Matthew 23:35, commentary and pictures

Spoken in His final teaching in the temple as judge against hypocrisy and abuse of sacred authority, Christ charged His hearers with all the righteous blood shed from Abel, the first martyr, to Zacharias slain between the temple and the altar. That generation was not condemned merely for its fathers' sins, but because while honoring the slain prophets outwardly it cherished the same hatred, rejected its own light and warnings, and plotted to destroy God's Son, thus completing the measure of its fathers' violence. Its guilt culminated in rejecting and killing Christ and in persecuting, scourging and slaying the prophets, wise men and scribes He would send, whose sufferings He counts as done to Himself. Therefore retributive justice long delayed would fall upon them, filling their day of repentance and bringing desolation upon Jerusalem as the murderer of the prophets, a type of the final vindication of God's honor and law. The same guilt rests on all in every age who share the persecutors' spirit, resist correction, condemn God's people, and deny Christ by selfish, worldly lives, and the same woes will fall on them unless they repent.

Setting and Tone

The words were spoken on Christ's final day of teaching in the temple courts, when He laid open the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and lawyers. On that day He warned the rulers of their true condition and of the retribution that would follow if they persisted in evil, while at the same time instructing seekers of truth. What He said then was meant to reach people of every age and nation. It belongs to His woes and denunciations against the scribes and Pharisees for hypocrisy and abuse of religious authority. That Pharisaism opposed God's truth and misused authority, and the denunciations and warnings were recorded as an admonition for future generations.

He spoke as judge, with holy authority and fearless earnestness, in burning denunciation and terrible severity against aggravating sin and religious pretension. His rebuke was not stirred by personal abuse or retaliation, but righteous indignation coexisting with love and mercy. Religious pretenders whose sinful deeds contradict their profession face God's curse and judgment. For open sinners there is greater hope when they truly repent.

The verse stands joined to His lament over Jerusalem that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her. He longed to gather her children as a hen gathers chickens under her wings, but she refused, so her house was left desolate. Her coming destruction would arrive when enemies cast a trench about her and lay her even with the ground, because she knew not the time of her visitation. He wept as He looked back across the whole history of the nation and saw continual apostasy and backsliding, privileges abused and opportunities unappreciated, with atoning grace continually offered and persistently refused. Jerusalem thus stood exposed as the murderer of the prophets, with the threatenings of divine wrath hanging over it.

The chapter shows people blinded to the relative importance of what they should understand. Its warning is that carelessness about putting right principles into practice is a fatal mistake.

Abel to Zacharias Slain

The sweep from righteous Abel to Zacharias son of Barachias slain between the temple and the altar gathers up all the righteous blood shed upon the earth through the generations. That accumulated guilt is charged to those who reject God's messengers and take part in killing them, and Jesus declared that these things would come upon the generation He addressed. By repeating the cruelty and resistance of their fathers and by their own persecution of the prophets sent to them, that generation completed the measure of its fathers' violence and faced God's punishment. By completing their fathers' pattern of violence, culminating in putting Him to death, the nation filled the measure of its guilt and reached the end of its day of repentance, and the judgment that followed showed that earlier wickedness had not been forgotten even though its punishment had long been delayed. The warning was spoken after years of labor to convince the Jews that great calamities would come upon their nation unless they repented, spoken to blind priests and unbelieving Pharisees with both entreaty and denunciation of their wicked course, pronouncing the woes upon Jerusalem and fulfilled upon that generation. The same principle applies to impenitent cities, for God sends by His messengers messages of reproof and warning, and when the messengers are despised and abused and the messages rejected so that patience and forbearance will not turn hearts to Him, He sends judgments which no human power can stand against, as He did upon San Francisco.

Righteous Abel was the first innocent victim, killed by his brother, and the first of the martyrs whose blood was shed. He looked forward by faith to the coming Savior, and his sacrifices showed that faith, for animal sacrifices pointed ahead to Christ's death. Earlier generations of rulers and priests had repeatedly rejected the prophets' warnings, and the leaders confronting Jesus were continuing that guilt by rejecting and abusing the Son of God. Jesus spoke the warning as judge, and the punishment built up through generations would fall on His contemporaries as retributive justice for their rejection of the Son of God and their continued hostility to God's messengers.

