Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
Ver. 14. Ye devour widows' houses] Though they pretended to be great fasters,Luke 18:12, yet their bellies prepared deceit, as Eliphaz hath it, Job 15:35, and their throats (those open sepulchres) swallowed up whole houses (such was their covetousness), and that of widows (such was their cruelty), and that under a pretence of long prayers, which was their hypocrisy; for while their lips seemed to pray, they were but chewing that morsel, that murdering morsel that made them receive the greater damnation. Multi in terris manducant, quod apud inferos digerant, saith Augustine. Many devour that on earth that they must digest in hell, where the never dying worm will feed greedily upon all such covetous caitiffs (wretches) as have the greedy worm under their tongues, and their ill-gotten goods gotten already into their bowels, as these Pharisees had; which therefore God shall fetch thence again with a vengeance, τα ενοντα, Luke 11:41; Job 20:15 .
Make long prayers] God takes not men's prayers by tale, but by weight. He respecteth not the arithmetic of our prayers, how many they are; nor the rhetoric of our prayers, how eloquent they are; nor the geometry of our prayers, how long they are; nor the music of our prayers, the sweetness of our voice, nor the logic of our prayers, or the method of them, but the divinity of our prayers is that which he so much esteemeth. He looketh not for any James with horny knees through assiduity in prayer; nor for any Bartholomew with a century of prayers for the morning and as many for the evening, but St Paul, his frequency of praying with fervency of spirit, without all tedious length and vain babblings, this is it that God maketh most account of. It is not a servant's going to and fro, but the despatch of his business that pleaseth his master. It is not the loudness of a preacher's voice, but the holiness of the matter and the spirit of the preacher, that moveth a wise and intelligent hearer. So here, not gifts, but graces in prayer move the Lord. But these long prayers of the Pharisees were so much the worse, because thereby they sought to entitle God to their sin, yea, they merely mocked him, fleering a in his face.
a To laugh in a coarse, impudent, or unbecoming manner. ŒD