“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.
Matthew 23:13. You shut up the kingdom of heaven. Christ pronounces a curse on them, because they pervert their office to the general destruction of the whole people; for since the government of the Church was in their hands, they ought to have been, as it were, porters for the kingdom of heaven. What purpose is served by religion and holy doctrine but to open heaven to us?
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,.... The same character is given as before, and the same woe denounced, and a fresh reason given of it: for ye devour widows' houses; that is, the goods in the houses of such as were left with fatherless children, and but little to support them; who being left alone, and none to advise them, and being weak, and...
Verse 13. Woe unto you. You are guilty, and punishment will come unto you. tie proceeds to state wherein they were guilty. This most eloquent, most appalling, and most terrible of all discourses ever delivered to mortals, was pronounced hi the temple, in the presence of multitudes.