Old/New Testament
23 `You scribes and Pharisees will have trouble. You who are not true to yourselves! You give God a tenth part of small garden plants. But you have not done those bigger matters of the law. You have not judged in the right way. You have not been kind. You have not believed God. You should be doing these things and the other things too.
24 You blind leaders! You take a fly out of your cup, but you drink down a big animal like a camel!
25 `You scribes and Pharisees will have trouble. You who are not true to yourselves! You wash the outside of a cup and a dish clean. But inside they are full of greed and wrong ways!
26 You blind Pharisees! First clean the inside of the cup and the dish so that the outside will be clean too.
27 `You scribes and Pharisees will have trouble. You who are not true to yourselves! You are like graves that have been painted white. Outside they look very nice. But inside they are full of dead men's bones and all kinds of dirt.
28 So it is with you. You look right on the outside. But inside you are full of lies and wrong ways.
29 `You scribes and Pharisees will have trouble. You who are not true to yourselves! You build places to bury the prophets and fix up graves of good men.
30 You say, "If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have helped to kill the prophets of God."
31 So you prove that you are the sons of the men who killed the prophets.
32 Finish doing what your fathers started to do.
33 You snakes - a whole family of snakes! You cannot get away! You will be judged and sent to hell.
34 That is why I send you prophets, wise men, and teachers. You will kill some of them and nail them to a cross. And you will beat some of them in your meeting houses and trouble them from one town to another.
35 So you will be punished for all the blood of every good man that is on the ground. I mean all the blood from the time of Abel, who was a good man, to Zechariah, the son of Barachiah. You killed him between the temple and God's altar.
36 I tell you the truth. The people who are still living now will be punished for all these things.
37 `Jerusalem! Jerusalem! You kill the prophets. You throw stones to kill the men who are sent to you! How often I have wanted to gather your people together, as a mother hen gathers her little ones under her wings. But you would not come!
38 Now you are left alone in your house.
39 I tell you this. You will not see me again until the time when you say, "God bless him who comes in the name of the Lord." '
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