After silencing the elite of Judaism who challenged his authority, Jesus turned to his disciples (Luke 20:45), but he spoke so that all the people heard, including the spies who watched him. Jesus then directed his criticism toward the scribes or rabbis, who were generally of the group of the Pharisees (Luke 20:46-47). He had just finished silencing the Sadducees and the Pharisees (the scribes), but neither group had shown any sign of repenting. Although they were silenced and couldn’t contradict Jesus’ wisdom, they still refused to repent of their rebellion against God and submit to the Messiah, whom he had sent.
Jesus shows us how the Pharisees had manufactured their own status in the Jewish community by quoting one another. Each one making the other well-known in Judaism as though he were an authority—something Jesus never did (cf. Matthew 7:29). Jesus’ standing in the community was as good as his own words. They, on the other hand, taught on the authority of one another, so that all seemed to be authorities in the word of God. Moreover, they dressed the part in their long robes and chose the seats that faced the people in the synagogues, and loved the most honorable seats at the feasts, all of which added to their artificial importance.
Moreover, they traded upon their reputations in the community in order to exalt their own status within Judaism. Every rabbi, who was able to gain control of the inheritance of a widow by becoming a wise executor of her financial matters, exaggerated his own greatness at the expense of the widow, whom he pretended to serve. Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century AD, gives us an example of how this occurred when he wrote of the Pharisees helping King Alexander’s widow, Alexandra:
“And now the Pharisees joined themselves to her (Alexandra), to assist her in the government. These are a certain sect of the Jews that appear more religious than others, and seem to interpret the laws more accurately. Now Alexandra hearkened to them to an extraordinary degree, as being herself a woman of great piety towards God. But these Pharisees artfully insinuated themselves into her favor by little and little, and became themselves the real administrators of the public affairs: they banished and reduced whom they pleased; they bound and loosed [men] at their pleasure; and, to say all at once, they had the enjoyment of the royal authority, whilst the expenses and the difficulties of it belonged to Alexandra… while she governed other people, and the Pharisees governed her.” [Josephus: Wars 1.5.2 – parenthesis mine].
Thus, we are able to understand how the Pharisees were apt to take advantage of widows. They made themselves executors of their estates, took advantage of the widow’s wealth in order to improve their own expectations, and, in so doing, the widow was responsible for payment of all they did.
Jesus concluded that those who do such things will receive the greater judgment. ‘Such things’, of course, do not have to be done to widows alone. In our own modern era a great deal of money exchanges hands in the name of religion—‘in the service of Christ’ as it were. Men live off the money others give them, because they are well esteemed in the community of believers. These ‘well esteemed’ folk have the obligation to use such funds with great discretion. Yet, as can be readily observed, some have not done so. Rather, they live as princes, not knowing what it means to have to balance a checkbook. Such people will receive the greater judgment, when God chooses to set things right.
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