Woe to you: Jesus' last public address and his lament over Jerusalem

Matthew 23 is the last public speech of Jesus in the first Gospel. It comes after the days of controversy in the temple (chapters 21-22) and before he leaves the temple for the last time (24:1). Tradition ascribes the Gospel to the apostle Matthew, the tax collector who became one of the Twelve (9:9), on the testimony of Papias, who is quoted by the historian Eusebius. Many critical scholars regard the author as an unnamed Jewish Christian, probably a trained scribe (compare 13:52), who used Mark and a collection of sayings. On that view the date is about AD 70 to 90, which means that the strong words of this chapter were set down for a church in tension with the Jewish leadership of its day. Those who defend an earlier date, or Matthean priority, place the Gospel before 70 and see the chapter as Jesus' own history.

The speech is addressed to 'the crowds' and to the disciples (23:1), with the scribes and Pharisees as its subject. The scribes were experts in the Law, and the Pharisees a movement devoted to keeping it with the traditions of the elders. The Pharisees were not villains in general. They held the resurrection (Acts 23:8), loved Scripture and had a wide following. Matthew's chapter is aimed at those who had joined the plot against Jesus and at the faults he saw in the teachers of his time.

Mark 12:38-40 and Luke 20:45-47 have only a short warning about the scribes. Luke 11:37-54 has a set of woes, spoken at a meal to Pharisees and lawyers, that overlaps with Matthew's. Many scholars attribute the overlap to a common source, and others to repeated teaching by Jesus. Luke 13:34-35 has the lament over Jerusalem in nearly the same words as Matthew 23:37-39. Matthew gathers the material into one speech of greater length and force than any other Gospel.

The chapter is a prophetic rebuke, and the best comparison is with the oracles of woe in Isaiah 5:8-23 and Habakkuk 2. In Hebrew prophecy a woe is a cry of grief over a coming ruin as much as a curse. The speaker is a prophet pronouncing judgment on his own people, and that is the right frame. Jesus, the teachers and the crowds are all Jews. Jeremiah, Isaiah and Amos spoke as sharply to Israel's leaders as Jesus does here, and none of them is read as hostile to Israel. Many Jewish scholars, and Christian scholars with them, have noted that this inner-Jewish quarrel has been misused over the centuries to justify hatred of Jews. That use has no place in the chapter. Hyperbole and caricature, such as the camel swallowed whole, are part of the form.

The chapter also holds together two kinds of speech. Verses 1-12 are teaching directed to the disciples about leadership in the community. Verses 13-36 are the woes directed at the leaders, in the second person. Verses 37-39 are lament, and the speaker turns from judgment to grief. The movement is from instruction through rebuke to sorrow, and the last two verses show the heart that was behind the whole.

One must also take the chapter in context. It follows the parable of the tenants (21:33-46) and the questions of chapter 22, and it leads into the prophecy of the temple's fall (24:1-2). The last words 'your house is left to you desolate' are the hinge between the two chapters.

Verses 1–3

'The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat.' The phrase describes their role as teachers of the Law, and stone seats for the reader of the Law have been found in some ancient synagogues. Jesus therefore tells the crowds to 'practice and observe everything they tell you', but not to copy their conduct, 'for they do not practice what they preach.' The target is the gap between teaching and living, and not the Law itself.

Verses 4–7

They tie up heavy loads for others and will not lift a finger to move them. Their deeds are done 'for men to see': they 'broaden their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels'. Phylacteries (tefillin) were small boxes with Scripture texts, worn on the forehead and arm, and tassels were worn on the hem of the garment, in obedience to Deuteronomy 6:8 and Numbers 15:38-39. These are commanded signs. The fault is in making them larger for display. They also love honoured seats, public greetings and the title Rabbi.

Verses 8–12

Jesus turns to the disciples. They are not to take the titles Rabbi, father or instructor, because 'you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers', one Father in heaven, and one Instructor, 'the Christ'. The saying is aimed at status and the claim of ultimate authority, which belongs to God alone. 'The greatest among you shall be your servant' repeats 20:26 and the proverb that the self-exalted will be humbled.

Verses 13–15

• The first woe: they shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, neither entering nor allowing others. (Verse 14, about devouring widows' houses, is absent from the best early manuscripts and is omitted in the BSB. It is probably imported from Mark 12:40.)
• The second is about proselytes. They cross land and sea to win one convert and make him 'twice as much a son of hell', that is, of Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, used as a figure for final judgment.

