Matthew 23:31

31 "So that you bear witness against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the Prophets.

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 "Alas for you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you repair the sepulchres of the Prophets and keep in order the tombs of the righteous,
30 and your boast is, "`If we had lived in the time of our forefathers, we should not have been implicated with them in the murder of the Prophets.'
31 "So that you bear witness against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the Prophets.
32 Fill up the measure of your forefathers' guilt.
33 O serpents, O vipers' brood, how are you to escape condemnation to Gehenna?
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