Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 22–26

If we ought to consider everything in the words of the Gospel figuratively, we must see why in Matthew the scribes and Pharisees are said to clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, while in Luke mention is made of the cup and the bowl. Both, then, name vessels for food and drink, and both name the cup, which is for drinking; but not both the dish: the one says “bowl,” the other “dish,” yet each is held to be a vessel for food. According to both evangelists, then, there is a spiritual drink and a spiritual food which we seek in the words of the Scriptures of the law and the prophets. Every word by which we are given drink spiritually, or every narrative by which we are nourished, is a vessel of drink and food. We are warned, then, not to care for the outside of words or narratives more than for what is inside, so that our heart may be filled with clean senses that give drink and nourishment, and not with words or their ornate composition, because “the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.” For example, one who strives to bring forth a well-composed word rather than one filled with a saving sense has the cup of his narrative cleaned outside, but inside it is filled with filth and vanities. Hence Paul, who was not accustomed to clean the outside of the cup and the dish but the inside, confesses himself “unskilled in speech, but not in knowledge”; and his speech was indeed rustic, yet clean because of the cleanness of his knowledge. But those who spoke “in wisdom of word,” and by this emptied the cross of Christ, offered words clean outside but full inside of unclean knowledge, and of plunder and intemperance of life. Likewise one who, hearing the word or some Scripture of the law, delights in its outward composition more than in its inward and saving senses, loves a cup or dish cleaned outside but filthy within.

If we ought also to add a third explanation akin to the previous ones, we say that the letters of the law and the prophets are cups of spiritual drink for the soul, and dishes of necessary food for faithful people, or bowls of wisely seasoned foods. Of these cups and dishes and bowls of the law and the prophets the scribes and Pharisees study the outward and common sense, and hasten to show this to be clean and holy; but the disciples of Christ hasten to clean and sanctify the inward and spiritual sense by knowledge and by convincing demonstration, so that they may eat and drink the law and the prophets cleaned within, longing to hear and receive the inward and mystical sense, and passing beyond the outward senses of the words. It is good, then, to clean carefully the inside of the cup, or dish, or bowl, because for one who has first cleaned the inside of the cup, the outer parts too become truly clean; and the vessels of the words are found clean when their true and spiritual senses have been made plain.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inside are full of dead men's bones and of all filth; so you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” Just as above they are full within of plunder and intemperance, so here too they are full of hypocrisy and iniquity, which are compared to dead men's bones, to all uncleanness. For hypocrisy, being a kind of pretence of good, has nothing living from the good it feigns. And the bones, so to speak, of the virtue it feigns are a dead righteousness, or a dead chastity. For if we hear wisely what the present saying wishes to show, we understand that every feigned righteousness is a dead righteousness. Just as a dead man seems to be a man but is not a man, so too a dead chastity is not chastity. And that chastity is dead which comes about not for God's sake but as a pretence for men's sake. And just as among actors there are those who take on the masks of certain people and are not themselves those whom they play, but seem to be, so one who feigns righteousness: his feigned righteousness is not righteousness, but seems so. For it is not righteousness but a counterfeit of righteousness. So too a chastity feigned in deceit is not chastity, but seems so. That is why such people are rightly likened to whitewashed tombs. Outwardly they seem righteous in the sight of those who do not know how to consider the inner things, but within they are full of dead men's bones. There are as many bones and uncleannesses in them as there are good works feigned from an evil disposition; and they seem outwardly righteous before men, not before those whom Scripture calls gods, to whom the word of God came, but before those who die like men. It would be evil even to have within oneself one bone of a dead man or one uncleanness. But now see Scripture's heightening of the malice of hypocrites. For just as tombs are full of bones and of all uncleanness, so they too are full of hypocrisy and iniquity, not pretending in some one thing, nor before one or two or three persons in their whole life, though even that would be a very great evil, but all the days of their life they live in pretences, and are one thing and are thought to be another. Some are lustful within but outwardly show themselves chaste, pretenders to chastity and counterfeiters of virginity. Others are pretenders to righteousness while they are unjust within; and others are pretenders to other virtues while they are full within of the opposite vices. There are some who pretend even to martyrdom, and some to the office of bishop, or of presbyter, or of deacon, or to the church's knowledge or teaching, having only the mask and show of the virtues, but in truth they are enemies of the very virtues they feign.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say: If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been their partners in the blood of the prophets. Thus you bear witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who killed the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. Serpents, brood of vipers, how will you escape the judgment of Gehenna? Therefore, behold, I send you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous blood that is shed on the earth.”

