Matthew 23 - Introduction

CHAPTER 23.

THE GREAT ANTI-PHARISAIC DISCOURSE.

This is one of the great discourses peculiar to the first Gospel. That some such words were spoken by Jesus in Jerusalem in the Passion week may be inferred from Mark 12:38-40; Luke 20:45-47. The few sentences there reported look like a fragment, just enough to show that there must have been more too meagre (gar zu dürftig., De W.) to have been all that Jesus said on such a large topic at such a solemn time. A weighty, deliberate, full, final statement, in the form of a dying testimony, was to be expected from One who had so often criticised the prevailing religious system in an occasional manner in His Galilean ministry a summing up in the head-quarters of scribism of past prophetic censures uttered in the provinces. In such a final protest repetitions might be looked for (Nösgen). In any case, whether all the words here brought together were spoken at this time or not, the evangelist did well to collect them into one body, and he could not have introduced the collection at a more appropriate place.