The Great Commentary (Mossman/Cobb English)

Woe unto you, &c. . . . but if he shall swear by the gold of the temple , &c., the gold, that is, which he has vowed to pay. Instead of he is a debtor, the Arabic translates he has sinned, that is, he does not pay what he has sworn. Observe (from the words in Matt v. 34), that the Scribes thought from what God had commanded, that they should swear by Him alone, — an oath by any creature was not an oath, nor obligatory; but being blinded by avarice, they excepted such things as, being offered to God, filled their own coffers, as if these alone were to be accounted most sacred Wherefore they are rightly called by Christ blind guides. Moreover, the Scribes were wont to say that the oblations were more holy than the Temple itself, “ that they might make men more ready for offerings than for prayers,” says the Gloss. He calls the gold which was cast into the treasury of the Temple for maintaining its ministers the gold of the Temple. Truly says the Gloss, u He that swears by a creature, swears by the Deity which presides over the creature.” Ye fools and blind, &c. This reasoning of Christ is clear, and ON OATHS. 4 * convicts the Scribes of folly. Holiness is properly interior virtue* and the grace which sanctifies the soul. But the Temple is here called holy by metonymy, because it is set apart for holy things, such as the offering in it of prayers and sacrifices to God. This, therefore, was only an external holiness which the temple communicated to the other things offered in it to God. Wherefore the Temple was more holy than anything offered in the Temple, and therefore an oath made by the Temple was more binding than an oath made by the gold offered in the Temple. And whoso shall swear by the altar , &c. The same reasoning applies to the altar which Christ has already applied to the Temple. The altar which sanctifieth , Syr. consecrates , , the gift. A gift offered to God is not properly sanctified so that it should be in itself righteous or holy, but it is said to be sanctified extrinsically, because it is offered to God, and thus sanctified. Mystically: S. Augustine says (1 Qucest. Evang. 34), “The Temple and the Altar is Christ. The gold and the gifts are the praises and sacrifices which are offered in Him and by Him.” Origen says, the altar is the heart ; the gifts are prayer and fasting, which the heart makes holy. Whoso shall swear by the temple , &c. That is, he swears by God, who has His throne in the Temple, that He may be worshipped there. For the sacred majesty and holiness of God are supposed by men to abide in the Temple. Whence, S. Nilus says, “ Come to the church as to Heaven.” And he that sweareth by heaven , &c. For by the common usage and belief of men, he who swears by God, who only is infallible, and the uncreated Truth itself, calls Him to attest what he says or promises. Wherefore, he who swears by Heaven, swears by God, the King and Lord of Heaven, and calls Him to witness

Woe unto you, &c. Tithes were sanctioned by God in the law. Whence R. Achiva says in Pirke Avoth, “ Tithes are the bulwark of riches,” because they defend and preserve them. “Tradition is the bulwark of the law. A vow is the bulwark of abstinence ; silence, of wisdom.” 42 Mint, a herb of sweet smell, which is often put into broth. Anise, says Pliny, is of efficacy against flatulency and p&ins in the stomach. And ye have left , &c. . . . judgment , justice and equity, passing unjust sentences, so as to favour your own friends and those who offer you gifts. Afercy, because ye rigidly and cruelly exact tithes of widows and the poor. And fat thy i.e., fidelity in words and compacts. Or faith in God, and Christ who has been sent by Him. Therefore, ye are unbelievers, in that ye lack faith, hope, and charity, which are the things that God above all requires, according to the words in Micah vi. 8, “ I will show thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? ” These are the things which ye ought to have done, and not to omit the others, such as the tithing of minty which was either commanded or permitted by the law. Ye blind guides which strain out, &c. ; Gr. divTJ^ovrtg, i.e., straining , purifying, draining wine, milk, or oil from gnats or other impurities or dregs, by means of a strainer of linen, or other such material As Apuleius says of the Gymnosophists, “They know not how either to cultivate land or to strain gold.” Swallow a camel For camel, Cajetan puts wrongly asilum , a gadfly , an insect which makes a horrid noise. All the codices, Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic have camel, which is properly opposed to gnat, as something very large to something very small The sentence is proverbial, and means, “Ye have exact care of trifling things, such as tithing of herbs, lest any one should defraud you in the smallest possible degree ; but you at the same time commit, without any scruple, all manner of injustice, rapine, and other wickednesses, as big, as it were, as camels, which ye may be said to swallow down.” As it is said in Job xv. 16, “Who drinketh iniquity like water.” “Christ derides the seal of the Scribes,” says Origen, “in being so scrupulous about very trifling things, and so free and bold in the commission of ON SUPERSTITION. 43 great crimes; in being superstitious about ceremonial washings, but devoid of true religion and charity.” They have those who are like them among Christians even now, who scrupulously recite the rosary, and fast in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and withal are guilty at the same time of luxury, rapine, theft, &c. Proverbs with a similar meaning are: “To draw water from a fountain to fill the sea.” “To strip one who is bare, to heap garments upon those who are clothed.” “He takes a candle to add to the sunlight.” “ To hunt a dog with a lion, a hare with an ox.” Mystically: S. Gregory understands by the gnat , Barabbas; by the camel , Christ. This is what he says (lib. i, Moral c. 6), “The gnat wounds in humming, but the camel of its own accord bends to receive its burden. The Jews, therefore, strained out the gnat, because they asked that the seditious robber might be set free. But they swallowed the camel , because by their cries they strove to destroy Him, who of His own will had come down to bear the burdens of our mortality.”

Therefore , behold, I send, &c. Observe the word therefore, that it expresses from the preceding verse an effect, as it were, from a cause. It means, “because ye, as serpents and vipers, will kill Me, your Messiah, for which wickedness ye will be cut off and condemned to hell I have had pity upon you, and will send to you My disciples after My death, that they may avert from you this destruction, that they may arouse you to repentance and faith in Me. But I foresee that ye will slay them also, as I have predicted in the 33d verse.” 1 send. Luke xL 49 says, The wisdom of God hath said, that is, indeed, Christ Himself. Prophets , and wise men, and Scribes. Luke has Prophets and 48 Apostles . S. Jerome says “This marks the various gifts of Christ’s disciples: Prophets , who foretell things to come; wise nun , who know when they ought to speak the word ; Scribes, those learned in the law.” Some of them ye shall kill , as S. Stephen by stoning, James the greater by the sword; and crucify , as S. Simeon, Bishop of Jerusalem, successor of S. James (see Euseb. H. E . ii. 32) ; and some of them ye shall scourge , as Peter and the Apostles (Acts iv. and v.), and persecute from city to city , like Paul and Barnabas (Acts xiii. and xiv.). Tropologically : Origen says (horn. 23, in Num .), “ And I, this day, if I will not hear the words of a Prophet, if I despise his warnings, stone that Prophet, and as far as in me lies, kill him.”

