The Jewish authorities continued unceasingly active in their efforts to tempt or beguile Jesus into some act or utterance on which they could base a charge of offense. The Pharisees counseled together as to "how they might entangle him in his talk"; and then, laying aside their partisan prejudices, they conspired to this end with the Herodians. The same incongruous association had been entered into before in an attempt to provoke Jesus to overt speech or action in Galilee. The Lord had coupled the parties together in His warning to the disciples to beware of the leaven of both.
Pharisees and Herodians joined forces against Jesus. Their plans were conceived in treachery, and put into operation as the living embodiment of a lie. This delegation of hypocritical spies came asking a question, in pretended sincerity, as though they were troubled in conscience and desired counsel of the eminent Teacher.
"Master," said they with fawning duplicity, "we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man" "Tell us therefore," they continued, "What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar, or not?" The question had been chosen with diabolic craft; for of all acts attesting compulsory allegiance to Rome that of having to pay the poll-tax was most offensive to the Jews.
Had Jesus answered "Yes," the guileful Pharisees might have inflamed the multitude against Him as a disloyal son of Abraham. The nation, both rulers and people had settled it, however grudgingly, for they accepted and circulated among themselves the Roman coinage. To make current the coins of any sovereign was to acknowledge his royal authority. "But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?"
"Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are CæSar's; and unto God the things that are God's." The reply was a masterly one by whatever standard we gage it; it has become an aphorism in literature and life. It established for all time the one righteous basis of relationship between spiritual and secular duties, between church and state. The apostles in later years builded upon this foundation and enjoined obedience to the laws of established governments. It was that effigy with its accompanying superscription that gave special point to His memorable instruction. One may draw a lesson if he will, from the association of our Lord's words with the occurrence of C
This was followed by the further injunction: "and unto God the things that are God's" Every human soul is stamped with the image and superscription of God, however blurred and indistinct the lines may have become through the corrosion or attrition of sin. Render unto the world the stamped pieces that are made legally current by the insignia of worldly powers, and give them to God and His service.
The Sadducees tried to discomfit Jesus by propounding what they regarded as an involved if not indeed a very difficult question. They held that there could be no bodily resurrection, on which point of doctrine as on many others, they were the avowed opponents of the Pharisees. "Master," said the spokesman of the party, "Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother"
The Mosaic law authorized and required that the living brother of a deceased and childless husband should marry the widow with the purpose of rearing children to the name of the dead. Such a state of affairs as that presented by the casuistical Sadducees, in which seven brothers in succession had as wife and left as childless widow the same woman, was possible under the Mosaic code relating to levirate marriages. But it was a most improbable instance.
Jesus stopped not, however, to question the elements of the problem as presented to Him. Whether the case was assumed or real mattered not, since the question "Whose wife shall she be?" was based on an erroneous conception. The Lord's meaning was clear, that in the resurrected state there can be no question among the seven brothers as to whose wife for eternity the woman shall be. All except the first had married her for the duration of mortal life only, and primarily for the purpose of perpetuating in mortality the name and family of the brother who first died.
Luke records the Lord's words as follows in part: "But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more" In the resurrection there will be no marrying nor giving in marriage. All questions of marital status must be settled before that time, under the authority of the Holy Priesthood, which holds the power to seal in marriage for both time and eternity.
This was a direct assault upon the Sadducean doctrine of negation concerning the literal resurrection of the dead. Certain of the scribes present were impressed by the incontrovertible demonstration of the truth. The proud Sadducees were confuted and silenced; "and after that they durst not ask him any question at all"
The Pharisees, covertly rejoicing over the discomfiture of their rivals, now summoned courage enough to plan another attack of their own. One of their number, a lawyer, by which title we may understand one of the scribes who was distinctively also a professor of ecclesiastical law, asked: "Which is the first commandment of all?" The reply was prompt, incisive, and so comprehensive as to cover the requirements of the law in their entirety.
Matthew's wording of the concluding declaration is: "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets" The philosophic soundness of the Lord's profound generalization will appeal to all students of human nature, he says. The Jews had divided and subdivided the commandments of the law, and had supplemented even the minutest subdivision with rules of their own contriving.
