Matthew 23:27

23:27 “Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of everything unclean.

Luke 11:44

11:44 Woe to you! You are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without realizing it!”


tn Or “scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.

sn This was an idiom for hypocrisy – just as the wall was painted on the outside but something different on the inside, so this person was not what he appeared or pretended to be (for discussion of a similar metaphor, see L&N 88.234; BDAG 1010 s.v. τοῖχος). See Deut 28:22; Ezek 13:10-16; Acts 23:3.

tc Most mss (A [D] W Θ Ψ Ë13 Ï it) have “experts in the law and Pharisees, hypocrites” after “you,” but this looks like an assimilation to the parallel in Matt 23:25, 27, 29. The shorter reading has earlier attestation from a variety of reliable mss (Ì45,75 א B C L Ë1 33 1241 2542 lat sa).

tn Grk “men.” This is a generic use of ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpo"), referring to both males and females.

sn In Judaism to come into contact with the dead or what is associated with them, even without knowing it, makes one unclean (Num 19:11-22; Lev 21:1-3; Mishnah, m. Demai 2:3). To Pharisees, who would have been so sensitive about contracting ceremonial uncleanness, it would have been quite a stinging rebuke to be told they caused it.