23:13 “But woe to you, experts in the law 3 and you Pharisees, hypocrites! 4 You keep locking people out of the kingdom of heaven! 5 For you neither enter nor permit those trying to enter to go in.
23:15 “Woe to you, experts in the law 6 and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You cross land and sea to make one convert, 7 and when you get one, 8 you make him twice as much a child of hell 9 as yourselves!
23:34 “For this reason I 10 am sending you prophets and wise men and experts in the law, 11 some of whom you will kill and crucify, 12 and some you will flog 13 in your synagogues 14 and pursue from town to town,
1 tn Or “and the scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.
2 tn Grk “crying out in the temple [courts] and saying.” The participle λέγοντας (legontas) is somewhat redundant here in contemporary English and has not been translated.
3 tn Or “scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.
4 tn Grk “Woe to you…because you…” The causal particle ὅτι (Joti) has not been translated here for rhetorical effect (and so throughout this chapter).
5 tn Grk “because you are closing the kingdom of heaven before people.”
5 tn Or “scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.
6 tn Or “one proselyte.”
7 tn Grk “when he becomes [one].”
8 tn Grk “a son of Gehenna.” Expressions constructed with υἱός (Juios) followed by a genitive of class or kind denote a person belonging to the class or kind specified by the following genitive (L&N 9.4). Thus the phrase here means “a person who belongs to hell.”
7 tn Grk “behold I am sending.” The Greek word ἰδού (idou) has not been translated because it has no exact English equivalent here, but adds interest and emphasis (BDAG 468 s.v. 1).
8 tn Or “scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.
9 sn See the note on crucified in 20:19.
10 tn BDAG 620 s.v. μαστιγόω 1.a states, “of flogging as a punishment decreed by the synagogue (Dt 25:2f; s. the Mishna Tractate Sanhedrin-Makkoth, edited w. notes by SKrauss ’33) w. acc. of pers. Mt 10:17; 23:34.”
11 sn See the note on synagogues in 4:23.