Then answered one of the lawyers, and said unto him, Master, thus saying thou reproachest us also.
In the verse a lawyer interrupts Christ's plain rebuke of the Pharisees and others already addressed to object that such saying reproaches the lawyers also. The setting belongs to Christ's rebuke of religious leaders who set themselves up as judges and censors while failing to keep God's law and perverting what God had entrusted to them as sacred. In that setting the lawyers judged and censured people whom the Holy Spirit was moving to declare God's word, although the lawyers themselves failed to keep the law.
Jesus confirms in response that the lawyers are also condemned. That condemnation is that they impose heavy burdens on others but do nothing to help carry them. The woe He then pronounces falls on lawyers who encourage an unrighteous purpose and help hold a person in blindness and exalted infatuation, thereby becoming guilty with him. That same woe is spoken today to lawyers who counsel and strengthen a wrong course, lading men with burdens grievous to be borne while refusing to touch those burdens themselves.
In the verse a lawyer interrupts Christ's plain rebuke of the Pharisees and others already addressed to object that such saying reproaches the lawyers also. The setting belongs to Christ's rebuke of religious leaders who set themselves up as judges and censors while failing to keep God's law and perverting what God had entrusted to them as sacred. In that setting the lawyers judged and censured people whom the Holy Spirit was moving to declare God's word, although the lawyers themselves failed to keep the law.
Jesus confirms in response that the lawyers are also condemned. That condemnation is that they impose heavy burdens on others but do nothing to help carry them. The woe He then pronounces falls on lawyers who encourage an unrighteous purpose and help hold a person in blindness and exalted infatuation, thereby becoming guilty with him. That same woe is spoken today to lawyers who counsel and strengthen a wrong course, lading men with burdens grievous to be borne while refusing to touch those burdens themselves.