As far as the surface of the text goes, he does not seem to threaten very reasonably those who build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous. For in this alone they were doing something praiseworthy, building the tombs of the prophets and adorning the monuments of the righteous, not consenting to the works of their fathers which they dared against the prophets and saints, especially in saying, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been their partners in the blood of the prophets.” How, then, were they worthy to receive the “woe”? But if someone says, “As regards that work and the profession of their words they were not guilty, but they were culpable because they bore witness against themselves that they were the sons of those who killed the prophets,” not even this is true. For in a matter that does not happen by a man's choice, how can a man … ? For it is not of each man's choice whose son he is, of a good man or of a bad. So it was not because they built the tombs of the prophets and said, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been guilty,” that they were either guilty or innocent; but because by the deeds themselves and by the likeness of their crimes they bore witness against themselves that they were the sons of those who killed the prophets, filling up the measure of their fathers and adding what had been lacking, completing the killing of the prophets and the righteous by the killing of Christ the Son of God. For this reason it was not possible for those held guilty of such an act to escape the judgment of Gehenna. For them even the blood of Christ was not enough, but they also killed and crucified those prophets and scribes who were sent by Christ, scourged them in their synagogues, and persecuted them from town to town. For all these murderous deeds it was just that they should suffer the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of the people, when the patience of God no longer bore the greatness and number of their crimes. And there came upon the generation of those who had filled up the measure of their fathers, and of the prophets and wise men and scribes of Jesus Christ, all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whose killing he imputes to the scribes and Pharisees, as though he had been killed not by their fathers but by those very men. For so it is written: “whom you killed between the temple and the altar.” Those whom Christ reproaches cannot say that Zechariah son of Barachiah was one of the twelve prophets whose writings we have in our hands; rather he means Zechariah the father of John, about whom we cannot show from the canonical Scriptures either that he was the son of Barachiah or that the scribes and Pharisees killed him between the temple and the altar. But a tradition of this kind has come down to us: that there was a place in the temple where virgins were permitted to stand and pray to God, while women who had known a man's bed were not permitted to stand in it. Now Mary, after she had borne the Saviour, came in to worship and stood in that place of the virgins; and when those who knew that she had already borne a son tried to prevent her, Zechariah stood up and said to those who were preventing her that she was worthy of the place of the virgins, since she was still a virgin. So, as though Zechariah were most plainly acting against the law and letting a woman stand in the place of the virgins, the men of that generation killed him between the temple and the altar. Yet let us ask those who do not believe such a tradition to explain how Jesus reproaches them over Zechariah, not as the sons of those who killed the prophets, including Zechariah, but as those who themselves killed Zechariah between the temple and the altar. If, then, the word of Christ is true which he says to the Pharisees and scribes then present, “whom you killed between the temple and the altar,” it is not possible to understand it of the Zechariah who is one of the twelve. Nor is it surprising if it happened that both Zechariahs, and their fathers too, had the same name. The word that Christ speaks means something like this: “You who excuse yourselves from the blood of the prophets and say, If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been their partners in the blood of the prophets, and who build the tombs of the slain prophets, by the very things you have dared against me bear witness against yourselves that you are the sons of your murderous fathers, filling up, through my blood and the blood of my prophets, what had been lacking in their iniquities. For they did not crucify Christ, but you crucified him, filling up the measure; and having become the brood of those vipers who killed the prophets, most evil serpents, you shut for yourselves the way of escape from the judgment of Gehenna because of the greatness of the crimes you have committed against Christ, and against his wise men, his prophets, and his scribes; and still you have dared to separate yourselves from the company of your fathers and excuse yourselves from the blood of the prophets.”

