Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore you shall receive the greater condemnation.
All Commentaries on Matthew 23:14 Go To Matthew 23
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Woe unto you, &c. Because ye devour, that Isaiah , exhaust, the substance of widows, in extracting money from them by selling them under a feigned appearance of sanctity your long public prayers. This is why He adds in explanation, making long prayers. Gr. Ï€Ïοφάσει μακζα̃ πζοσεχόμενοι, praying at length as a pretext.
Wherefore ye shall receive greater damnation. The Syriac translates, ye are about to receive the extremest judgment; both because ye rob from widows, and because, as Chrysostom says, ye paint avarice the colour of religion, that iniquity may be loved, being esteemed as piety. Ye also imbue widows with your own errors and wickedness. Wherefore ye ought to receive the punishment of your own sin and the guilt of their ignorance, as S. Hilary says.
Woe unto you . . . hypocrites, &c. Instead of hypocrites, the Syriac has here and in the verses which follow, acceptors of persons. Proselyte means the same in Greek as advena, or stranger, in Latin. A proselyte was one who was converted from heathenism to Judaism, and became attached to the Jewish Church and religion. In Hebrew proselytes are called gerim. Christians call such persons neophytes. The Scribes strove to turn many Gentiles to Judaism, for the sake of ambition as well as avarice, that they might augment their oblations. Sea and land, that Isaiah , the whole world.
Ye make him the Song of Solomon , that Isaiah , guilty, worthy of hell, twofold more than yourselves; Gr. διπλότεζον υ̉μω̃ν. For, as Euthymius says, it is the same as in nature, that scholars easily surpass their teachers in vice. "Because," as Chrysostom says, "being provoked by the evil example of their teachers, they become worse than them, especially when they are stirred up by the words and examples of their teachers." Again, many proselytes, when they see your evil doings, return to heathenism. For he who relapses commits a greater and, as it were, a double sin.
