Discovery BoxMatthew 23:13 
Context23:13 “But woe to you, experts in the law 1 and you Pharisees, hypocrites! 2 You keep locking people out of the kingdom of heaven! 3 For you neither enter nor permit those trying to enter to go in.
Matthew 23:15-16
Context23:15 “Woe to you, experts in the law 4 and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You cross land and sea to make one convert, 5 and when you get one, 6 you make him twice as much a child of hell 7 as yourselves!
23:16 “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple is bound by nothing. 8 But whoever swears by the gold of the temple is bound by the oath.’
Matthew 23:25
Context23:25 “Woe to you, experts in the law 9 and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
Matthew 23:27
Context23:27 “Woe to you, experts in the law 10 and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of everything unclean. 11
Matthew 26:24
Context26:24 The Son of Man will go as it is written about him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for him if he had never been born.”
1 tn Or “scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.
2 tn Grk “Woe to you…because you…” The causal particle ὅτι (Joti) has not been translated here for rhetorical effect (and so throughout this chapter).
3 tn Grk “because you are closing the kingdom of heaven before people.”
4 tn Or “scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.
5 tn Or “one proselyte.”
6 tn Grk “when he becomes [one].”
7 tn Grk “a son of Gehenna.” Expressions constructed with υἱός (Juios) followed by a genitive of class or kind denote a person belonging to the class or kind specified by the following genitive (L&N 9.4). Thus the phrase here means “a person who belongs to hell.”
sn See the note on the word hell in 5:22.
8 tn Grk “Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing.”
9 tn Or “scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.
10 tn Or “scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.
11 sn This was an idiom for hypocrisy – just as the wall was painted on the outside but something different on the inside, so this person was not what he appeared or pretended to be (for discussion of a similar metaphor, see L&N 88.234; BDAG 1010 s.v. τοῖχος). See Deut 28:22; Ezek 13:10-16; Acts 23:3.