To love God with all one's heart and soul and mind is to serve Him and keep all His commandments. To love one's neighbor as one's self is to be a brother in the broadest and, at the same time, the most exacting sense of the term. Therefore the commandment to love God and man is the greatest, on the basis of the simple and mathematical truth that the whole is greater than any part. What need of the decalog could there be if mankind would obey this first and great and all-embracing commandment? The Lord's reply to the question was convincing even to the learned scribe who had acted as spokesman for his Pharisaic colleagues.
The man was honest enough to admit the righteousness and wisdom on which the reply was grounded. Jesus was no whit less prompt than the well-intending scribe in acknowledging merit in the words of an opponent. As to whether the scribe remained firm in purpose and eventually gained entrance into that blessed abode, the scriptural record is silent.
Sadducees, Herodians, Pharisees, lawyers, and scribes, all had in turn met discomfiture and defeat in their efforts to entangle Jesus on questions of doctrine or practise. They had utterly failed to incite Him to any act or utterance on which they could lawfully charge Him with offense. Having so effectually silenced all who had ventured to challenge Him to debate, "no man after that durst ask him any question," Jesus in turn became the aggressive interrogator.
The Lord's citation of David's jubilant and worshipful song of praise, which, as Mark avers, Jesus said was inspired by the Holy Ghost, had reference to the Messianic psalm. Jesus the Christ is the Son of David in the physical way of lineage by which both Jesus and David are sons of Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, and Adam.
But while Jesus was born in the flesh as late in the centuries as the "meridian of time" He was Jehovah, Lord and God, before David, Abraham, or Adam was known on earth. The humiliating defeat of the Pharisaic party was made all the more memorable and bitter by the Lord's final denunciation of the system, and His condemnation of its unworthy representatives. "All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do," said the Lord, "but do not ye after their works; for they say, and do not."
Distinction between due observance of official precept and personal responsibility of following evil example could not have been made plainer. Disobedience to law was not to be excused because of corruption among the law's representatives, nor was wickedness in any individual to be condoned or palliated because of another's villainy. "For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers"
Their inordinate vanity and their irreverent assumption of excessive piety were thus stigmatized. The high-sounding title, Rabbi, signifying Master, Teacher, or Doctor, had eclipsed the divinely recognized sanctity of priesthood. To be a rabbi of the Jews was regarded as vastly superior to being a priest of the Most High God. "But be not ye called Rabbi," said Jesus to the apostles and the other disciples present, "for one is your Master, even Christ"
Those upon whom would rest the responsibility of building the Church He had founded were not to aspire to worldly titles nor the honors of men. Those chosen ones were brethren, and their sole purpose should be the rendering of the greatest possible service to their one and only Master. As had been so strongly impressed on earlier occasions, excellence or supremacy in the apostolic calling, and similarly in the duties of discipleship or membership in the Church of Christ, was and is to be achieved through humble and devoted service alone.
From the mixed multitude of disciples and unbelievers, comprizing many of the common people who listened in glad eagerness to learn, Jesus turned to the already abashed yet angry rulers, and deluged them with a veritable torrent of righteous indignation. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men," he said.
The avarice of the Jewish hierarchy in our Lord's lifetime was an open scandal. By extortion and unlawful exaction under cover of religious duty the priestly rulers had amassed an enormous treasure. The perfidy of the practise was made the blacker by the outward pretense of sanctity and the sacrilegious accompaniment of wordy prayer.
It is possible that this woe was directed more against the effort to secure proselytes to Pharisaism than that of converting aliens to Judaism. But as the latter was thoroughly degraded and the former disgustingly corrupt, the application of our Lord's denunciation to either or both is warranted. "Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing," says Jesus. "Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?"
The Lord condemned the infamous enactments of the schools and the Sanhedrin concerning oaths and vows. They had established or endorsed a code of rules, inconsistent and unjust, as to technical trifles by which a vow could be enforced or invalidated. If a man swore by the temple, the House of Jehovah, he could obtain an indulgence for breaking his oath. But if he vowed by the gold and treasure of the Holy House, he was bound by the unbreakable bonds of priestly dictum.
To what depths of unreason and hopeless depravity had men fallen, how sinfully foolish and how wilfully blind were they, said Jesus. The lesser and evidently just requirement of strict fidelity to the terms of self-assumed obligations was to be enforced, without unrighteous quibble or inequitable discrimination. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel."