Righteous Abel represents the faithful people who from his day onward have faced hatred and resistance for condemning sin. The same spirit that led people to kill Abel continues to turn sinners against those who reprove them. The blood of God's slain prophets remained as a testimony against apostate Israel.

The righteous blood shed upon the earth means hollow formalism put in place of honor to God's law, teaching for doctrine the commandments and traditions of men, and heaven's messengers despised, prophets slain, and servants humiliated, beaten, and cast into prison, with every indignity heaped upon them. It belongs to a long history looked back upon with weeping, marked by continual apostasy and backsliding, with atoning grace continually offered and persistently refused, privileges abused and opportunities unappreciated. This long course of resisted grace and slain prophets almost completed the nation's ruin through national apostasy and failure to be God's instrumentality for converting souls from error and leading them into truth.

Why That Generation Bears It

That generation was not condemned merely for the sins of its fathers, but became accountable by its own course in rejecting its warnings, mercies and light, repeating the cruelty and resistance of those before it, and continuing their hatred and revenge. By so repeating their fathers' violence it accumulated guilt upon itself and made itself responsible, completing the measure of their violence and filling up its own guilt to the end of its day of repentance. The blood of righteous sufferers shed through the generations would therefore be required of the nation that persisted in resisting God and rejecting Christ's mercy, and the judgment that followed showed earlier wickedness had not been forgotten though its punishment had long been delayed. Leaders who reject the light God sends and persecute His messengers share this responsibility and face divine retribution, for their hearts remain deceitful and iniquitous despite outward claims to godliness.

While outwardly honoring the prophets who had been killed, the scribes and Pharisees cherished the same deceitful and iniquitous hearts as their ancestors, and rejecting the light brought by Christ made them responsible for the fate they provoked. They condemned their fathers for stoning the prophets sent to correct them and lamented their own humiliation under Rome, yet their priests and elders cherished the spirit that would lead to the same crimes and plotted to destroy God's Son. This made their honor to the prophets hypocritical and placed them in the same line of guilt as those who shed the prophets' blood, from Abel through Zechariah, as men ready to repeat their crimes. Holy prophets sent with messages to Israel had been slain through the instigation of Israel's leaders because they denounced the sins of those in authority. Refusal to be reproved for iniquity, slighting God's warnings, and holding sins closer had brought captivity to a heathen nation as punishment.

From age to age the people resisted God's care and warnings, and their rebellion culminated in rejecting the Son of God and preparing to kill Him, bringing the nation under imminent judgment. Their guilt was completed by rejecting and abusing the Son of God and by the treatment of the prophets, wise men and scribes He would send, whom they would kill and crucify and scourge in synagogues and persecute from city to city. The leaders who rejected and killed God's messengers thus bore the accumulated guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from Abel to Zechariah slain at the temple, and their own persecution completed the measure of their fathers' violence so that judgment would fall on their generation. When the rulers were charged that the apostles intended to bring Jesus' blood upon them, that accusation made their responsibility explicit and offered another call to repentance, but by seeking to kill the apostles they continued the same opposition to God's servants and repeated the guilt of those who had shed the blood of His messengers.

Jesus identifies His interest with His chosen people, feeling Himself personally misrepresented, accused and dishonored in their wrongs. He regards every wrong done to His followers and to the weakest of humanity with intense interest, registers their sufferings in the books of heaven as done unto Himself, and in the great day will judge every action as if done unto Himself. Animal sacrifices symbolized the atonement of the Son of God, but offerings without true repentance and obedience could not remove guilt. A broken and repentant heart mattered more than many sacrifices.

Retributive Judgment Foretold

The verse pronounces retributive justice from divine justice upon the generation that rejected Jesus, holding it answerable for the accumulated blood of the righteous from Abel, the first innocent victim killed by his brother, to Zacharias slain between the temple and the altar. The blood of God's slain prophets remained as a testimony against apostate Israel, and because earlier rulers and priests had repeatedly rejected prophetic warnings, the leaders confronting Jesus continued that guilt by rejecting and abusing the Son of God and maintaining hostility to His messengers. Jesus spoke the warning as judge, after years of labor to convince the Jews that great calamities would come upon the nation unless they repented, with both entreaty and denunciation toward blind priests and unbelieving Pharisees whose outward honor for the prophets could not hide deceitful and iniquitous hearts like their ancestors'.

