Continuing with my series on the “woes” of Matthew 23. Why weren’t the Pharisees entering into the Kingdom of Heaven, and how were they shutting out others? Of all the woes, this charge was the most surprising. And how were they making their converts into “sons of hell”? We’re going to look at a few possibilities for what Yeshua/Jesus was talking about with that accusation and explore some more of the world of the first century Jews and particularly the Pharisees.
Transcript below, rather loosely edited.
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Ever meet a recent convert, to just about anything? Does the word insufferable come to mind? It definitely does seem that new converts very often feel that they have something to prove, like they have to make up for not always knowing what they know now, that they know an awful lot when in actuality they know almost nothing, and that they personally need to convert the rest of the world as well?
How many of us went through this insufferable phase when we “found” Torah—in actuality, we started keeping just a handful more commandments added to the many we were already cherishing, defending, and observing—how many of us became such a stench in people’s nostrils that they decided we joined some sort of crazy legalistic cult where the prime ritual was to tell people who kept many commandments that they were lawless because we kept a few extra ones?
Or, have you ever known anyone converted away from the Messiah Yeshua/Jesus, after years of knowing Him? People who were quite obviously saved and faithful followers but who became willing tools of the enemy, and underwent radical personality changes, once the anti-missionaries (often former believers) threw a few confusing verses out of context at them and manipulated them into forgetting our Master and throwing it all away? Ever watch their tactics? The zeal that was once expended on telling people they were lawless now poured into getting people to deny Yeshua altogether?
New converts, we all know, can be sons of hell when the wrong people are guiding them, or when, sadly, they are converted and then left alone without any sort of mature guidance whatsoever.
And that’s what we are going to talk about today, in the third part of this teaching series about the seven polemical woes of Matthew 23. What exactly was wrong with Pharisaic converts and how were the Pharisees shutting people out of the Kingdom of Heaven?
Hi, I’m Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where we explore the historical context of Scripture and talk about how it bears on our own behavior and witness as image-bearers. You can find my teachings on my websites theancientbridge.com and contextforkids.com as well as on my youtube channels, accessible from my websites. You can also access past broadcasts on my podcast channel characterincontext.podbean.com and my context books for adults and families are available through amazon.com.
So, let’s read the sections we will be covering this week.
13 “But woe to you, Torah scholars and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not enter yourselves, nor do you let those enter who are trying to go in.
15 “Woe to you, Torah scholars and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel over land and sea to make one convert. And when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of Gehenna as yourself.”
Now, if you are familiar with how this section reads in some versions, you will notice a missing verse, which reads:
“Woe to you, Torah scholars and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, while praying at length as a show. Therefore, you will receive greater condemnation.”
Although you can find that verse in both Luke and Mark, it isn’t in any of the early versions of Matthew and so it is likely that the words were added by “helpful” scribes later in order to clear up what they felt was a discrepancy. But don’t believe the charges that it was edited out to hide anything—it does, after all, show up in two other places and no two Gospel accounts of anything are exactly the same. Remember that these accounts were written down years later—I can’t even tell the same story accurately about what happened last week!
I am going to read a bit from CARM.org here on it. CARM stands for Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry:
It is absent in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex B (both early fourth-century), Codex D (fifth century), Codex Z (sixth century), Codex L (eighth century), Codex Θ, minuscule 33 and 892 (ninth century), and other later manuscripts on into the middle ages. Many early Old Latin manuscripts do not contain it, such as ita (fourth century), ite (fifth century), and others. The majority of the Latin Vulgate manuscripts, including all of the earliest copies, also lack the reading. The verse is missing in the earliest Syriac manuscript, The Sinaitic Palimpsest (fourth century), as well as some of the later Palestinian Syriac copies. Most of the Coptic manuscripts also lack the verse, including the middle Egyptian manuscripts, the Sahidic manuscripts, and some of the Bohairic. The Armenian and Georgian translations likewise do not contain it. Thus, our earliest sources lack the verse, the verse is lacking a very wide range of sources, and there is a continuous stream of testimony to its absence throughout the centuries.