The law of the tithe had been a characteristic feature of the theocratic requirements in Israel from the days of Moses. The Lord denounced as rank hypocrisy the observance of such requirements as an excuse for neglecting the other duties of true religion. The reference to "the weightier matters of the law" may have been an allusion to the rabbinical classification of "light" and "heavy" requirements under the law; though it is certain the Lord approved no such arbitrary distinctions.
To omit the tithing of small things, such as mint leaves, and sprigs of anise and cummin, was to fall short in dutiful observance. To ignore the claims of judgment, mercy, and faith was to forfeit one's claim to blessing as a covenant child of God. By a strong simile, the Lord stigmatized such inconsistency as comparable to one's scrupulous straining at a gnat while figuratively willing to gulp down a camel. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess"
Cups and platters though cleansed to perfection were filthy before the Lord if their contents had been bought by the gold of extortion, or were to be used in pandering to gluttony, drunkenness or other excess. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness"
The dogmas of the rabbis made even the slightest contact with a corpse or its cerements, or with the bier upon which it was borne, or the grave in which it had been lain, a cause of personal defilement. Care was taken to make tombs conspicuously white, so that no person need be defiled through ignorance of proximity to such unclean places. The periodical whitening of sepulchres was regarded as a memorial act of honor to the dead. But even as no amount of care or degree of diligence in keeping bright the outside of a tomb could stay the putrescence going on within, so no externals of pretended righteousness could mitigate the revolting corruption of a heart
Jesus had before compared Pharisees with unmarked graves, over which men inadvertently walked and so became defiled though they knew it not. National pride, not wholly unlike patriotism, had for centuries expressed itself in formal regard for the burial crypts of the ancient prophets, many of whom had been slain because of their righteous and fearless zeal. "If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets," Jesus said.
Those modern Jews were voluble to disavow all sympathy with the murderous deeds of their progenitors. They ostentatiously averred that if they had lived in the times of those martyrdoms they would have been no participators therein. Yet by such avouchment they proclaimed themselves the offspring of those who had shed innocent blood. With scorching maledictions the Lord thus consigned them to their fate: "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?"
Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation." To their sanctimonious asseverations of superiority over their fathers who had slain Jehovah's envoys, Jehovah Himself replied by predicting that they would dye their hands in the blood of prophets, wise men, and righteous scribes, whom He would send amongst them. That dread fate, outlined with such awful realism, was to be no eventuality of the distant future. Every one of the frightful woes the Lord had uttered was tobe realized in that generation.
Looking from the temple heights out over the city of the great King, soon to be abandoned to destruction, the Lord was obsessed by emotions of profound sorrow. With the undying eloquence of anguish He broke forth in such a lamentation as no mortal father ever voiced over the most unfilial and recreant of sons. The children of Israel had spurned the proffered safety of a protecting paternal wing; soon the Roman eagle would swoop down upon them and slay. Had Israel but received her King, the world's history of post-meridian time would never have been what it is.
The stupendous temple, which but a day before the Lord had called "My house," was now no longer specifically His. "Your house," said He, "is left unto you desolate." He was about to withdraw from both temple and nation. By the Jews His face was not again to be seen, until, through the discipline of centuries of suffering they shall be prepared to acclaim in accents of abiding faith.
Jesus observed the lines of donors, of all ranks and degrees of affluence and poverty, some depositing their gifts with evident devoutness and sincerity of purpose, others ostentatiously casting in great sums of silver and gold. Among the many was a poor widow, who with probable effort to escape observation dropped into one of the treasure-chests two small bronze coins known as mites; her contribution amounted to less than half a cent in American money. The Lord called His disciples about Him, directed their attention to the poverty-stricken widow and her deed, and said: "Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury"
In the accounts kept by the recording angels, entries are made in terms of quality rather than of quantity. The rich gave much yet kept back more; the widow's gift was her all. It was not the smallness of her offering that made it especially acceptable, but the spirit of sacrifice and devout intent with which she gave. "For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath"
Our Lord's public discourses and the open colloquies in which He had participated with professionals and priestly officials, in the course of His daily visits to the temple during the first half of Passion week, had caused many of the chief rulers, beside others, to believe on Him as the veritable Son of God. But the fear of Pharisaic persecution and the dread of excommunication from the synagog deterred them from confessing the allegiance they felt, and from accepting the means of salvation so freely offered. It may have been while Jesus directed His course for the last time toward the exit portal of the one-time holy place that He uttered the solemn testimony of His divinity recorded by John.
