Matthew 23:1-3

Matthew 23:1-3. Then spake Jesus to the multitude Leaving all converse with his adversaries; whom he now gave up to the hardness of their hearts. The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’s seat Or, chair That is, read and expound the law of Moses, and are the appointed teachers of the people. The Jewish doctors, as is well known, always taught sitting. The name Pharisees being the appellation of a sect, it cannot be supposed that our Lord meant to say of all the party that they sat in Moses’s chair. Such a character was applicable to none but the doctors of the sect; for which reason we must suppose that the name scribes and Pharisees is a Hebraism for the Pharisean scribes. All therefore they bid you observe, &c. That is, all that they read out of the law, and enforce on the manifest authority thereof, that observe and do Readily and cheerfully: “All,” says Theophylact, “that they require, εκ των Μοσεως βιβλων , απο του

Θεου νομοου , from the law of God out of the books of Moses.” An interpretation which must be allowed of. Because Christ elsewhere requires his disciples to beware of the leaven, that is, the doctrine, of the scribes and Pharisees; because they taught for doctrines the commandments of men, and by their traditions made void the law of God; and were blind leaders of the blind. But do not ye after their works By no means imitate their practices; for they say and do not They give many precepts to their disciples, which they do not perform themselves. As we must not receive corrupt doctrines for the sake of any laudable practices of those that teach them; so we must not imitate bad examples for the sake of the plausible doctrines of those that give them.