F. Warning against the scribes (20:45–47)
F. Warning against the scribes (20:45–47)
The long robes the scribes wore (‘flowing robes’, NIV) werea sign of distinction and marked the wearers as gentlemen of leisure, for anyone who worked for his living would not be cumbered with such clothing. Public greetings (‘greetings of respect’, Fitzmyer) and good places in synagogues and feasts were further ostentatious marks of eminence coveted eagerly by the scribes. But while they liked thus to shine before people, they were careless of how they appeared before God. Their devouring of widow’s houses will refer to practices which resulted in loss to widows, the most defenceless group of the day. It was forbidden to scribes to accept money for teaching. They must, and did, make their knowledge available without charge. But there was nothing to stop people making gifts to teachers and this was regarded as meritorious. Evidently some of the scribes encouraged impressionable widows to make gifts beyond their means. Another reprehensible practice was extortionate commissions for handling widows’ affairs. A further count against the scribes is that their prayers featured length rather than depth; they were prayers that gave the illusion of piety, but as they were offered in pretence they availed nothing before God. The scribes’ pretended piety and real dishonesty would result in the greater condemnation, greater in proportion to the esteem in which they caused people to hold them or greater in proportion to their hypocrisy.