By completing the fathers' pattern of violence, culminating in putting Christ to death, the nation filled the measure of its guilt and reached the end of its day of repentance. The punishment built up through generations for repeated killing of God's messengers and rejection of the light and truth they brought would soon fall upon that generation. That judgment showed earlier wickedness had not been forgotten though its punishment had long been delayed, with divine wrath hanging over Jerusalem as murderer of the prophets, guilty of all the righteous blood shed upon the earth for having rejected and slain the Son of God.

The same principle applies to impenitent cities, for God sends by His messengers messages of reproof and warning, and when the messengers are despised and abused and the messages rejected so that patience and forbearance will not turn hearts to Him, He sends judgments which no human power can stand against, as He did upon San Francisco. Jerusalem's destruction for rejecting repeated warnings and God's Son came when retributive judgment became due upon those who rejected God's clear word and clung to human traditions, becoming guilty of the blood of the prophets slain throughout history. That destruction typified the destruction of the world, its judgment vindicates God's honor and magnifies His law, and the Jewish nation's history is repeated in the Christian church when it rejects light.

Warning Beyond That Generation

From Abel onward those who dare to condemn sin have faced the same spirit of hatred and opposition. Wrongdoers resist warning and correction, justify their own conduct and reject reproof instead of righting their wrongs. They turn indignation against the reprover and treat him as though he caused the trouble. Righteous Abel stands as representative of the faithful from his day onward who meet hatred and resistance for this cause.

Those who share the spirit and work of earlier persecutors are held guilty for blood shed across the generations as truly as if they had shed it themselves. Christ applied this to the Jews of His time because they shared the murderers' spirit, sought to do what the murderers of the prophets had done, and sought to continue their work. The same guilt applies to all who condemn God's people to death, incurring guilt for their blood as though they had killed them themselves.

The same spirit that crucified Christ and slew the apostles was at work in papal leaders' violence against those beloved by God, continuing the spirit of those who killed the righteous. As in the days of Jesus, priests could become wicked and use authority lawful in itself for unlawful ends. Those who persecute God's faithful messengers share the guilt of those who shed righteous blood, repeating the hostility of the Pharisees by denouncing God's message as satanic and stirring others to revile and persecute its proclaimers.

Christ's denunciation of the self-righteous Jews warns people of every age who reject truth and mercy, scorn God's appeals, and deny Christ by lives ruled by selfishness, wealth, or worldly honor. The Jewish nation represents all who resist the pleadings of divine love. The danger of human authority ruling the conscience did not end with the dispersion of the Jews but continued to threaten the church in every age through abuse of religious authority and persecution of the righteous. When the Christian church rejects light and clings to human traditions while rejecting God's clear word, it repeats the nation's history and becomes guilty of the blood of the prophets slain throughout history, with judgment vindicating God's honor and magnifying His law.

The woes pronounced on the Pharisees will also fall on people who act in the same way unless they repent. Spiritual blindness leads them to neglect justice, mercy, and love, to deal unjustly with God's people, and to condemn minor faults while lightly passing over serious wrongdoing. Priests and rulers who persist in impenitence and oppose truth and righteousness face the same rebuke and woe and the same condemnation. Rejecting the light given leaves them in a worse position than the Jews, for the generation rejecting God's messengers bears guilt for the righteous killed throughout history.

Christ's messages, appeals, warnings, and judgments in Matthew 23:13-36 had no effect upon the ruling Pharisees because they rejected the Lord's reproof, manifested an exacting and intolerant spirit, and set the stumblingblock of their iniquity before their eyes. The same judgments He pronounced will fall upon men connected with the management of God's work unless they are converted, since continuing to walk in the same path and reject reproof brings the same judgment and separation from the work. People in sacred positions who fail to reform character may face the same kind of denunciation before the assembled universe.

He denounced the abominations He saw in the church and in the world with burning earnestness and words of terrible severity, and would not allow the people to be deceived by false claims to righteousness and sanctity. His missionaries and physicians must therefore stand in God-given manhood with freedom of speech and freedom of faith. They must refuse to harmonize with wrong plans or to be cowered into silence by a masterful spirit, refuse to verify statements they know are not true, and protest and correct false statements and wrong sentiments instead of listening speechless and doing harm by silence.