¹Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, ²and he said, “The scribes and Pharisees have sat down on Moses' seat, ³so whatever they tell you to keep, you are keeping to and doing, but do not do according to their works, for they say things, but they do not do them. ⁴For they bind heavy burdens and things hard to bear, and they put them on the shoulders of men, but they are not willing to move them with their finger. ⁵But they do all their works to be seen by men, and they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the fringes of their coats, ⁶and they love the privileged couches at dinners and the prime seats in the synagogues, ⁷and the greetings in the markets, and to be called by men, ‘Rabbi, rabbi.’ ⁸But do not you be called ‘rabbi’. For you have one guide: Christ. And you are all brothers. ⁹And do not call anyone your ‘father’ on earth, for you have one father, who is in the heavens. ¹⁰And do not be called ‘guides’. For you have one guide: Christ. ¹¹And the greatest among you will be your servant. ¹²And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. ¹³But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour widows' houses, and for a pretence you say long prayers. On account of this you will receive greater judgment. ¹⁴Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut up the kingdom of the heavens in front of men, for you do not go in, nor do you let those who are on the road to going in actually go in. ¹⁵Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you go round sea and dry land to make one proselyte, and when it has taken place, you make him a son of Gehenna twofold more than yourselves. ¹⁶Woe to you, you blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the sanctuary, it is nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the sanctuary is a debtor.’ ¹⁷Fools and blind men, for which is greater, the gold, or the sanctuary which sanctifies the gold? ¹⁸And: ‘Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing, but whoever swears by the gift which is on it is a debtor.’ ¹⁹Fools and blind men, for which is greater, the gift, or the altar which sanctifies the gift? ²⁰So he who swears by the altar swears by it and everything on it, ²¹and he who swears by the sanctuary swears by it and by him who dwells in it, ²²and he who swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on it. ²³Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you pay the tithe of mint and dill and cumin but have omitted the weightier aspects of the law: judgment and mercy and faith. You should have done these things, while not omitting the former things. ²⁴You blind guides, you strain off a gnat, but you swallow a camel. ²⁵Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, because you clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of plunder and injustice. ²⁶You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the dish, so that the outside of them may also become clean. ²⁷Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you are like whitewashed sepulchres, which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside are full of bones of the dead and all uncleanness. ²⁸In this way, you for your part appear righteous to men on the outside, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. ²⁹Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets, and you adorn the sepulchres of the righteous, ³⁰and you say, ‘If we had been around in the days of our fathers, we would not have been party with them to the shed blood of the prophets.’ ³¹So you witness to yourselves that you are sons of those who killed the prophets. ³²You too, fill up the measure of your fathers. ³³Serpents, offspring of vipers, how can you flee from the judgment of Gehenna? ³⁴On account of this, look, I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, ³⁵so that all righteous blood shed on earth should come upon you from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Berechiah whom you killed between the sanctuary and the altar. ³⁶Truly, I say to you that all this will come upon this generation. ³⁷Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I wished to gather your children in the way a bird gathers her nestlings under her wings, but you have not been willing. ³⁸Behold, your house is being left to you desolate. ³⁹For I say to you, you certainly will not see me from now until you say,

Reference(s) in Chapter 23: v.39 ↔ Psalm 118:26.