Wednesday of Holy Week

Woe to you!

Wednesday of Holy Week—Woe to you!

Yesterday in the Temple, the chief priests and scribes engaged Jesus in debate. Anxious to discredit his authority they prepared trick questions and cross-examination meant to trap him—they failed. After that, we are told, “nobody dared to ask him any more questions.” When Jesus returns to the Temple on Wednesday, he singles out the same scribes and chief priests for a scathing verbal attack.

In the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, Jesus names and condemns a list of abuses and injustices that were commonly practiced by the temple elites. He cries out, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!…For you devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance you make long prayers…Woe to you who tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith…you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth… You snakes, you brood of vipers!” (Matthew 23) Ouch!

Each of these “Woes” points to a specific example of injustice and, although we cannot examine each one, let us at least try to understand what Jesus refers to in the first. It is critical to comprehend how the religious practices of Jesus’ time were intertwined with the socioeconomic and political realities as well.

People in and around Jerusalem were were squeezed from every side forced to pay taxes to the king, more taxes and tributes to Rome, give tithes to, and buy sacrifices from the Temple and eke out a living on what was left over. The burden of regressive taxes fell hardest on the poor. A drought, an injury, or the death of a husband and father could easily push a family into economic ruin. When that happened, they had few options. Many took out loans from the wealthy, using their land or home as collateral. Much like modern rapacious title loan businesses, failure to repay meant losing everything. Some were forced into debt slavery, while others became day laborers, surviving as tenants to those who had taken their land. As early as the 8th century BC, a consolidation of wealth and land began to take place in and around Jerusalem. By Jesus’ day, much of the land was owned by a few. This concentration of wealth created an aristocratic class who, because it served their economic interests, turned a blind eye to what Jesus clearly claims is the main theme of scripture: justice. Jesus exposes their hypocrisy.

Jesus’ ‘woes’ aimed at the Temple elites do more than offend—they expose what was considered too impolite to say out loud. Everyone knew the system is rigged against those at the bottom, those without power or voice. But admitting it? That was as unwelcome then as it is now.

Woe to you for devouring widows’ houses—for bankrupting the most vulnerable, seizing their homes under the guise of piety, and lining your pockets with their ruin. Woe to you for flaunting your tithes of mint, dill, and cumin—luxuries only for the wealthy—as if meticulous tithing made you righteous, while you turn your back on justice and mercy. On the surface, the Temple elite played the piety game well. But because their holiness came at the expense of the poor, Jesus rightly calls them what they are, white-washed sepulchres—beautiful on the outside, rotten within.

So far, Jesus has attacked the Temple’s economic engine by flipping the money changers’ tables. The priests and scribes have tried—and failed—to discredit him. And now, he peels back layer after layer of their hypocrisy, leaving them exposed. I bet they were glad to find Judas.