Luke 11:43-44

11:43 Woe to you Pharisees! You love the best seats ¹  in the synagogues ²  and elaborate greetings ³  in the marketplaces! 11:44 Woe to you! ⁴  You are like unmarked graves, and people ⁵  walk over them without realizing it!” ⁶ 

[11:43]  ¹ tn Or “seats of honor.” The term here is plural and is not a reference only to the lead “seat of Moses” in the synagogue, but includes the front seats near the ark.

[11:43]  ² sn See the note on synagogues in 4:15.

[11:43]  ³ tn Grk “and the greetings.”

[11:44]  ⁴ 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 (Ì^45,75 א B C L ˹ 33 1241 2542 lat sa).

[11:44]  ⁵ tn Grk “men.” This is a generic use of ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpo"), referring to both males and females.

[11:44]  ⁶ 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.