Matthew 23:26

23:26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, ¹  so that the outside may become clean too!

Ezekiel 18:31

18:31 Throw away all your sins you have committed and fashion yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! ²  Why should you die, O house of Israel?

Amos 5:15

5:15 Hate what is wrong, love what is right!

Promote ³  justice at the city gate! ⁴ 

Maybe the Lord, the God who commands armies, will have mercy on ⁵  those who are left from ⁶  Joseph. ⁷ 

Luke 11:39-40

11:39 But the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees clean ⁸  the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. ⁹  11:40 You fools! ¹⁰  Didn’t the one who made the outside make the inside as well? ¹¹ 

James 4:8

4:8 Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and make your hearts pure, you double-minded. ¹² 

[23:26]  ¹ 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.

[18:31]  ² sn In Ezek 11:19, 36:26 the new heart and new spirit are promised as future blessings.

[5:15]  ³ tn Heb “set up, establish.” In the ancient Near East it was the responsibility especially of the king to establish justice. Here the prophet extends that demand to local leaders and to the nation as a whole (cf. 5:24).

[5:15]  ⁴ sn Legal disputes were resolved in the city gate (see the note in v. 12). This repetition of this phrase serves to highlight a deliberate contrast to the injustices cited in vv. 11-13.

[5:15]  ⁵ tn Or “will show favor to.”

[5:15]  ⁶ tn Or “the remnant of” (KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV); CEV “what’s left of your people.”

[5:15]  ⁷ sn Joseph (= Ephraim and Manasseh), as the most prominent of the Israelite tribes, represents the entire northern kingdom.

[11:39]  ⁸ sn The allusion to washing (clean the outside of the cup) shows Jesus knew what they were thinking and deliberately set up a contrast that charged them with hypocrisy and majoring on minors.

[11:39]  ⁹ tn Or “and evil.”

[11:40]  ¹⁰ sn You fools is a rebuke which in the OT refers to someone who is blind to God (Ps 14:1, 53:1; 92:6; Prov 6:12).

[11:40]  ¹¹ tn The question includes a Greek particle, οὐ (ou), that expects a positive reply. God, the maker of both, is concerned for what is both inside and outside.

[4:8]  ¹² tn Or “two-minded” (the same description used in 1:8).