22. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by Him Who sits upon it.
23. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you give a tenth of your mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected and omitted the weightier (more important) matters of the Law–right and justice and mercy and fidelity. These you ought [particularly] to have done, without neglecting the others.
24. You blind guides, filtering out a gnat and gulping down a camel! [Lev. 27:30; Mic. 6:8.]
25. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but within they are full of extortion (prey, spoil, plunder) and grasping self-indulgence.
26. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and of the plate, so that the outside may be clean also.
27. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you are like tombs that have been whitewashed, which look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of dead men's bones and everything impure.
28. Just so, you also outwardly seem to people to be just and upright but inside you are full of pretense and lawlessness and iniquity. [Ps. 5:9.]
29. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you build tombs for the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous,
30. Saying, If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have aided them in shedding the blood of the prophets.
31. Thus you are testifying against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets.
32. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers' sins to the brim [so that nothing may be wanting to a full measure].
33. You serpents! You spawn of vipers! How can you escape the penalty to be suffered in hell (Gehenna)?
34. Because of this, take notice: I am sending you prophets and wise men (interpreters and teachers) and scribes (men learned in the Mosaic Law and the Prophets); some of them you will kill, even crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue and persecute from town to town,
35. So that upon your heads may come all the blood of the righteous (those who correspond to the divine standard of right) shed on earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar [of burnt offering]. [Gen. 4:8; II Chron. 24:21.]
36. Truly I declare to you, all these [evil, calamitous times] will come upon this generation. [II Chron. 36:15, 16.]
37. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, murdering the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a mother fowl gathers her brood under her wings, and you refused!
38. Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate (abandoned and left destitute of God's help). [I Kings 9:7; Jer. 22:5.]
39. For I declare to you, you will not see Me again until you say, Blessed (magnified in worship, adored, and exalted) is He Who comes in the name of the Lord! [Ps. 118:26.]