Matthew 23:17

23:17 Blind fools! Which is greater, the gold or the temple that makes the gold sacred?

Matthew 23:19

23:19 You are blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?

Matthew 23:24

23:24 Blind guides! You strain out a gnat yet swallow a camel! ¹ 

Matthew 23:26

23:26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, ²  so that the outside may become clean too!

[23:24]  ¹ tn Grk “Blind guides who strain out a gnat yet who swallow a camel!”

[23:26]  ² tc A very difficult textual problem is found here. The most important Alexandrian and Byzantine, as well as significant Western, witnesses (א B C L W 0102 0281 ˹³ 33 Ï lat co) have “and the dish” (καὶ τῆς παροψίδος, kai th" paroyido") after “cup,” while few important witnesses (D Θ Ë¹ 700 and some versional and patristic authorities) omit the phrase. On the one hand, scribes sometimes tended to eliminate redundancy; since “and the dish” is already present in v. 25, it may have been deleted in v. 26 by well-meaning scribes. On the other hand, as B. M. Metzger notes, the singular pronoun αὐτοῦ (autou, “its”) with τὸ ἐκτός (to ekto", “the outside”) in some of the same witnesses that have the longer reading (viz., B* ˹³ al) hints that their archetype lacked the words (TCGNT 50). Further, scribes would be motivated both to add the phrase from v. 25 and to change αὐτοῦ to the plural pronoun αὐτῶν (aujtwn, “their”). Although the external evidence for the shorter reading is not compelling in itself, combined with these two prongs of internal evidence, it is to be slightly preferred.