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Mat_23:1. After the Pharisees have been thus silenced, there now follows the decisive and direct attack upon the hierarchs, in a series of overwhelming denunciations extending to Mat_23:39, and which, uttered as they are on the eve of His death, form a kind of Messianic σημεῖον through which Jesus seeks to testify against them. Luke has inserted at ch. 11 portions of this discourse in an order different from the original; but he has given in the present connection, like Mark 12, only a few fragments, so that, keeping in view that a collection of our Lord’s sayings was made by Matthew, and considering the originality in respect of matter and arrangement which characterizes the grand utterances now before us, the preference must be accorded to the report furnished by this apostle (in answer to Schleiermacher, Schulz, Schneckenburger, Olshausen, Volkmar). The entire discourse has so much the character of a living whole, that, although much that was spoken on other occasions may perhaps be mixed up with it, it is scarcely possible to disjoin such passages from those that are essentially original. Ewald thinks that the discourse is made up of passages that were probably original, though uttered on very different occasions; Holtzmann has recourse to the hypothesis that the evangelist has derived his account from a supposed special source, the same as that on which ch. 5 is based; in answer to the latter, see Weiss, 1864, p. 114. Observe that the ὄχλοι are mentioned first, because the first part of the discourse on to Mat_23:7 is directed to them, then the μαθηταί are addressed in Mat_23:8-12, whereupon in Mat_23:13 ff. we have the withering apostrophe to the Pharisees who were present, and that for the purpose of warning the ὄχλοι and the μαθηταί to beware of them; and finally, the concluding passage, Mat_23:37 ff., containing the pathetic exclamation over Jerusalem. The glance, the gesture, the attitude, the matter and the language, were such that there could be no doubt who were immediately aimed at in the various sections of the discourse. We may imagine the scene in the temple to have been as follows: in the foreground, Jesus with His disciples; a little farther off, the ὄχλοι ; more in the background, the Pharisees, who in Mat_22:46 are spoken of as having withdrawn.