But it follows that someone who understands Scripture according to the simple history will object and ask why he did not say “up to the blood of John son of Zechariah,” especially since the law and the prophets prophesied until John. We shall say to him that it is plain that the scribes and Pharisees did not kill John, but Herod. For although the scribes and Pharisees did not believe John, as it is written, “If we say, The baptism of John is from heaven, he will say to us, Why then did you not believe him?”, yet they still had a certain reverence for his name, not daring, in reply to Christ's question about his baptism, to say that it was from men; for they feared the people, who believed that John was truly a prophet. How, then, would he reproach those who had not killed John as though they were his killers? But he reproached them as the killers of Zechariah, saying: “whom you killed between the temple and the altar.” Further, it must be said about the text that a generation of sinners is not punished as soon as a sin has been committed; but when the following generation, which ought to correct in itself the sin of its fathers, adds still worse things to the sins of its fathers, and so many generations have sinned in a nation or a city, then the nation is punished or the city destroyed. So too the nation of the Jews, which inflicted many evils on the prophets, was not to be punished at once when it began to murder them, but after God's patience, when they had added to the blood of the prophets the blood of Christ and filled up the measure of their fathers, then they were punished more justly. This generation of the Jews in Christ's time, then, did not take upon itself the sin that Cain sinned in killing his brother, nor the sin of those who killed the prophets; but the patience of God shown in the nation of the Jews had to be ended by measures, so that after many sheddings of the blood of the prophets and the righteous, Jerusalem and Judaea, not having been made desolate before, should suffer this afterwards for the blood of Christ; and for this reason God acted with long-suffering, so that the scribes and Pharisees, with the people's approval, should take upon themselves the blood of Christ's prophets, and, according to the Gospel, of the wise men and scribes whom they killed and crucified and scourged in their synagogues and persecuted from town to town; so that, when all had been driven out of Judaea, the place emptied of all the saints should be made desolate, and should suffer all that it suffered from Vespasian and Titus. We have explained this in its bodily sense.

But if we must also explain these same things figuratively, we shall say the following in this place. I think that, just as Christ came hidden in a body, so that by fleshly people, who looked at the appearance of his body and did not consider his powers, he was seen as a man, but by spiritual people, who did not attend to the appearance of his body but considered the works of his powers, he was understood to be God, so all divine Scripture is embodied, and especially that of the Old Testament. For the spiritual and prophetic sense of Scripture is hidden in the history of the matter set forth, so that all Scripture is understood by ordinary people according to the history, but by the spiritual and perfect according to the spiritual mystery. With this preface, let us return to the word. Just as in the case of the prophets themselves, when they departed this life, their bodies were in the tombs but their souls and spirits in the region of the living, so too in the prophetic sayings it must be noticed that their narrative, according to the simple history, is the body, while the spiritual sense, the very inmost truth of the Scriptures, is the soul and spirit which dwells in the simpler narratives according to the history. And we may not unfittingly consider the tombs of the prophets to be the very letters of the Scriptures, and the books in which the narrative lies placed and remains, like a body placed in tombs. Those, then, who understand and receive the spiritual things of the Scriptures and their truth hidden within have in themselves the souls and spirits of the prophets, having themselves become as it were the region of the living prophets. But those who do not grasp or seek them, but attend only to the simple narrative and history of the matter, honour the bodies of the prophets placed in letters and in books as in certain tombs; such were the Pharisees, who are rightly called Pharisees, that is, “cut off,” because they cut off the spiritual things of the prophets by the bodily history, as it were driving the soul of the prophets out of the body, killing the prophecies themselves and making them lifeless, as though they had nothing spiritual. And they are truly hypocrites, building and adorning only the tombs of the prophets that contain the bodily history, that is, devoting themselves to the very Scriptures and books of the prophets; who, not understanding that they are honouring dead bodies, that is, historical narratives, seem to act piously towards the memory of the prophets, but are impious; and by this very thing they wish to defend themselves as not being partners of those who killed the prophets, but they are convicted of adding to the crimes of those who killed the prophets and of filling up the measure of their iniquity by this very thing, that they do not believe in Christ, whom not the simple histories of the prophets but their spiritual sense proclaims. I know without doubt that everywhere the cause of the Jews' unbelief has been this, that