It was at this point that one of the Scribes' at table broke in. Remembering in what contempt some of the learned held the ignorant bigotry of the Pharisees, [4297] we can understand that he might have listened with secret enjoyment to denunciations of their folly.' As the common saying had it, the silly pietist,' a woman Pharisee,' and the (self-inflicted) blows of Pharisaism,' were among the plagues of life. [4298] And we cannot help feeling, that there is sometimes a touch of quiet humour in the accounts which the Rabbis give of the encounters between the Pharisees and their opponents. [4299] But, as the Scribe rightly remarked, by attacking, not merely their practice, but their principles, the whole system of traditionalism, which they represented, was condemned. [4300] And so the Lord assuredly meant it. The Scribes' were the exponents of the traditional law; those who bound and loosed in Israel. They did bind on heavy burdens, but they never loosed one; all those grievous burdens of traditionalism they laid on the poor people, but not the slightest effort did they make to remove any of them. [4301] Tradition, yes! the very profession of it bore witness against them. Tradition, the ordinances that had come down - they would not reform nor put aside anything, but claim and proclaim all that had come down from the fathers as a sacred inheritance to which they clung. So be it! let them be judged by their own words. The fathers had murdered the prophets, and they built their sepulchres; that, also, was a tradition - that of guilt which would be avenged. Tradition, learning, exclusiveness - alas! it was only taking away from the poor the key of knowledge; and while they themselves entered not by the door' into the Kingdom, they hindered those who would have gone in. And truly so did they prove that theirs was the inheritance, the tradition,' of guilt in hindering and banishing the Divine teaching of old, and murdering its Divine messengers. [4302]
There was a terrible truth and solemnity in what Jesus spake, and in the Woe which He denounced on them. The history of the next few months would bear witness how truly they had taken upon them this tradition of guilt; and all the after-history of Israel shows how fully this Woe' has come upon them. But, after such denunciations, the entertainment in the Pharisee's house must have been broken up. The Christ was too terribly in earnest - too mournfully so over those whom they hindered from entering the Kingdom, to bear with the awful guilt of their trivialities. With what feelings they parted from Him, appears from the sequel.
And when He was come out from thence, the Scribes and the Pharisees began to press upon Him vehemently, and to provoke Him to speak of many things; laying wait for Him, to catch something out of His Mouth.' [4303] __________________________________________________________________
[4248] Even St. Luke xx. 45-47 is not an exception. Christ, indeed, often afterwards answered their questions, but this is His last formal address to the Pharisees.
[4249] St. Matt. xxiii.
[4250] St. Matt. xxiii.
[4251] See the remarks on St. Luke xi. 39-52 in our analysis of St. Matt. xxiii. in chap. iv. of Book V.
[4252] St. Luke xi. 37.
[4253] The expression one of the Lawyers' (ver. 45) seems to imply that there were several at table.
[4254] St. Luke xi. 53, 54.
[4255] Not to dine' as in the A.V. Although in later Greek the word riston was used for prandium, yet its original meaning as breakfast' seems fixed by St. Luke xiv. 12, riston depnon.
[4256] {hebrew}, of which the German Morgenbrot is a literal rendering. To take the first meal later in the day was deemed very unwholesome: like throwing a stone into a skin.'
[4257] On the sacredness of the duty of hospitality, see Sketches of Jewish Social Life,' pp. 47-49.