Allegiance to Himself was allegiance to God. The people were plainly told that to accept Him was in no degree a weakening of their adherence to Jehovah, but on the contrary a confirmation thereof. Repeating precepts of earlier utterance, He again proclaimed Himself the light of the world, by whose rays alone mankind might be delivered from the enveloping darkness of spiritual unbelief. The testimony He left with the people would be the means of judgment and condemnation to all who wilfully rejected it. "For," said He in solemn finality, "I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say,. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting"
As Jesus was departing from the enclosure wherein stood what once had been the House of the Lord, one or more of the disciples called His attention to the magnificent structures. The Lord's answering comment was an unqualified prophecy of the utter destruction of the temple and everything pertaining to it. The literal fulfilment of that awful portent was but an incident in the annihilation of the city less than forty years later.
Whatever of discourse, parable, or ordinance was to follow, would be directed only to the further instruction and investiture of the apostles. The Jews had an aversion for images or effigies in general, the use of which they professed to hold as a violation of the second commandment. Their own coins bore other devices, such as plants, fruits, etc., in place of a human head. The Romans had condescendingly permitted the issue of a special coinage for Jewish use, each piece bearing the name but not the effigy of the monarch. The ordinary coinage of Rome was current in Palestine, however.
When the Jews had been brought into subjection by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the Lord commanded through the prophet Jeremiah (27:4-8) that the people render obedience to their conqueror. The obedience so enjoined included the payment of taxes and extended to complete submission. After the death of Christ the apostles taught obedience to the powers that be, which powers, Paul declared "are ordained of God" See Rom. 13:1-7; Titus 3:1; 1 Tim. 2:1, 3; see also 1 Peter 2:13, 14.
The restored Church proclaims as an essential part of its belief and practise: "We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law." See Articles of Faith , xxiii. 3. Marriage for Eternity. —Divine revelation in the dispensation of the fulness of times has made plain the fact, that contracts of marriage, as indeed all other agreements between parties in mortality, are of no validity beyond the grave, except such contracts be ratified and validated by the duly established ordinances of the Holy Priesthood. Sealing in the marriage covenant for time and eternity, which has come to be known as celestial marriage, is an ordinance established
The Rabbinical schools, in their meddling, carnal, superficial spirit of word-weaving and letter-worship, had spun large accumulations of worthless subtlety all over the Mosaic law. Among other things they had wasted their idleness in fantastic attempts to count, and classify, and weigh, and measure all the separate commandments of the ceremonial and moral law. They had come to the sapient conclusion that there were 248 affirmative precepts, being as many as the members in the human body, and 365 negative precepts. The total being 613, which was also the number of letters in the decalog. They arrived at the same result from the fact that the Jews were commanded (Numb. 15:38
Some thought the omission of ablutions as bad as homicide. Others considered the third commandment to be the greatest commandment. None of them had realized the great principle, that the wilful violation of one commandment is the transgression of all (James 2:10), because the object of the entire Law is the spirit of obedience to God.
The Hebrews adopted the custom of wearing phylacteries, which consisted essentially of strips of parchment on which were inscribed in whole or in part the following texts: Exo. 13:2-10 and 11-17; Deut. 6:4-9, and 11:13-21. Phylacteries were worn on the head and arm. The parchment strips for the head were four, on each of which one of the texts cited above was written.
The Pharisees wore the arm phylactery above the elbow, while their rivals, the Sadducees, fastened it to the palm of the hand (see Exo. 13:9). The common people wore phylacteries only at prayer time; but the Phariseers were said to display them throughout the day.
The size of the parchment strips was fixed by rigid rule. The Lord had required of Israel through Moses (Numb. 15:38) that the people attach to the border of their garment a fringe with a ribbon of blue. In ostentatious display of assumed piety, the scribes and Pharisees delighted to wear enlarged borders to attract public attention. It was another manifestation of hypocritical sanctimoniousness.
