Matthew 23:31

Matthew 23:31. So then. ‘You acknowledge the sins of your fathers, but hypocritically deny your own, adding hypocrisy to impiety,'

Ye witness to yourselves, your own consciences condemning you, that ye are the sons (morally as well as naturally) of them that slew the prophets. Some find here an allusion to a Jewish proverb: ‘One kills him, and another digs his grave' (comp. Luke 11:47), asserting complicity in guilt; but our Lord assumes that evil moral characteristics are hereditary; therefore those whose conduct did not oppose the false principles and crimes of their forefathers, were partakers in their guilt (Matthew 23:32; Matthew 23:35-36). Doing this in appearance only, the Pharisees showed that they had no true conception of either their own condition, or the crime of their fathers. Possibly attributing such violence to the barbarity of ancient times, they failed to see that these persecutions sprang from the same hatred of real righteousness which produced their hypocritical service. A common mistake.