Jesus Unloads His Seven Woes on the Pharisees and Us – Woe #2

Jesus Unloads His Seven Woes on the Pharisees and Us – Woe #2.

“Woe unto you hypocritical Torah-teachers and Pharisees, frauds and pretenders!” (Matthew 23). 

In Matthew 23, Jesus demonstrated the spiritual audacity of taking on the religious leaders of His day. To many of the listeners of His diatribe, His words must have been outrageous. But Jesus had the guts and the nerve to confront the religious establishment, even as He included name-calling and divine judgment onto the heads of all those leaders of the Temple. This indeed took some holy chutzpah. Jesus had what it took to display his tenacious pursuit of biblical righteousness.

“Woe unto you“: What sorrow awaits you; alas for you; distress is headed your way; you’re asking for trouble; grief is coming for you; how unfortunate you are; your destiny will involve nothing but suffering; you’re hopeless.

“Hypocrite“: Pretender; fraud; phony; imposter; play-actor; fake.

Scribe: ‘Men of Letters,’ since the Greek word for scribe is “gramma,” the source for our word “grammar;” religious scholar; teacher of religious law; lawyer; interpreter of Torah; member of Temple leadership; associated with the Pharisees because most of the scribes belonged to the Pharisee party.

Pharisees: A popular religious party operating in 1st century Israel. They were respected for their scholarly knowledge of Scripture and for their interpretation of the written word and oral law. They were highly influential in the local synagogues. They were laymen, not priests, and came from all classes of people. They believed in the bodily resurrection of the dead and eternal life, which was earned by good works according to Mosaic Law. They emphasized extreme detail regarding observance to the Jewish law, which made them separatists from anything non-Jewish. They were committed to righteousness and obeying all of God’s laws, but often found themselves following the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit of the law, blind to the law’s true intent.

Number Seven: This number signifies wholeness, perfection, completeness. It is St. Matthew’s favorite number, for example there are seven petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, forgiveness not 7 but 77 times, there is a natural division of his gospel into seven sections, and now there are seven woes from Jesus.

Christ in Angry Prophet Mode. With the seven woes in Matthew 23, Jesus was living into His OT prophetic style of communication. And He enjoyed the perfect backdrop for the Woes… the Temple. Isaiah was the best known prophet in the Hebrew Bible who employed a “woe unto you” confrontation. In Isaiah’s case, he was calling the people of Judah to task for their exploiting of others, their drunkenness, their pride and arrogance, their confusing of moral standards, and their perverting of justice. Jesus used this “woeful” prophetic formula to critique not the people of Israel but the Temple leadership for their mean-spirited hypocrisy and their superficial, self-righteous ambition. There are actually eight woes technically in this Matthew passage, but one of them wasn’t in the original manuscripts, and so scholars say it was added to the gospel after first being written. So this eighth woe (“you devour widows’ houses“) is not considered an official woe of Jesus. He proclaimed seven woes, the perfect number, the complete number. This passage is Jesus’ most famous attack on the scribes and Pharisees, and has been called “the Grand Critique.” He didn’t mince words, He didn’t hold back in His stinging accusations of the Temple leadership. He basically excoriated them, and straightforwardly told them, I’ve had it with you! I’ve lost my patience with you! You are headed for disaster if you keep leading my people astray!

Second Woe: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites and phonies! Here you are, traveling all over the Roman Empire to persuade even one Gentile to join you in your Faith, but all you’re doing is convincing someone to join a dead religion! When you convert someone to your system, you are drawing them into a religious program in which this convert will focus on the unimportant details like your man-made additional laws and traditions! And your proselytes will miss God, the whole point of Faith! In your propaganda, you will be creating even more hypocrites who don’t make it into the Kingdom of God. Your new converts will be fit for the garbage dump outside town, just like you!” (Matthew 23:15).

The Pharisee in Me… The Second Woe:

… When I try to invite new members to my church, do I just use propaganda to bring them into a religious system, or do I engage in a persuasive conversation to help usher them into the Kingdom of God?

… Which comes first when I spread the Word, my church program or the Gospel of Christ?

… Am I more concerned about my church’s membership or the Kingdom’s membership?

… Am I willing to admit potential problems with my own theology when I share the Good News?

… When discussing my faith in Christ, am I more concerned about a check list of beliefs than a personal relationship with God?