“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; for ye are like unto whited sepulchres,[1] which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.  Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

[Footnote 1:  The tombs being impure, it was customary to whiten them with lime, to warn persons not to approach them.  See p. 315, note 3, and Mishnah, Maasar hensi, v. 1; Talm. of Jerus., Shekalim, i. 1; Maasar sheni, v. 1; Moed katon, i. 2; Sota, ix. 1; Talm. of Bab., Moed katon, 5 a.  Perhaps there is an allusion to the “dyed Pharisees” in this comparison which Jesus uses.]

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, ’If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’  Wherefore, ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.  Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.  ‘Therefore, also,’ said the Wisdom of God,[1] ’I will send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city.  That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias,[2] whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.’  Verily, I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation."[3]

[Footnote 1:  We are ignorant from what book this quotation is taken.]

[Footnote 2:  There is a slight confusion here, which is also found in the Targum of Jonathan (Lament. ii. 20), between Zacharias, son of Jehoiadas, and Zacharias, son of Barachias, the prophet.  It is the former that is spoken of (2 Paral. xxiv. 21.) The book of the Paralipomenes, in which the assassination of Zacharias, son of Jehoiadas, is related, closes the Hebrew canon.  This murder is the last in the list of murders of righteous men, drawn up according to the order in which they are presented in the Bible.  That of Abel is, on the contrary, the first.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. xxiii. 2-36; Mark xii. 38-40; Luke xi. 39-52, xx. 46, 47.]

His terrible doctrine of the substitution of the Gentiles—­the idea that the kingdom of God was about to be transferred to others, because those for whom it was destined would not receive it,[1] is used as a fearful menace against the aristocracy.  The title “Son of God,” which he openly assumed in striking parables,[2] wherein his enemies appeared as murderers of the heavenly messengers, was an open defiance to the Judaism of the Law.  The bold appeal he addressed to the poor was still more seditious.  He declared that he had “come that they which see not might