Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith: these ought you to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
All Commentaries on Matthew 23:23 Go To Matthew 23
John Chrysostom
AD 407
Here then He naturally says it, where it is tithe and almsgiving, for what does it hurt to give alms? But not to keep the law; for neither does it say thus. Therefore here indeed He says, These ought ye to have done; but where He is speaking about clean and unclean, He no longer adds this, but makes a distinction, and shows that the inward purity is necessarily followed by the outward, but the converse is no longer so.
For where there is a plea of love to man, He passes it over lightly, for this very reason, and because it was not yet time expressly and plainly to revoke the things of the law. But where it is an observance of bodily purification, He overthrows it more plainly.
