“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.
The Pharisees are like whitewashed tombs, fair without but stinking carcasses within. Christ tears off their deceitful mask that they wore in empty hypocrisy, and rips away their beautiful exterior to show what lies underneath: deceit and iniquity hidden in their hearts. The lesson is plain: the children of God must desire to be pure, not merely to appear so.
AI summary
These men displayed righteousness outwardly through phylacteries, long garments, and alms meant to be seen, yet inwardly they were full of hypocrisy and envy. They were of that sort of Pharisee the Jews themselves called "the dyed ones", colored on the outside, rotten within, their deeds as adulterous as Zimri's but their pretense as pious as Phinehas.
AI summary
Tombs were whitewashed each year so the unclean would avoid them; thus whitened, they gleamed with beauty, yet within lay rotting corpses. So the Pharisees: their outward conduct appeared well, but their hearts teemed with hypocrisy, envy, pride, lust, and malice, corruption hidden beneath a brilliant surface.
AI summary