The words are found in this place in only a few relatively late Greek witnesses. Among these are Uncial 0233 (eighth century), and some later medieval manuscripts and lectionaries. The verse is present here in a number of Old Latin manuscripts, including itb and itff2 (both fifth century), and others. It is also found in the late medieval Clementine revision of the Vulgate. It is present in the second oldest Syriac manuscript, the Curetonian Gospels (fifth century), as well as some of the later Palestinian Syriac manuscripts. It is also present in some later Bohairic Coptic manuscripts. Thus, there is little ground in the original Greek to argue for the verse. There is fairly early evidence in some of the ancient translations, but in each case, there is even earlier evidence without the verse.
In other words, it appears in no early Greek sources, and the earliest place it does show up is in a couple of Latin sources and in the second oldest Syriac, but not the oldest.
So I am not going to teach about it here, maybe when I am doing Mark and Luke later. Nothing nefarious here, no one is trying to delete it since you can find it in two other places where no one doubts their authenticity. Much ado about nothing. Folks just love a conspiracy, but sometimes the answer is just really unexciting.
The really big deal about this week’s episode of “polemic wars” is verse 13:
“But woe to you, Torah scholars and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not enter yourselves, nor do you let those enter who are trying to go in. “
Oh, and by the way, I have been going back and forth between the ESV and the TLV—this is from the TLV and substitutes Torah Scholars for Scribes, so when I say Torah Scholars, you hear Scribes, okay? It isn’t exactly the same thing, and so I am not entirely happy with this, but I wanted you to be aware of the different translations. Remember that although the Pharisees were a sect, or faction, within Judaism—which is a voluntary group of people who are united around similar goals and ideas for how life should be lived and, in this case, God’s laws followed, the Scribes were a professional class of educated men. They did everything from taking dictation to writing up contracts, serving as high, mid and lower-level bureaucrats, but the Scribes here are probably high-level retainers (employees) of the upper classes. Some might well have been Torah teachers but all high-level retainers to the Jewish elite would have needed to be fluent in the Torah laws—which often put them in the position of also being teachers. But their position went so far beyond being Torah scholars that I don’t like the size of the box they have been shoved into. Some were Pharisees, some were Sadducees, and undoubtedly some were neither.
There are six “woes” altogether in this chapter, and these are the first two. “Woe” can mean so many different things in Scripture, from sorrow to cursing, and in this case, it is cursing—and the very first charge is the most serious.
So, again, the routine polemic accusation—hypocrisy. We are going to see that in front of every charge. It simply meant, as Josephus told us about the Pharisees, that they were not living up to what they preached (even though he claimed that they had the correct interpretation of Judaism). As my wise friend Yolanda says, “Just because you are right doesn’t mean you are right.” It doesn’t matter what you say if you aren’t living up to it. It’s like on social media, people telling other folks how to live when we can’t even see how they live. For all we know, we are listening to sociopaths and worse and thinking they are great and righteous dudes because they talk an interesting game.
“For you shut people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not enter yourselves, nor do you let those enter who are trying to go in. “
How on earth are the Pharisees shutting people out of the Kingdom of Heaven? How can they do it? Well, in a two-fold manner. Primarily, they are keeping Jews out by using their considerable influence to try and undermine any sort of Jewish support of Yeshua. Now, it didn’t work up in Galilee—they lost every single verbal battle and they weren’t the ones working miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead. Josephus said that the Pharisees were so popular and liked by the lower classes that all they had to do was make an accusation to be believed—even if that accusation was against the king of the high priest. These guys were educated and they reportedly went to great lengths to be on good terms with everyone during this time. This would have meant acting as patrons, champions, and patrons to the uneducated poor who made up most of the Jewish population of Palestine.
Now, they tried really hard to dissuade people in the Galilee from following Yeshua, but by the time He made His way into Jerusalem that final Passover, he was at the head of a throng of adoring fans who were hailing Him as the Son of David. But, He was crossing over into the stronghold of the Pharisees, Sadducees, Chief Priests, Elders, and Scribes, and they were not going down without a fight, and they certainly weren’t prepared to give up their social status and influence to this upstart artisan from the Galilee, and especially not from *gasp* Nazareth. These were the leaders, the cool kids, the popular cliques—and the common people listened to them. In ages past, people truly believed that your social status was a measure of your inherent worth as a human being—so you listened to the wealthy and powerful. They had natural-born credibility. It’s kinda like how some folks care what celebs have to say about politics, despite their having no qualifications whatsoever outside of their fame and wealth and acting talent (some less than others).