That upon you may come , &c., righteous blood. That is, of the righteous men who have exhorted others to live justly and holily, both by word and example. Whence S. Luke has, the blood of the Prophets ; for a Prophet in Scripture frequently denotes a just and holy man. S. Austin gives the reason for what Christ says in this verse, “ Because the imitation of wicked men causes people to obtain not only their own deserts, but the deserts of those whom they imitate.” Moreover S. Chrysostom says, “ Even as the rewards which all the preceding generations deserved were bestowed upon those who received Christ, so what their wicked ancestors merited came upon the latest Jews.” Which was shed, &c. Because, although Cain, who slew his brother Abel, was not a Jew by race, yet by his wickedness in killing righteous Abel he afforded an example to the Jews, who were most prone to follow it, in killing the holy Prophets. Thus Cain the fratricide was not the natural, but the symbolical father of the Jews who slew their brethren, Christ and the Prophets. By a like analogy the devil is called the father of all the proud and the wicked. The Jews, even though they knew the Divine vengeance which pursued Cain’s fratricide, not only imitated it, but far transcended it by slaying Christ, the Son of God, and His Apostles. We may THE CATNTTES. 49 add, that although Cain was not a direct forefather of the Jews, he was one of their collateral ancestors. He was the brother of Seth, from whom Abraham and the Jews were sprung. But the posterity of Seth married the daughters of Cain, as Abulensis saith (Quast. 260) (see Gen. vi. 2). This is probable, but not certain. All that Scripture says is, that from them the giants were sprung, who were the cause of the Deluge, in which they perished. But it does not say that other children were not sprung from them. There were persons who praised this fratricide of Cain, and for that reason were called Cainites, as S. Augustine says (lib, de harts, c. 18), “The Cainites are so called because they honour Cain, saying that he was a man of the greatest virtue.” They also think that the traitor Judas was something divine, and account his wickedness a benefit They assert that he knew beforehand how great a benefit the Passion of Christ would be to the human race, and for that reason betrayed Him to the Jews to be put to death. They are also said to honour the Sodomites, and those who made a schism amongst the ancient people, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Zacharias the son of Barachias. You will ask who was this Zacharias? There are three opinions. The first that of S. Chrysostom (Horn, de Joan. Bapt.), Vatablus, Arias Montanus, &c. They think that he was the Zachariah, the last but one of the twelve minor Prophets. For he was the son of Barachiah, but we nowhere read that he was slain between the Temple and the altar. The second and more probable opinion is, that he was the Zachariah who was the son of Jehoiada, who, with base ingratitude, was slain in an awfully sacrilegious manner by King Joash in the most holy place, — that is to say, in the court of the Priests, which was between the Temple, or the holy place, and the altar of burntoffering; for this altar was in the court of the Priests (2 Chron. xxiv. 21). So Abul. ( Quasi . 215), S. Jerome, Bede, Tertullian (Scorpiace, c. 8), “Zachariah is slain between the Temple and the altar, marking the stones with indelible spots of blood.” For although there were other Prophets slain by the Jews after Zachariah, he is the last whose murder is related in Scripture, vou in. d 50 Add to this that Scripture makes mention only of the blood of Abel and this Zacharias as crying for vengeance. Of Abel’s it is said (Gen. iv. io), “What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto Me from the ground.” And of Zacharias (2 Chron. xxiv. 22), “Who, when he was dying, said, ‘The Lord look upon it, and require it.’” Chrysostom says, “ He makes mention of Abel to show that they would kill Christ and His Apostles out of envy, as from envy Cain slew Abel; of Zacharias, because the holy man was slain in the holy place.” You will say, this Zacharias was the son of Jehoiada, not of Barachias. S. Jerome answers that Jehoiada was also called Barachiah, perhaps because Barachiah in Hebrew signifies “the blessed of the Lord.” And it is plain that Jehoiada, who was a very holy man, was such. S. Jerome adds, “ In the Gospel which the Nazarenes make use of, we find, instead of the son of Barachias, the son of Jehoiada.” The third opinion is, that this Zacharias was the father of John the Baptist, concerning whom there is a tradition that he was slain by the Jews because he proclaimed the advent of Christ, saying in his Canticle, “ And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways and because he had hidden his son John from Herod, the murderer of the innocents, who sought to kill him on account of the miracles which happened at his birth. For this Zacharias was the last of the Prophets. For John, his son, was rather an index to a present Christ than a Prophet of a future one. Again, that this Zacharias was the son of Barachias is attested by S. Hippolytus, the martyr, who is cited by Nicephorus (H. E. ii. 3). S. Jerome rejects this as apocryphal; but the same thing is asserted by S. Cyril, against the Anthropomorphites, Peter of Alexandria (in regula Eccles . can. 3), S. Epiphanius (lib. de vit. et obit. Prophet.), Baronius (in apparat. Ann.), S. Thomas (in Catena). Origen, Theophylact, Euthymius, and S. Basil (Horn, de humana Christi general .) add that this Zacharias was slain by the Jews because, after the birth of Christ, he placed the Blessed Virgin as a virgin among the virgins ADDRESS TO JERUSALEM. 5 1 in the Temple. But this is difficult to be believed, for reasons given by Baronius and Abulensis