Matthew 23:28

THE MESSAGE

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

King James Version (1611)
Euen so, yee also outwardly appeare righteous vnto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisie and iniquitie.

King James Version
Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

English Standard Version
So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

New American Standard Bible
"So you too, outwardly appear righteous to people, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

New Century Version
It is the same with you. People look at you and think you are good, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and evil.

Amplified Bible
"So you, also, outwardly seem to be just and upright to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

New American Standard Bible (1995)
"So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Legacy Standard Bible
In this way, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Berean Standard Bible
In the same way, on the outside you appear to be righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

Contemporary English Version
That's what you are like. Outside you look good, but inside you are evil and only pretend to be good.

Complete Jewish Bible
Likewise, you appear to people from the outside to be good and honest, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and far from Torah.

Darby Translation
Thus also *ye*, outwardly ye appear righteous to men, but within are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Easy-to-Read Version
It is the same with you. People look at you and think you are godly. But on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and evil.

Geneva Bible (1587)
So are ye also: for outwarde ye appeare righteous vnto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisie and iniquitie.

George Lamsa Translation
Even so, from the outside you appear to men to be righteous, but from within you are full of iniquity and hypocrisy.

Good News Translation
In the same way, on the outside you appear good to everybody, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and sins.

Lexham English Bible
In the same way, on the outside you also appear righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Literal Translation
So you also indeed outwardly appear righteous to men, but within are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

American Standard Version
Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but inwardly ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Bible in Basic English
Even so you seem to men to be full of righteousness, but inside you are all false and full of wrongdoing.

Hebrew Names Version
Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

International Standard Version
In the same way, on the outside you look righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Etheridge Translation
So you also from without appear to the sons of men as righteous, but within you are full of unrighteousness and hypocrisy.

Murdock Translation
So ye also, outwardly, appear to men as righteous; but within, ye are full of iniquity and hypocrisy.

Bishop's Bible (1568)
Euen so, ye also, outwardly appeare ryghteous vnto men: But within, ye are full of hypocrisie and iniquitie.

English Revised Version
Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but inwardly ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

World English Bible
Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Wesley's New Testament (1755)
So ye likewise outwardly appear righteous to men; but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Weymouth's New Testament
The same is true of you: outwardly you seem to the human eye to be good and honest men, but, within, you are full of insincerity and disregard of God's Law.

Wycliffe Bible (1395)
So ye with outforth semen iust to men; but with ynne ye ben ful of ypocrisy and wickidnesse.

Update Bible Version
Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Webster's Bible Translation
Thus ye also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

New English Translation
In the same way, on the outside you look righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

New King James Version
Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

New Living Translation
Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness.

New Life Bible
As men look at you, you seem to be good and right but inside you are full of sin. You pretend to be someone you are not.

New Revised Standard
So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
Thus, ye also, outside, indeed, appear to men, righteous, but, within, are full, of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Douay-Rheims Bible
So you also outwardly indeed appear to men just: but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Revised Standard Version
So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Tyndale New Testament (1525)
So are ye for outwarde ye appere righteous vnto me when within ye are full of ypocrisie and iniquite.

Young's Literal Translation
so also ye outwardly indeed do appear to men righteous, and within ye are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
Euen so are ye also: Outwarde ye appeare righteous vnto men, but within ye are full of ypocrisye and iniquyte.

Mace New Testament (1729)
just so ye put on an air of probity in the sight of men, but within are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Simplified Cowboy Version
That's the way y'all appear to people. You look good on the outside, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and rebellion.

Contextual Overview

¹³ "I've had it with you! You're hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God's kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won't let anyone else in either. "You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned. "You're hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, ‘If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that's nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that's serious.' What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: ‘If you shake hands on a promise, that's nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that's serious'? What ridiculous hairsplitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless. "You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God's Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that's wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons? "You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something. "You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You're like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it's all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you're saints, but beneath the skin you're total frauds. "You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You're cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count. "Snakes! Reptilian sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It's on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse. "You can't squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah's son, whom you murdered at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I'm telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation. "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God's news! How often I've ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn't let me. And now you're so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say? Only this: I'm out of here soon. The next time you see me you'll say, ‘Oh, God has blessed him! He's come, bringing God's rule!'" ¹⁴Religious Fashion Shows Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. "The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God's Law. You won't go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don't live it. They don't take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It's all spit-and-polish veneer. "Instead of giving you God's Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn't think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor' and ‘Reverend.' "Don't let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don't set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father'; you have only one Father, and he's in heaven. And don't let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ. "Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you'll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you're content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty. "I've had it with you! You're hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God's kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won't let anyone else in either. ¹⁵ "You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned. ¹⁶"You're hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, ‘If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that's nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that's serious.' What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: ‘If you shake hands on a promise, that's nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that's serious'? What ridiculous hairsplitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless. ²³"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God's Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that's wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons? ²⁵"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something. ²⁷"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You're like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it's all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you're saints, but beneath the skin you're total frauds. ²⁹"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You're cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count. ³³"Snakes! Reptilian sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It's on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