they did not understand Jesus as the Christ of God, because they always gave their minds to the bodily histories, unwilling to believe that there is anything spiritual in them. For example, we bring forward what is prophesied in Zechariah, where it is said that he would enter Jerusalem on an ass and a colt, and would destroy the chariots from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem. If someone wants to understand this of Christ according to the history of the letter, it does not fit. For Christ is not related to have destroyed bodily and perceptible chariots from Ephraim, nor a bodily horse from a bodily Jerusalem. But if you see among heretics the assemblies of falsehood itself joined as it were under a yoke and badly agreeing with one another, which the word of truth customarily destroys, you will see how Christ, the Word of God, destroys spiritual chariots from a spiritual Ephraim. For Ephraim is always set down as a figure of the heresies that have separated themselves from the Church of Christ, as Ephraim did from the tribe of Judah. So spiritually too the divine word threw the horse and rider of the Egyptians into the sea, that is, the ungodly man together with the devil, his rider and instigator. So also he destroyed the horse from Jerusalem, that is, whoever has been subject to the devil as rider and not to Christ, like those acceptable horses of Christ of which Habakkuk says, “You will mount your horses, and your riding is salvation,” that is, upon the apostles and the other saints in whom Christ dwells. Therefore we say: “Some in chariots (meaning Ephraim) and some in horses (meaning the adversaries of Jerusalem), but we will be magnified in the name of our God; they have been bound and have fallen, but we have risen and stand upright.” They bear witness against themselves that they are the sons of those who killed the prophets by this very thing, that they fill up the measure of their fathers, adding to their unbelief unbelief in Jesus, which comes from nowhere else than this, that they give their time to nothing else than the building of the prophets' tombs, that is, only to diligent study of the prophetic letters and books. The scribes of the law are unhappy ones; but there are other scribes, who are sent by Christ according to the Gospel, whose spirit gives life and whose letter does not kill as the letter of the law does; for those who follow the letter of the law run into unbelief and vain superstitions, while those who follow the letter of the Gospel, that is, its simple narrative, are saved, since even the simple narrative of the Gospel alone suffices the simpler for salvation. And if you see the scribes of the law and the Pharisees acting not only against the wise men of the Gospel and those who prophesy the things of Christ, but also against the scribes of the New Testament, you will see how, as far as lies in them, they kill Christ's prophets, crucify his scribes by disparaging their words, and scourge them in their synagogues. Often, then, one can hear among the heresies, who are spiritual Pharisees, how with their tongues, as with certain lashes of their evil speech, they scourge Christians and persecute them from town to town, sometimes even bodily, sometimes spiritually, wishing to drive them out as it were from their own city of the law and the prophets, the Gospel and the apostles, and by their lying persuasions, as by persecutions, to drive them into another, foreign city of some other gospel; as the Apostle said on account of the false apostles: “I marvel that you are so quickly being transferred from the grace of God who called you to another gospel, which is not another, except that there are some who trouble you.” Therefore all the righteous blood will come upon them which they shed by this very thing, that they wish to overturn the truth of the Scriptures, which is rightly called the blood and life of the Scriptures, because every Scripture, unless it is understood according to the truth, is dead. They shed the truth of the Scriptures, then, like their blood, as the blood of Abel was shed. And not only then did the voice of Abel's blood cry out to God, but always the truth of the Scriptures shed by the ungodly, in the sense we have given, beginning from the blood of Christ, that is, from the truth of the Gospel, pleads with God through all the Scriptures against those who wish to overturn it; and the blood of the covenant, that is, the truth of the prophetic Scriptures, pleads against those who considered it unclean and would not be sanctified in it as in living and sanctifying blood. So they also shed the blood of Zechariah, which means “remembrance of God.” For everyone who hastens to destroy the remembrance of God in those whom he causes to stumble seems to shed the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, which itself means “blessing of God”; for through the blessing of God we remember God. And if we ought not to leave even the name of Abel unexamined, we say that Abel means “mourning.” One, then, who receives what is written, “Blessed are those who mourn,” saves Abel; but one who does not receive it sheds the blood of Abel, that is, the truth of saving mourning. Therefore what is written will be fulfilled upon him: “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.” The remembrance of God is slain by the ungodly between the temple and the altar when the temple of God is corrupted by the lustful, and his altar is soiled and defiled by neglect of prayers, when a man's prayer turns into sin, as was said of Judas's prayer: “And let his prayer become sin.”