"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets. Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Woe #7, Matthew 23:29-33 is Jesus’ final woe against the Pharisees and scribes. It condemns them for looking to the past with a romantic vision of the patriarchs and the prophets. They romanticize the time of the prophets and the patriarchs for the purity of the Mosaic Law. Yet their imagination also condemns their forefathers for murdering the prophets of old. These Pharisees and scribes elevate their piety above the patriarchs and are condemned more by Jesus’ words than their blind vision of the past.