Matthew 23:29

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and garnish the tombs of the righteous.

THE SEVENTH WOE

In this seventh woe, Christ began to pronounce sentence upon those religious leaders and the nation they had so basely led and betrayed. In this seventh woe, Christ suddenly revealed himself as the Judge of those evil people and dramatically assumed the prerogatives of judgment and gave sentence against those who had the vanity to suppose they were judging him!

The time of pleading, persuading, and reasoning with them had passed. Without hesitation, in the clearest and most powerful language, in the presence of his disciples and all the people, Christ uttered the judgment of God upon the flower of Israel's religious hierarchy, condemning, along with the nation which, alas, had blindly followed them, and consigning them to the judgment and punishment of hell.

The seventh woe, as all the others, dealt with hypocrisy, the sin reiterated over and over. In the seventh case, they were making a fine "to do" over the tombs of the prophets, building beautiful sepulchres, and decorating their graves, and at the same time declaiming their superiority over their ancestors who had slain the prophets. In this woe, Christ exposed the Pharisees as true sons of their evil fathers.