Verses 16–22

The third woe is on 'blind guides' who say that an oath by the temple means nothing but one by the gold of the temple binds. Jesus asks which is greater, the gold or the temple that makes it sacred, the gift or the altar. All oaths involve God, because the temple, the altar and heaven are all his. This continues the teaching of 5:33-37.

Verses 23–24

The fourth woe concerns tithes. They tithe mint, dill and cumin, which was in line with Leviticus 27:30 and was not condemned: 'You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.' But they neglect 'the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness' (compare Micah 6:8; Hosea 6:6, quoted in Matthew 9:13 and 12:7). They 'strain out a gnat but swallow a camel', possibly a wordplay in Aramaic on the two words, and the camel was an unclean animal (Leviticus 11:4).

Verses 25–28

The fifth and sixth woes use two pictures of purity. A cup cleaned outside and left foul inside shows a concern for ritual that ignores the heart: 'First clean the inside'. And they are 'like whitewashed tombs', which were whitewashed so that people would not touch them and become unclean (Numbers 19:16): fair outside, full of bones within.

Verses 29–36

The seventh woe is on building the tombs of the prophets. They say that they would not have joined in shedding the prophets' blood, but by that very statement they identify themselves as the sons of those who did. 'Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your fathers.' Jesus will send prophets, wise men and teachers, some of whom they will kill and crucify. The blood from Abel (Genesis 4) to 'Zechariah son of Berechiah' falls on 'this generation'. The Zechariah murdered in the temple court is told in 2 Chronicles 24:20-22, where his father is Jehoiada. Zechariah the prophet was the son of Berechiah (Zechariah 1:1). The identification is unclear: some think Matthew has confused two men, others that Jehoiada was also called Berechiah, and others that the words 'son of Berechiah' are a later addition in some manuscripts. Since Chronicles stands last in the Hebrew Bible, the phrase may span the whole Scripture from first to last martyr.

Verses 37–39

'Jerusalem, Jerusalem' is a cry of grief. He has longed to gather her children as a hen gathers chicks under her wings (the image recalls Psalm 91:4), 'but you were unwilling!' Her house is left desolate. He closes with Psalm 118:26: they will not see him again until they say 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.'

The chapter is about the true shape of religion. Jesus does not condemn the Law, the tithe or the tassel, and he affirms the tithe. He condemns a religion of display that has lost its centre. The prophets said the same: God desires mercy and not sacrifice (Hosea 6:6), and fasting without justice is empty (Isaiah 58). The standard Jesus names, justice, mercy and faithfulness, is the Law's own summary (Micah 6:8) and the love commandments of 22:37-40 applied to conduct.

The chapter also shows the Bible's view of leadership. The warning against titles in 23:8-12 belongs with Paul's account of ministry (1 Corinthians 3:5-9; 2 Corinthians 4:5) and Peter's charge to elders not to lord it over those entrusted to them (1 Peter 5:1-4). Authority in God's people is service.

The woes join the long history of Israel's prophets, who were often rejected, and the chapter places the coming judgment on Jerusalem within that history (compare Acts 7:51-53). Yet the chapter ends in lament and in hope. The promise that they will say 'Blessed is He who comes' echoes the hope of Romans 11:25-26, where Paul expects Israel's eventual turning. Interpreters differ on whether 23:39 describes a future conversion, a recognition at the last judgment, or both.

The chapter shows Jesus as the one who has final authority over Israel's teachers. He claims to be the one Teacher and the Christ (23:8, 10), the one who sends prophets, wise men and scribes (23:34), and the one whose longing to gather Jerusalem's children has been refused for as long as he has been calling. In the parallel in Luke 11:49 the sending is attributed to the Wisdom of God, and Matthew makes it Jesus' own act. The hen image applies to him the language the Psalms use of God's protection (Psalm 17:8; 91:4), and Jesus takes the place of the LORD.

The chapter also shows him as the prophet who knows the pattern. Jerusalem's killing of the prophets and stoning of those sent prepares for his own death (21:37-39). The blood-guilt of the long line of prophets from Abel to Zechariah is brought to its end by the death of the last and greatest messenger, the Son. The final promise, that he will return and be welcomed, makes him the one who comes in the name of the Lord (Psalm 118:26), a verse the crowd shouted at his entry (21:9) and which will be fulfilled when he returns.