MATTHEW 23:14 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.”
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows' houses and for a pretense you make long prayers; therefore you will receive the greater condemnation. The second woe (verse numbering varies in manuscripts): the financial exploitation of vulnerable widows paired with the religious performance of long prayers. The long prayers that are pretense are the theatrical piety that the Pharisees perform while profiting from the vulnerable. The greater condemnation communicates the compounded judgment: both the exploitation and the hypocrisy carry their respective penalties.
Church Fathers on Matthew 23:14
Next the Lord rebukes them for their g1uttony, and what was the worst, that not from the rich but from widows they took wherewith to fill their bellies, thus burdening the poverty of those whom they should have relieved.
'Devour widows' houses,' that is, your superstitions have this only aim, namely, to make a gain of the people that are put under you.
The female sex is imprudent, as not contemplating with reason all that it sees or hears; and weak, as being easily turned either from bad to good, or from good to bad. The male sex is more prudent and hardy. And therefore pretenders to holiness practise most upon women, who are unable to see their hypocrisy, and are easily inclined to love them on the ground of religion.
Read all 7 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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