So these guys had a lot of sway, and they had the ability to shut down Messianic claimants—but it wasn’t going so well at this point. Yeshua was dazzling the crowds. But Yeshua knew it would be short-lived—He was about to be betrayed and then the elites would be able to persuade the people that He was a phony.
(1) They weren’t entering the Kingdom of Heaven themselves—translates to: they were rejecting God’s Messiah, their long-awaited Jewish Messiah.
John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
It would have been one thing for people to reject Him without seeing the miracles and without personally hearing the teaching, but the Pharisees have been recorded as having sent emissaries to check him out all through the synoptic Gospels. So did the Scribes. These people saw the works, yet they were rejecting Him. I like to put it this way, when they saw Yeshua, they said, “Nah, this guy is nothing like God.” Healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons, cleansing lepers and giving sight to the blind—didn’t remind them of God in the slightest. What an insult to God!!! We can’t insult God and refuse to recognize His visitation through His one unique Son and enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. They saw with their own eyes.
(2) They do not let those enter who are trying to go in—folks are trying to follow after Yeshua but the leadership keeps forcibly getting in the way. The Pharisees have the heart of the people—IF they accepted Yeshua then everyone else would too—well, at least the non-elites anyway. They had the power to make for a completely different outcome, but they used their influence to protect their own interests and their own honor.
This is why Yeshua cursed and condemned them, as a group, for shutting people out of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a fearful thing to have so much influence and to use it badly for selfish purposes. The more honor that came Yeshua’s way, the lower the Pharisees sank on the social ladder. Remember when John the Baptist’s disciples were upset about everyone going to Yeshua? John 3:26-30
And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” 27 John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. 28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ 29 The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”
John was great because he did what the Pharisees could and should have done—direct their disciples to follow the Messiah. That was their job, it was why they were granted favor and authority by God. That’s why our jobs in this world are so important—most of us have a measure, big or small, or influence. What do we use it for? To encourage people toward Yeshua or to drive them as far away from Him as possible? There is more than one way of discouraging people from following Him, of making His teachings look like lies.
How about parents? Do we want our kids long for Yeshua, to follow after Him, to become more and more like Him? Or have we pushed Him aside in favor of Torah? And Torah is important to me, don’t get me wrong, but how many of us parents have found out tragically late that we gave our kids the same exact foundation as the Pharisees had without ever implanting a love and appreciation of Messiah, who actually died for them? Do they see us in love with Him, citing all His teachings (and not just the ones that give us the chance to obviously tie back to Torah, as though we need to do that in order to validate Him when God already validated Him by raising Him from the dead? Are we picking fights with each other, and on the Sabbath, even over disagreements—like the Pharisees and their Scribes? That leaves a bad taste in the mouth of Sabbath-keepers, much less those who genuinely think it was bumped a day—and don’t even get me going on how it looks to unbelievers. If life outside of belief looks kinder and more peaceful than a believing life, that’s on us. We’re shutting people out of the Kingdom of Heaven when we make it look less fruitful than the world. And I’ve been guilty of it myself—of all of this, and more.
I remember once I was approached by a precious saint who was told by someone in their congregation that they couldn’t invite someone who wasn’t yet keeping the Feasts and Sabbaths to their Feast celebration—and no, it wasn’t Passover where you can conceivably make that call if you choose. The reason? The lady wasn’t in Covenant. Well, the lady was a Christian, and that means she keeps the majority of the commandments that can be kept and simply doesn’t keep the others because of the paradigms she grew up with. But she is seeking and interested in keeping a few more. How terrible that, like a Pharisee, this person drew artificial lines of who is and is not in Covenant based upon anything other than a belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and in the virgin birth, perfect life, crucifixion, death, burial and resurrection of Yeshua—who she calls Jesus and so did we all once, and I still do if that’s the crowd I am in front of. Being understood trumps absolute accuracy—otherwise, we should be teaching first graders that, yes, we can subtract ten from four—but we don’t teach them that. First, they get taught that you can’t do it so they understand where to put the numbers and teach them to deal with real-world situations in their own sphere. Deciding which laws do and do not make you in Covenant if you do or do not keep them is a perfect example of adding to the Torah, and absolutely ignores the Hebrew Scriptures that show us in vivid living color just how unfaithful, ignorantly and willfully, Israel could be while still being in Covenant. I have never personally met a Christian who acted as badly as the people of Judah were behaving before the exile, during which yes they were still in Covenant.
