Matthew 23:31

31 So that you are witnesses against yourselves that you are the sons of those who put the prophets to death.

Matthew 23:31 Meaning and Commentary

Matthew 23:31

Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves
Or "against yourselves", as the Syriac reads; for what they said was a plain acknowledgment, and a full confession, what their fathers had done, and whose offspring they were; and from whom better things were not to be expected; since they were their fathers' own children, and of the same temper and disposition with them: that ye are the children of them that killed the prophets.
They plainly owned, that their fathers killed the prophets, and that they descended from them; though they meant not so much to reproach, their ancestors, as to give themselves a greater character; yet it did not with those, that knew them; not with our Lord: for as their own words testified against them, that they were a seed of evildoers; their practices showed them to be of the same spirit and principles with their progenitors.

Matthew 23:31 In-Context

29 A curse is on you, scribes and Pharisees, false ones! because you put up buildings for housing the dead bodies of the prophets, and make fair the last resting-places of good men, and say,
30 If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in the blood of the prophets.
31 So that you are witnesses against yourselves that you are the sons of those who put the prophets to death.
32 Make full, then, the measure of your fathers.
33 You snakes, offspring of snakes, how will you be kept from the punishment of hell?
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