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7. Φαρισαίων. The name signifies ‘Separatists;’ the party dates from the revival of the National life, and observances of the Mosaic Law under the Maccabees. Their ruling principle was a literal obedience to the written law and to an unwritten tradition. Originally they were leaders of a genuine reform. But in the hands of less spiritual successors their system had become little else than a formal observance of carefully prescribed rules. ‘The real virtues of one age become the spurious ones of the next.’ Prof. Mozley, Sermon on Pharisees. The ‘hypocrisy’ of the Pharisees, which stifled conscience and made them ‘incapable of repentance,’ is the special sin of the day rebuked more than any other by the Saviour.
Politically they were the popular party, supporters of an isolating policy, who would make no terms with Rome or any other foreign power. The Zealots may be regarded as the extreme section of the Pharisees.
The Sadducees were the aristocratic and priestly party, they acquiesced in foreign rule, and foreign civilisation. They refused to give the same weight as the Pharisees to unwritten tradition, but adhered strictly to the written law of Moses. Their religious creed excluded belief in a future life, or in angels and spirits (Act 23:8). The name is probably derived from Zadok the priest in David’s time. Others with less probability connect it with Zadok, a disciple of Antigonus of Socho, who lived in the second century B.C. The derivation from tsaddik (righteous) is untenable.
γεννήματα, ‘offspring,’ ‘brood,’ of vipers.
ἐχιδνῶν. ἔχιδνα not the ‘seeing creature,’ ὄφις (see note ch. Mat 10:16), but lit. the pernicious and dangerous beast that ‘strangles;’ from the same root as anguis, ‘ango’ (Curtius, Etym.). The word suggests the harmful teaching of the Pharisees that ‘strangled’ truth.
φυγεῖν ἀπὸ. Cp. ἀπὸ Σκύλλης φεύγειν. Xen. Mem. II. p. 31.
τῆς μελλούσης ὀργῆς. Cp. τῆς ὀργῆς τῆς ἐρχομένης. 1Th 1:10. ὀργή, or ‘wrath,’ is the human conception by which the divine attitude towards sin is ‘expressed;’ hence, the divine judgment upon sin. Cp. Rom 2:5, θησαυρίζεις σεαυτῷ ὀργὴν ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ὀργῆς καὶ δικαιοκρισίας τοῦ θεοῦ; Rev 11:18, ἦλθεν ἡ ὀργή σου; and Luk 21:23, ὀργὴ τῷ λαῷ τούτῳ, of the divine judgment in relation to the fall of Jerusalem. ὀργὴ belongs rather to the O.T. than to the New. It does not occur again in this gospel, and is very rare in the others. But St Paul frequently introduces the conception of ὀργὴ in illustration of δικαιοσύνη, cp. Rom 1:17-18, δικαιοσύνη γὰρ θεοῦ ἀποκαλύπτεται … ἀποκαλύπτεται γὰρ ὀργὴ θεοῦ κ.τ.λ.
For this judicial sense of ὀργὴ in Classical Greek cp. τὸ τρίτον ὕδωρ ἐγχεῖται τῇ τιμήσει καὶ τῷ μεγέθει τῆς ὀργῆς τῆς ὑμετέρας, Plato Lys. XXIII. 4. 8; and Strabo c. 67, 4, ἐλεγχόμενος δʼ ὑπὸ τῶν κατηγόρων ἐπὶ τοῦ Ἀντωνίου παρῃτεῖτο τὴν ὀργήν. ‘Fleeing from the wrath to come’ implies agreeing with God’s view of sin and therefore ‘repentance’ or change of heart.