Matthew 22:46

And no one was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.

Thus in that profound question of Jesus, the Pharisees no longer had a case of knowing the answer, and through self-interest avoiding a reply. They WERE ignorant of the riddle Jesus propounded, but they would not accept the truth from him. But their day of grace was almost over. The plot was laid. Before the week expired they would kill him. Never again would they ask him any questions. They confessed themselves unable to stand before his searching words. Intellectually, morally, and spiritually, they were vanquished by the Lord; and, like a wounded serpent that sinks its fangs again and again into its own flesh, those unfortunate men would kill their own head and Redeemer, involving themselves and their whole nation in irreparable ruin. What a commentary on religious bigotry is that!

Some commentators attribute his characterization of the Pharisees to a kind of prejudice on Matthew's part, but that is not true. As a former tax collector, he had indeed enjoyed a peculiarly advantageous position from which to learn the true character of the Pharisees, but it must not be thought that Matthew colored or perverted that picture in any way. On the contrary, his emphasis on their conduct was NECESSARY; and, as God always chooses his instruments, Matthew was ideally suited to the task of presenting those enemies of Jesus in their true light.

Reasons for the need to expose those men rise from the fact that, as the official representatives of Judaism, their failure to recognize and accept their Messiah would ever afterwards be used by Satan as an argument against the validity of Christ's claim upon all mankind as the true Messiah. If there had been, therefore, the least vestige of anything honorable or upright in the Pharisees et al., there could have continued through history some suspicion that since "good men," as they were supposed to be, rejected the Messiah, there must have been some reason for their doing it. Matthew successfully broke that crutch of infidelity. His analytical, yet fair and generous, treatment of those bigots in their hatred of Christ forever removes any suspicion or even the outside possibility of any doubt that their actions were otherwise motivated than through blind, fanatical, and selfish hatred of the truth. Their every argument, invented through despair, maliciously urged, and distorted to appear plausible; their every connivance with even their worst enemies to find some pretext against him; their reliance at last upon suborned and lying witnesses, perversion of Sacred Scriptures, malevolent torture of truth itself, and, withal, their prejudice against him, not desiring to accommodate with him but only striving for a means of his murder - all these things are so faithfully detailed in Matthew's gospel that, two thousand years after the facts, any fair-minded person can easily understand WHY SUCH MEN rejected the Christ.