And he said, “Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.
Christ here says many of those things to a Pharisee and his guests, in a private conversation at table, which he afterwards said in a public discourse in the temple (Mt. 23); for what he said in public and private was of a piece.
Commenting on Luke 11:37-54
Truly ye bear witness, that ye allow the deeds of your fathers,.... Or "ye bear witness, and ye allow"; that is, they both witnessed that their fathers killed the prophets, and they consented to what they did, and approved of their actions: for they indeed killed them; it must be owned, and not their sons: and ye build their sepulchres; which was a bearing and...
burdens grievous, &c.--referring not so much to the irksomeness of the legal rites (though they were irksome, Act 15:10), as to the heartless rigor with which they were enforced, and by men of shameless inconsistency.