Three More Woes

Greetings everyone.

Today, I will continue a look at the end Luke 11, where Jesus issues six woes to the Pharisees and the teachers of the law.  In my previous post, we looked at the first three, and today will examine the final three of these 'woes,' to see how we should not behave.  I will remind of what Alan Thompson says about the Greek word for woe, οὐαὶ (ouai). Thompson tells us that these woes express  “the judgment that will come because of what they do in contrast to what they ought to have done.”  (Thompson, 195.) We will look at what they were doing compared to what they should have been doing.  

Picking the story up in Luke 11:45, one of the experts of the law expresses to Jesus was insulting them too. These scribes worked together with the Pharisees to study the law and the traditions that grew up around the law. Like the Pharisees they viewed themselves as righteous and felt that they had no need to respond to Jesus’ message. So Jesus goes after the experts of the law, too. 

The 4th ‘woe’ is delivered to the experts of the law.  What they have done:  They have laid heavy burdens on the backs of ordinary people and have not lifted a finger to help them. (This heavy burden is the heavy weight of religious obligation that the experts of the law were placing on everyone.) What they should have done:  First, they could stop putting heavy burdens on people, and second, help those who need help. 

What is Jesus going after here?  The pseudo-spirituality of rule-keeping and ritualistic service.  Jesus is seeking hearts, not rule-keepers.  Rememeber, clean the inside, not the outside.  Jesus has already stated that if the inside is clean, the outside will be clean. When we only clean the outside, we are in reality, just putting on a show for others to see. 

5th woe. Jesus implies complicity with the killing of the prophets in times past.  Their ancestors had rejected the prophets of God.  Now, these men say that they want to honor the prophets, yet they still reject God’s prophet on the scene in their own time, which of course, is Jesus. What they were doing: Building monuments.  What they should have been doing: Listening to Jesus. 

Now, Jesus is saying that this generation would be held accountable for all of the deaths of the prophets, from Abel to Zechariah, not to mention, the death of the greatest prophet of all, Jesus. We understand that these men did not literally kill the prophets of old, but that the spirit that caused their ancestors to kill them is alive and well in that generation. (Bock, 1120.) Apparently, one had to be a dead prophet to receive honor from these men. 

The  6th woe:  They are obstacles that hinder others from knowing God. What were they doing?  They were opposing God’s message, and thereby blocking others from it.  What should they be doing?  Listening to Jesus and helping others find their way to him.

Afterwards, these Pharisees, whom Jesus had just blasted, set their minds to trap him in his words.  Luke says uses the word  ἐνέχειν (enechein) which means to hold a grudge against or to bear ill-will toward.  In my own traslation, I have translated it as “The Pharisees began to hold a terrible grudge against him.”  Another word Luke uses here is ἐνεδρεύοντες (enedreuontes), which means to “lie in wait.”  In their anger, the Pharisees were waiting for their opportunity to ambush Jesus because of the things he had said to them.  Rather than listen to Jesus and repenting, they focused on how they could get rid of him.  Jesus issued these woes against them, and their actions bore out the truth of what he was saying to them.  They were cups that were clean only on the outside, and for us they serve only as bad examples. 

Tom