What are the seven woes of the Pharisees?

Notice the introduction in Matthew 23:13 (“But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in”), Jesus gives a general woe to the Pharisees, introducing the theme of the woes which is that the Pharisees are actively preventing other people from getting to heaven even while they themselves are not going into heaven. Why? These were not what society would term awful men. They were men of great learning, esteemed by the society as living righteously, and therein is the problem. They were men who were standing on their own foundation of righteousness, missing completely their need for God. In that, they compare well with many in our society.

Today we have many people who are rich, satisfied within themselves, who are not at all ready to meet their Maker. The message of the gospel, that salvation is by faith alone and is the gift of God, does not penetrate through their garbs of righteousness. Their reasoning is that they do more good than wrong, and that when that final day comes perhaps God will have to fudge a bit in their favor, but surely their good deeds will outweigh their bad. By such reasoning many souls continue in their blindness all of their lives, slow-walking themselves to hell, and ignoring all the warning signs. Look at the woes of the Pharisees and see what those with self-righteousness wrongly assume.

1. (Matthew 23:14) “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.”
Pharisees were counseling widows, talking them out of their houses, and garnering money for their own purposes. Instead of helping them to find heaven, they were accumulating wealth and power unto themselves by making their piousness evident through public prayer. For this Jesus says they will be judged more severely.

2. (Matthew 23:15) “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.”
When I read this woe I cannot help but wonder where Saul of Tarsus was, who later was renamed Paul. Trained by the Pharisees, he shows up more than a decade after this, vigorously attacking Christians. So it is when the self-righteous teach others—their pervasive doctrine remakes someone to be much more evil. Very likely, he was a youth at the time of Jesus teaching, and was being filled with the leaven of the Pharisees.

3. (Matthew 23:16) “Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!”
The interpretation of the laws of God were woefully overdone by the Pharisees. Instead of looking for the truth of those laws, it was almost as if they were taking a microscope to the laws and finding things there that simply were not to be found. Here Jesus points to their rule that swearing by the temple itself was nothing, but swearing by the gold in the temple was everything. Their hearts were laid bare by the accusation of Jesus—gold was where their hearts were, and not at all with the God who made it all.

4. (Matthew 23:23) “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.”
Notice the woe. Jesus is not correcting their fastidiousness in observing the small points of the law. Indeed, he tells them that is commendable, but his lament is over the lack of attention to the greater things. Are we not just the same? We are so careful in some few things and so blind in other things. At least, I have found repeated blind spots in my own life, and sought to correct those under the power of the Spirit, but how much more the self-righteous? They point to their deeds always, and those deeds may be wonderful works, but they neglect to mention all the things they have forgotten. It is most dangerous for such a person to find himself standing before God and facing his judgment. It is no good defense to point at one’s good works when we know that wickedness of the heart will always find us out.

5. (Matthew 23:25) “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.”
I remember reading of Luther’s struggle for salvation. He knew himself to be desperately wicked, and forced himself to many extra confessions, struggling with the “inside of his cup”. Luther knew his sin, and eventually he found the way to be rid of it was by faith, by believing that God punished sin at the cross in his Son, and that because of that punishment we have been forever redeemed—by faith. In contrast, the self-righteous man is so busy cleaning the outside of the cup that he never sees the inside, stained and hideous and corrupt though it may be.

6. (Matthew 23:27) ”Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.”
In this woe the glaring contrast of self-righteousness is made to that which is inside. Jesus furthers his theme of being clean on the outside but filthy on the inside. I often hear such people protest, “Oh, you know I am not such a bad guy”, and that may bring a smile from our spouses in this lifetime, but do we really want to go to God and try to convince him that we are not evil? He sees directly into our hearts, which is at times most inconvenient, but there it is. I am afraid such a defense will not work.

7. (Matthew 23:29-31) “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.”
The self-righteous had made monuments out of the graves of the prophets, trying to show how they were different than their fathers. But they were destined to do the deeds of their wicked fathers, and nowhere does that become more evident than in their rush to crucify the Lord of Glory. Here Jesus, I believe, is looking forward to the dastardly deed of the cross which these self-righteous sepulchers were going to perform.
The seven woes of the Pharisees, then, were aimed at the self-righteous, and we seem to have plenty of those in modern society. I believe that the cloud of self-righteousness stands over the heads of multitudes, throughout all generations. Certainly it is the chief way that men are deceived into believing they have no need for a savior.

Remember that these are the very best of society. The disciples somewhere exclaim “Who, then, is able to enter the kingdom of God?” after Jesus tells them that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven. Even the disciples figured that God was surely with the “nice” people—were they not rich as a sign of God’s approval? The rich young man came to Jesus, telling Jesus of all that he had done (self-righteous), and Jesus, the gospel says, looked at the young rich man, and loved him. Jesus said, “Go, sell all that you have and give it to the poor.” But the young rich man could not be parted from his riches, and went away from the very love of God.

I can think of nothing worse than being in hell and knowing that God loves you, and also knowing that there is nothing that can be done, for you listened to the quiet lies of self-righteousness and neglected the necessity of caring for your soul. Elsewhere Jesus says I am not come to call the righteous, but the unrighteous. No wonder! The righteous will never hear his call, for they never examine themselves to see that righteousness is just a façade. It is only those who realize their unrighteousness that will answer the call to faith.

The warning is there. Jesus ends the woes asking the Pharisees how they will escape the damnation of hell. It is most interesting to study history and observe how few of these Pharisees ever did see their need. Paul stands out most prominently, and there were but two or three others of all the thousands of Pharisees. Without a doubt, there are going to be many surprised people at the last judgment, for in blindly depending on their own deeds, they condemn themselves, and there remains nothing more to be done. Sinners in the hands of an angry God.


Matthew 23:
13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!
17 Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?
18 And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty.
19 Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?
20 Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon.
21 And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein.
22 And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.
23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.
28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,
30 And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
31 Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.
32 Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?