But woe unto you that are rich! — Better, woe for you, the tone being, as sometimes (though, as Matthew 23 shows, not uniformly) with this expression, one of pity rather than denunciation. (Comp. Matthew 23:13; Mark 13:17; Luke 21:23.) We enter here on what is a distinct feature of the Sermon on the Plain — the woes that, as it were, balance the beatitudes. It obviously lay in St. Luke’s purpose, as a physician of the soul, to treasure up and record all our Lord’s warnings against the perilous temptations that wealth brings with it. The truth thus stated in its naked awfulness is reproduced afterwards in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19).
Ye have received your consolation. — Better, simply, ye have your consolation — i.e., all that you understand or care for, all, therefore, that you can have. The thought appears again in the words of Abraham, “Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things” (Luke 16:25). The verb is the same as in “they have their reward,” in Matthew 6:2; Matthew 6:5.