Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Matthew 23:15

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves." — Matthew 23:15 (ASV)

Many scholars have convincingly argued that the first century A. D. until the Fall of Jerusalem marks the most remarkable period of Jewish missionary zeal and corresponding success. Even in the Christian mission, no one seems to have opposed Paul’s or anyone else’s outreach to Gentiles: rather, what was disputed was the basis of admitting them to the people of God.

How much of the Pharisees’ activity was aimed at converting to their views those who had already become loose adherents of Judaism, we cannot know for certain. But whether they were winning raw pagans or sympathizers of Judaism, they were winning them to their own position.

The converts in view, therefore, are not converts to Judaism but to Pharisaism. They would travel extensively to make one “convert” (GK 4670)—a word used in the NT only here and in Ac 2:11; 6:5; 13:43 and one that at this time probably refers to those who had been circumcised and had pledged to submit to the full rigors of Jewish law, including the oral traditions of the Pharisees. Jesus did not criticize the fact of the Pharisees’ extensive missionary effort but its results: the “converts” became twice as much a “son of hell” (see comment on Mk 9:42–49) as the scribes and Pharisees who won them. That is, their converts “out-Phariseed” the Pharisees. Psychologically this is entirely possible, as every teacher of converts knows. As for these converts, the Pharisees’ teaching locked them into a theological frame that left no room for Jesus the Messiah and therefore no possibility of entering the messianic kingdom.