelzebub, "ye shall not see Me henceforth," that is, after this short time and the few days during which I shall dwell with you in this flesh up to My death (for you are ungrateful and unworthy of My doctrine, grace, and salvation), until the day of judgment, when even against your will you shall be compelled to acknowledge Me as the Messiah, the Son of God, the judge of you and of all men, and, if not with your mouth, certainly in your heart and mind, unwillingly you shall say "Hosanna" — which you have already mocked at in the children and the crowds, chap. 21, verse 16: for then you shall see that I was and am that Blessed One "who cometh in the name of the Lord," that is, who was sent by God the Father to redeem and save all men; and then you shall be bound to worship, revere, and adore Me as such. For then, says the Glossa, they shall confess the Son of God, whom now they have crucified.
Secondly, this passage can be taken of the Jews who, at the end of the world, shall be converted to Christ through Elias, and therefore shall acknowledge Christ — soon to come to judgment — as the Messiah, blessed by the Lord, as if to say: You, O Jews, refuse to acknowledge Me as the Messiah, and you persecute Me as a pseudo-Messiah even unto death and bloodshed; but your sons and your posterity shall, at the end of the world, acknowledge and worship Me as such, and therefore I shall bestow on them My grace and glory, while you I shall condemn to Gehenna — which shall be My signal praise, honor, and glory, but your disgrace, reproach, and everlasting destruction. For with this goad He pricks the hard and unbelieving hearts of the Jews.
This was foretold by Hosea, chapter 3, verse 4 and following, to which Christ here alludes, for he says: "Because for many days the children of Israel shall sit without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an altar, and without an ephod, and without teraphim; and after these things the children of Israel shall return, and shall seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the last days." See what is said there.