ye also: Matthew 23:5, 1 Samuel 16:7, Psalms 51:6, Jeremiah 17:9, Jeremiah 17:10, Luke 16:15, Hebrews 4:12, Hebrews 4:13

but: Matthew 12:34, Matthew 12:35, Matthew 15:19, Matthew 15:20, Mark 7:21-23

Reciprocal: 2 Kings 23:14 - the bones of men Matthew 6:1 - to be Luke 11:44 - for Luke 13:15 - Thou hypocrite Acts 23:3 - thou whited Romans 3:13 - throat Galatians 6:12 - as desire Colossians 2:23 - a show 2 Timothy 3:5 - a form James 3:17 - hypocrisy 1 Peter 2:1 - hypocrisies Revelation 3:2 - thy works

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous,.... By making broad their phylacteries, enlarging the borders of their garments, praying long prayers, compassing sea and land to make one proselyte, paying tithes of all manner of herbs, and cleansing the outside of the cup and platter, and doing all their works, prayers, fastings, and alms deeds, to be seen of men. This is the accommodation of the above simile; by reason of these things they looked like whited sepulchres, outwardly beautiful: so these appeared outwardly righteous, they looked like righteous persons, and were not; they were what Hagar, as the Jews say, charged her mistress with being; for so they interpret these words, "her mistress was despised in her eyes", Genesis 16:4 b.

"She said, this Sarah is not secretly, what she is openly; she appears כאילו היא צדקת, "as if she was righteous" and she is not righteous.''

The same they say of c Leah. This was a misrepresentation; but the representation Christ gives of these men, is right; they were of that sort of the Pharisees, which they call הצבועין, "the dyed", or "coloured" ones: it is said of Jannai the king, that he should say to those of his family d;

"Do not be afraid of them that are Pharisees, (that are truly so,) nor of them that are not Pharisees; but of them that are, הצבועין, "dyed", for they are like to Pharisees; for their works are as the works of Zimri, (adulterers, as these were,) and they expect the reward as Phinehas.''

The gloss upon it is,

"the Pharisees hated him, because he had slain many of their wise men, and was turned Sadducee; and when he was dying, his wife was afraid of them, lest they should take away the kingdom from her sons, and she desired him to seek their favour for her; but he said unto her, do not be afraid of the Pharisees, for they are "righteous", and will not render evil to thee, nor to thy sons; for they have not sinned against them; nor of them that are not Pharisees, for they are their friends; but of "the dyed ones": as if he had said, their appearance is not according to their nature, but they are dyed without,

ואין תוכם כברם, "and their inside is not as their outside": for their works are as the work of Zimri, for they are ungodly; and they expect the reward as Phinehas, saying to men, to honour them as Phinehas.''

But this outward show and appearance of righteousness, was only "unto men", not unto God: they did not appear so to him, who is the searcher of hearts, and knows what is in man, and knew all the secret wickedness that was in them; for though they imposed upon, and deceived men, they could not deceive God; nor was their iniquity hid from Christ, who adds, "but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity": and which was evident from their ambition and vain glory, in desiring the uppermost rooms at feasts, the chief places in the synagogue, greetings in the markets, and titles of honour and grandeur; from their avarice and cruel oppression of the widows, and fatherless, under a pretence of long prayers; from their neglecting the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, and practising extortion and excess: that saying of their's e, may be applied to themselves;

"every disciple of a wise man, שאין תוכו כברו, "whose inside is not as his outside", is no disciple of a wise man.''

And it is expressly ascribed by some of their writers to one sort of the Pharisees, of whom they say f,

"they are desirous to appear to men to be holy, but their inside is not as their outside;''

which is much the same Christ here says of them. What our Lord charges these men with, is owned by their own doctors; they say g, that

"the iniquity of those that were under the first temple, was open and manifest, but the iniquity of those that were under the second temple, was not open.''

But as the gloss says,

"the children of the second temple, רשעים היו בסתר, "were secretly wicked".''

b Bereshit Rabba, sect. 45. fol. 40. 3. Jarchi in Gert. xvi. 4. c Bereshit Rabba, sect. 71. fol. 63. 2. d T. Bab. Sota, fol. 22. 2. e T. Bab. Yoma, fol. 72. 2. f Bartenora in Misn. Sota, c. 3. sect. 4. g T. Bab. Yoma, fol. 9. 2.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Matthew 23:28. Even so ye also - appear righteous unto men — But what will this appearance avail a man, when God sits in judgment upon his soul? Will the fair reputation which he had acquired among men, while his heart was the seat of unrighteousness, screen him from the stroke of that justice which impartially sends all impurity and unholiness into the pit of destruction? No. In the sin that he hath sinned, and in which he hath died, and according to that, shall he be judged and punished; and his profession of holiness only tends to sink him deeper into the lake which burns with unquenchable fire. Reader! see that thy heart be right with God.