But this people who knoweth not the law... — The words express “Those people there, among whom you have been, and with whose opinion you have been coinciding, instead of holding the authoritative opinion which we have declared, and which we alone can declare. We are the interpreters of the Law, and have the key of knowledge. That ignorant rabble uninstructed in the Law are cursed.”
Are cursed. — The writings of the Rabbis are full of scorn and contempt for the untutored multitude, whom they called ‘am hââretz, “people of the earth,” as opposed to those instructed in the Law, whom they called ‘âm kôdesh, “holy people.” These words are an expression of this contempt. Some have supposed that they are meant to express the ban of excommunication, which they use as a weapon of compulsion in John 9:22, but this is quite out of the question as applied here to the multitude.