23
"Alas for you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay the tithe on mint, dill, and cumin, while you have neglected the weightier requirements of the Law--just judgement, mercy, and faithful dealing. These things you ought to have done, and yet you ought not to have left the others undone.
24
You blind guides, straining out the gnat while you gulp down the camel!
25
"Alas for you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you wash clean the outside of the cup or dish, while within they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
26
Blind Pharisee, first wash clean the inside of the cup or dish, and then the outside will be clean also.
27
"Alas for you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are just like whitewashed sepulchres, the outside of which pleases the eye, though inside they are full of dead men's bones and of all that is unclean.
28
The same is true of you: outwardly you seem to the human eye to be good and honest men, but, within, you are full of insincerity and disregard of God's Law.
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?