Luke 11:45 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Then answered one of the lawyers, &c. A doctor, or interpreter of the law. The Jewish lawyers (as our translation not very properly terms them) were the most considerable species of scribes, who applied themselves peculiarly to study and explain the law. Probably many of them were Pharisees, but it was no ways essential to their office that they should be so. What touched the person here speaking was, that our Lord, in his last wo, Luke 11:44, had joined the scribes with the Pharisees. Master, thus saying, thou reproachest us The rebuke which thou hast given the scribes and Pharisees in so general a way, affects us lawyers also. And he said, Wo unto you also, ye lawyers The lawyers, even of the Pharisean denomination, had done unspeakable mischief by their erroneous interpretation of Scripture, which they perverted to favour the tradition of the elders as much as possible, and so bound heavy burdens on men's shoulders, which they themselves would not touch with one of their fingers. Jesus, therefore, spake his mind freely concerning them also, laid open their character, and denounced further woes against them. Wo unto you, for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets He blames them for building the sepulchres of the prophets, because they did it from no regard to the murdered prophets, though in words they pretended to venerate their memory, but in order to make an ostentation of their piety. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers By all your conduct you show that inwardly, in your minds, you approve of the deeds of your fathers, who persecuted the prophets; for they killed them, and ye build their sepulchres You are men of precisely the same character and disposition with them; hypocrites, who covered the grossest acts of wickedness with the specious appearance of piety. For like them you pretend great reverence for the ancient prophets, while ye destroy those whom God sends to yourselves. Ye therefore bear witness, by this deep hypocrisy, that you are of the very same spirit with them. Or, more at large, thus: “From your known disposition, as well as from your open practice, which is to trample upon the laws of God, as often as they stand in the way of your wicked purposes, and particularly from your persecuting the messengers of God, one is obliged to think that you build the sepulchres of the prophets whom your fathers killed, not from any pious regard for God, whose messengers they were, nor to do honour to the prophets themselves, but to do honour to their murderers, as approving of their deeds, and intending to perpetuate the memory of them to posterity with applause. The great men among the Jews always possessed the true spirit of politicians. In the time of the prophets they made no scruple to kill persons, whom they knew to be the messengers of God, because, forsooth, the good of the state required it. In our Saviour's time, Caiaphas, the high- priest, openly avowed this principle in a full meeting of the grandees. For when some were opposing the resolution of the major part of the council, who had determined to kill Jesus, and urged the unlawfulness of the action, he told them plainly that they were a parcel of ignorant bigots, who knew nothing at all either of the principles or ends of government, which render it necessary oft-times to sacrifice the most innocent for the safety of the community. Therefore also said the wisdom of God Agreeably to this the wisdom of God hath said, in many places of Scripture, though not in these very words, I will send them prophets, &c. Because you imitate the ways of your fathers, by persecuting the messengers of God; because you carry your wickedness to as great a pitch as your fathers did; for these reasons God hath declared his last resolutions concerning you: he hath said, I will send them prophets and apostles, yea, and my beloved Son, notwithstanding I know they will persecute and slay them: That the blood of all the prophets, &c. That by this last and greatest act of rebellion, the iniquity of the nation being completed, God may at length testify how much he was displeased with this people from the beginning, for persecuting and murdering his prophets, and that by sending upon the generation which completed the iniquity of the nation, such signal judgments as should evidently appear to be the punishment of that great and accumulated wickedness, committed by them in their several successive generations. Verily I say, It shall be required of this generation And so it was within forty years, in a most astonishing manner, by the dreadful destruction of the temple, the city, and the nation. The justice of such a procedure every thinking person will acknowledge, who considers that sins committed by men, as constituting a body politic, can only be punished in the present life; the proper punishment of national sins being national judgments, even such judgments as dissolve the transgressing state. And these the providence of God thinks necessary for its own vindication, always inflicting them upon nations, when the measure fixed upon by God for punishment is filled up, that the wrath of God being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, the nations of the world may be awed and kept in subjection to the government of God. See on Matthew 23:29-33.