Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Matthew 23:13-28, Oaths, mint, gnats and whitewashed tombs
Jesus pronounces woes on the scribes and Pharisees: they shut the kingdom, play games with oaths, tithe herbs while neglecting justice, strain gnats and swallow camels, and look clean outside like whitewashed tombs.
Matthew 23:13-28, in every translation this tool compares.
Jesus pronounces a series of woes on the scribes and Pharisees, calling them actors whose religion is for show. He attacks rules that let people slip out of oaths, careful tithing of garden herbs alongside neglect of justice and mercy, and fussing over tiny matters while swallowing huge ones. Their outward purity, he says, hides greed inside, like tombs painted bright while full of decay. Later rabbis criticized bad Pharisees in similar terms.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/oaths-and-vows\/","n":"Oaths and vows","s":"Calling God, or something holy, to witness that you speak the truth or will keep your word. People swore by lesser things to keep God's name safe if they broke it.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/unclean-by-touch\/","n":"Unclean by touch","s":"Under the law, skin disease, bleeding, corpses, tombs and certain animals made a person ritually unclean, and touch could pass it on.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/burial-and-mourning\/","n":"Burial and mourning","s":"Mourners came at once, the dead were buried the same day, wrapped in linen in rock tombs, and family carried the duty of burial. Pagan mourning, with little hope beyond a shadowy underworld, could be bleak.","r":""}
Hypocrite first meant an actor (Keener). Later rabbis, who saw themselves as the Pharisees' heirs, criticized bad Pharisees of their own, and Keener notes that most of Jesus' moral teaching would have won agreement from the very people he opposed. The golden vine on the temple had gold added to it each year (the cultural backgrounds notes). A drink in which something died was unclean (Leviticus 11:32-33); Pharisees exempted creatures as small as a gnat, and in Aramaic the words for gnat and camel sound alike (the cultural backgrounds notes; Keener). Shammai's and Hillel's schools argued over whether to clean the inside or the outside of a cup first, and Jesus' wording sides with Hillel (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). Tombs were whitewashed before Passover to warn pilgrims away, since even a shadow touching a grave was thought to defile; the cultural backgrounds notes add that here Jesus uses whitewash as a beautifier covering decay. In Jerusalem tombs were whitewashed on the fifteenth of Adar, ahead of Passover (Wilkins). For converts, Wilkins points to Josephus on the wives of Damascus and Queen Helena of Adiabene, and notes that scholars debate how actively Judaism sought them.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Matthew 23:13-28, 23:15, 23:16-22, 23:23, 23:24, 23:25-26 and 23:27-28
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Matthew 23:15, 23:16, 23:24, 23:25-26 and 23:27
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Matthew 23:16-19
- Michael J. Wilkins, Matthew, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Matthew 23:15 and 23:27