Shutting a saint out from learning about a Feast. Really. There is no Biblical precedent for it. I tell you, we all need to take a good long look at these woes and point the fingers right back at ourselves.
Now what about the second woe?
“Woe to you, Torah scholars and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel over land and sea to make one convert. And when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of Gehenna as yourself.”
Although we lack evidence of the Pharisees actively converting Gentiles, and in fact, Shammai, whom we discussed last week, was patently against it while Hillel favored it, we can read this verse two different ways.
(1) The House of Hillel, in some way or another, was actively seeking out converts in the diaspora.
(2) The converts they were seeking were converts to the faction/sect of the Pharisees.
Now, I used to teach that the first was more likely to what Yeshua was talking about, and perhaps it was. There are stories of wealthy Gentiles becoming believers—kings and high officials, among the gentiles. And this would have been just smart policy. In the diaspora, you had no choice about whether your local rulers were positive toward Judaism or negative—they either were or were not. A highly educated Jew, if they came into the circles of these rulers, because of the Greco-Roman attraction for knowledge and wisdom teachings, could capture the attention and earn the respect of their hosts. If this lead to a proselyte situation, where the Gentile decides to become a sort of disciple and learn the ways of God, then that benefitted everyone. But even if it didn’t, people are often less likely to persecute a people group if they admire it. What I am not sure of is how on earth that would result in the Gentiles becoming worse than they were when they were idol worshippers. But then, despite my growing collection of wrinkles, I wasn’t there so I am speculating.
So, we come to option 2, which I am going to explore here. As a faction, and remember that a faction is a voluntary association of people with common goals for how they want society to function, they want to be more influential within the community and within the larger world. So with the Pharisees, the more Pharisees they are, and the more powerfully placed their membership is, the more seats they have on the Sanhedrin court, the more likely one of their own might supplant the family of Ananas as High Priests, as they were Roman appointees and if Rome could appoint one family, why not another if Ananas should fall out of favor? The more Pharisees, the more presence among the people—as six thousand guys isn’t really very much spread out over an entire country. The name of any faction game is getting more people, and particularly more wealthy and powerful people converted to your side of the cause. They wanted the Pharisaic life (and particularly their version of it, be it Hillel’s or Shammai’s) to not just be popular, but to be the authoritative way of life. They didn’t want the Essenes out doing their own thing, and the Sadducees doing their own thing (especially because the Sadducees were the first-century power players in government positions and in the aristocracy). They wanted Sabbath to officially be their way, and tithing, and ritual household purity, and, I imagine, a whole bunch of other things lost to history. It isn’t any different than wanting everyone to be a Messianic—except that we keep our politics separate in the 21st century—and more than that, “our” kind of Messianic because the early Christians were just another faction within Judaism. But we want our flavor of Christianity to rule out, right? We want da powa!
So, perhaps the “traveling over land and sea” was a bit of hyperbole, which Yeshua and every other ancient near eastern and Greco-Roman speaker uses a lot. Hyperbole is a form of exaggeration in order to make a point—like saying that the mustard seed was the smallest seed when it wasn’t. They knew that, but it was a visual idiom that was commonly used in the day. Maybe He was just making a crack about how difficult it is to get anyone to join their faction—perhaps because their standards were high based on who they would accept not just as a distant follower but as an actual member—and we still have no idea about how they ran their organization, if at all. If it was organized formally or very loosely. We don’t know if a poor man was allowed to join their ranks or if they only were interested in the rich and powerful, or at least in the educated retainer class to the rich and powerful. Given the social world of the times, with honor and shame and all that, I am inclined to believe they were not interested in having the “rabble” among their membership. Such people, in the eyes of the elites, were there to be influenced, and not to be trusted and imbued with influence.
And on top of making the remark about how far they had to travel to find someone willing to join them, He confronted them with the futility of the effort because they were just causing them to become insufferable human beings. You know how when people get new beliefs, they feel like they have to suddenly feign that they know more than they do, or they count their newfound knowledge as so amazing that they rub it into everyone’s faces and use it as an arbitrary boundary maker as to who is in and who is out of God’s favor—forgetting who they were yesterday.
