Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You traverse land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
They boast of zeal in winning converts to the Jewish faith, but what they actually do is plunge souls from one danger into a far greater one. The religion they teach is so corrupted and full of profane practices that to draw Gentiles into it is to rescue them from Scylla only to hurl them into Charybdis.
AI summary
Woe unto you, you blind guides,.... Meaning the same persons, the Scribes and Pharisees, as before, though not named, who pretended to be "guides of the blind", Rom 2:19 but were them selves blind, and so very unfit to be guides of others; they were as they were born, ignorant of divine things, of God in Christ, of the true Messiah, of the true meaning...
They exhaust themselves gaining converts, not from piety but to swell their numbers and empty purses. Once won, these proselytes receive no true instruction or restraint. The Pharisees strip away their former superstitions but give nothing sound in their place, leaving them to full indulgence in vice and twice as hellbound as their corruptors.
AI summary