“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you build the sepulchres of the prophets, and garnish the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets'.”
The thought of whitewashed tombs leads on to the way they treat the tombs of the prophets, and the monuments to ‘the righteous'. They honour both prophets and righteous men of the past. They build their tombs and decorate their monuments (Herod the Great had built a new marble monument over David's tomb. It was an age of such gestures. And the Scribes and Pharisees, as well as the people, heartily approved of it because of their admiration for David, even if they did not like Herod and did not do it themselves. And the wealthier among them would almost certainly have contributed to similar gestures). ‘Righteous men' are those well known from their history for their faithfulness to God (compare Hebrews 11). Once men are dead they very often become seen as respectable and acceptable, and that is what has happened in this case. Once they are safely out of the way and could no longer make accusations or demands they were honoured.
And indeed the Scribes and Pharisees and the people smugly said, (and probably believed it), ‘If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' They were actually convinced that their attitude to prophets and righteous men was the right one, and that had they been alive in their day they would have listened to them and followed them. They totally overlooked their own attitude towards John the Baptist and their plots against Jesus, and their willingness to beat people who disagreed with them. After all, that was different. He could not really be righteous, for He did not agree with them, and all should recognise they only beat people who were in the wrong, (that is who were opposed to or neglected their teaching). And the same attitude would apply to His followers, for while He criticised their righteousness, they criticised His and theirs (Matthew 9:3; Matthew 9:11; Matthew 9:34; Matthew 12:2; Matthew 12:24). And they would continue to do so. They no doubt said that He took things too far, and applied them too literally. What was needed was balance, (that is, to take up their position). Thus they considered that it was probably better for all if He was out of the way. For He was not really ‘a prophet'. He was a false prophet. So rejecting Him was not quite the same thing as rejecting the prophets.