Luke 11:46 - Exposition

Ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers . Then the Lord turned to the accomplished Jerusalem scholar, and with withering emphasis pronounced upon his famous and influential order those scathing reproaches which for eighteen centuries have been the woeful inheritance of all hypocritical self-deceivers. How true was the expression, "burdens grievous to be borne," a very superficial study of the Talmud will amply show; for although even the earliest parts of that stupendous compilation were not committed to writing until some time after, yet very much of what we now peruse in those strange, weary treatises existed then in the oral tradition. which it was the life-work of scholars and pedants, like the lawyer to whom Jesus was then speaking, to learn, to expound, and to amplify; and these vexatious and frivolous ordinances which the lawyers and scribes pressed home upon the people with such urgency were often shirked and avoided by the learned and cultured scribe-class as a body.