Jesus first accuses these religious leaders of "shutting" off the kingdom, using the image of a majordomo, a prominent official who carried keys (16:19; Is 22:22; Rev 3:7). This may allude to scribes' purported authority to "bind" and "loose" by their knowledge of the law (Mt 16:19), here used to hinder would-be followers of Christ (Meier 1980:268-69). Thus they are blind guides of the blind (23:16, 19, 24; compare 15:14).

They are eager to make converts, but their converts simply mimic and accentuate their flaws. (One thinks by contrast of the stone-drunk man who told D. L. Moody, "I'm one of your converts," to which Moody reportedly replied, "I can certainly see you're not one of the Lord's.") Although Judaism had no central sending agency, hence no "missionaries" in the formal sense, plenty of evidence testifies that many Jewish people were winning Gentiles to Judaism (for example, Jos. Ant. 20.17, 34-36; Apion 2.210; Tac. History 5.5). Jewish people actively courted many conversions in the Gentile world until Christian emperors began enforcing earlier Roman laws to shut down Jewish proselytism (see Jeremias 1958:11-12). Presumably by exposing converts to the truth of God's standards while allowing hypocrisy through their own bad example (23:3, 13), these Pharisees were leading their converts to be doubly damned.