And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts:
The verse describes the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders, and their love for the most honored places in the synagogues and at feasts. That love belonged together with wearing long robes and making long prayers, all done from a desire to appear important and devoted, to make people think they were very pious, and to uphold their claims of superior sanctity. Their professed sanctity was only a cloak for iniquity that concealed hard, unclean, self-righteous hearts and evil motives. Behind that cloak they exploited widows and devoured widows' houses by exactions and practiced injustice, fraud, and robbery of the poor. The verse belongs to Christ's exposing of these pretenders to religion by revealing their true character and evil motives to the people, condemning their evil works and putting them to open shame. His own untainted purity of life and faultless character in words and works served as a bitter reproof to them because they would not consent to reform and be transformed in character.
The verse describes the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders, and their love for the most honored places in the synagogues and at feasts. That love belonged together with wearing long robes and making long prayers, all done from a desire to appear important and devoted, to make people think they were very pious, and to uphold their claims of superior sanctity. Their professed sanctity was only a cloak for iniquity that concealed hard, unclean, self-righteous hearts and evil motives. Behind that cloak they exploited widows and devoured widows' houses by exactions and practiced injustice, fraud, and robbery of the poor. The verse belongs to Christ's exposing of these pretenders to religion by revealing their true character and evil motives to the people, condemning their evil works and putting them to open shame. His own untainted purity of life and faultless character in words and works served as a bitter reproof to them because they would not consent to reform and be transformed in character.