Titles of office in the Holy Priesthood are of too sacred a character to be used as marks of distinction among men. In the restored Church in the current dispensation, men are ordained to the Priesthood and to the several offices comprized within both the Lesser or Aaronic, and the Higher or Melchizedek Priesthood. Chas. F. Deems, in speaking of the irreverent use of ecclesiastical titles, says: "The Pharisees loved also the highest places in the synagogs, and it gratified their vanity to be called Teacher, Doctor, Rabbi"
They were not to love to be called Rabbi, a title which occurs in three forms. Nor were they to call any man 'Father,' in the sense of granting him any infallibility of judgment or power over their consciences. 'Papa,' as the simple Moravians call their great man, Count Zinzendorf: 'Founder,' as Methodists denominate good John Wesley; 'Holy Father in God,' as bishops are sometimes called. 'Doctor of Divinity,' the Christian equivalent of the Jewish 'Rabbi,' are all dangerous titles. But it is not the employment of a name which Jesus denounces, it is the spirit of vanity which animated the Pharisees.
Some of the early Mss. of the Gospels omit verse 14 from Matt. 23. Such omission reduces the number of specific utterances beginning "Woe unto you" from eight to seven. There is no question as to the appearance in the original of the passages in Mark 12:40 and Luke 20:47.
Edersheim (vol. ii, pp. 387-8) writes: "Some might come with appearance of self-righteousness, some even with ostentation, some as cheerfully performing a happy duty" See also Josephus, Antiquities xiv, 4:4; 7:1, 2. 9. Zacharias the Martyr.
The Old Testament contains no mention of a martyr named Zacharias son of Barachias. It does chronicle the martyrdom of Zechariah son of Jehoiada (2 Chron. 24:20-22) It is the opinion of most Bible scholars that the Zachariah referred to in Matthew's record is Zecharsiah.
The Old Testament does not number this Zechariah among the martyrs, but traditional accounts say that he was killed "in the day of propitiation" That the Lord referred to a late and probably the latest of the recorded martyrdoms is probable; and it is equally evident that the case was well known among the Jews. See Note 4 , page 119.
The Temple was almost finished when it was destroyed. Jesus had foretold its fate. The protecting presence of Jehovah had long since departed therefrom and Israel was left a prey to the foe. In the great conflict with the Roman legions under Titus, many of the Jews had taken refuge within the Temple courts, seemingly hoping that there the Lord would again fight the battles of His people and give them victory. This dire prediction soon found its literal fulfilment. The destruction of the Temple was predicted by Jesus in Mark 13:1, 2; see also Matt. 24:1,. 2; Luke 21:5, 6.
Though Titus would have spared the Temple, his legionaries, maddened by the lust of conflict, started the conflagration and everything that could be burned was burned. Thousands of men, women and children were ruthlessly butchered within the walls, and the temple courts were literally flooded with human blood. Of the Temple furniture the golden candlestick and the table of shewbread from the Holy Place were carried by Titus to Rome as trophies of war. representations of these sacred pieces are to be seen on the arch erected to the name of the victorious general. (Josephus, Wars of the Jews, vi, 4:5, 8. For a detailed and graphic account of the destruction of the Temple see chapters 4
Since the destruction of the splendid Temple of Herod no other structure of the kind, no Temple, no House of the Lord as the terms are used distinctively, has been reared on the eastern hemisphere. The soldier who applied the torch to the Holy House, which had remained intact while fire raged in the courts, is regarded by the historian as an instrument of divine vengeance.
We read (Wars, vi, 4:5): "One of the soldiers, without staying for any orders, and without any concern or dread upon him at so great an undertaking, and being hurried on by a certain divine fury, snatched somewhat out of the materials that were on fire"
Matt. 23:37-39; compare Luke 13:34, 35. Mark 12:41-44; Luke 21:1-4. 2 Cor. 8:12. John 12:42; compare 7:13; 9:22. John12:43; compare 5:44. Luke 11:44; compare 9:34. Psalm 110. 4:4; compare Heb. 5:6; 6:20; 7:17, 21. Matt. 24:1, 2; Mark 13:1,. 2;Luke 21:5, 6.