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Today's Verse Analysis

A long condemnation of the religious leaders of the time, their focusing on outward things not the inward.

Spoken to
audience
KJV Verse

Matthew 23:27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

NIV Verse:

Matthew 23:27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.

What His Listeners Heard:

oy vey for you, writers and distinguished, actors! Since you are so similar to tombs, plastered over which outwardly certainly appear beautiful. Inwardly, however, they are laden with bones of corpses and all impurity.

Lost In Translation:

The verse begins with a humorous word, the "woe" having the feeling of "oy vey" in Yiddish, and possibly the historical source of the word. The final Greek word translated here is the punchline, and a word Jesus only uses once. It is translated as "uncleanness" and "unclean," but describes the "foulness" of a wound, generally meaning "filth," and, in moral sense, "depravity." This word connects with the "rotten meat" idea describing the inside of the platter in Matthew 23:25. Literally, it means  "not pure," or "impurity," which I suspect had sexual connotations.

There are other double meanings here as well. The word translated as "whitened" actually means "plastered" or "painted" but it has the double meaning of "disguised." The word translated as "beautiful" primarily has the sense of "fresh," but a lot of double meanings as well, including "ripe for death" when applied to old people.  The word translated as "dead" means "corpses," "the dying" and "inanimate objects."

This verse continues the patterns we have seen in this section. Other than the humorous pattern of repeated phrases, in the most recent part, we see a pattern contrasting the "inward and "outward" starting at Matthew 23:25, before the, the large and small, before that, the earthly and spiritual. However, in a larger sense, everything goes back to the earthly and spiritual, where the earthly is temporary and eventually rots.

KJV w/Translation Issues :

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees(UW), hypocrites(UW)! for ye are like(WW) unto whited(WW) sepulchres, which indeed(CW) appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's(IW) bones, and of all uncleanness.

KJV List (See full page for word-by-word analysis):
For analysis of each word of original Greek and biblical verses, click here.

Constantly Updated

My analysis standards and methods are constantly improving. New information on each verse is provided as articles are updated. It requires approximately two years for me to work through updating each of Jesus's verses.

What Jesus's Listeners Heard

The everyday meanings of the Greek words Jesus used were different than the definitions they have been given over time in biblical translation. The word translations here are based upon documents of his time such as the Greek Septuagint, not ideas unknown in his time.

About this Site

See what Jesus said in Greek and see how his words are changed in English translation. My goal is to translate Jesus's words as they were heard when he taught, not the way they are interpreted today. The work here resurrects the humor and cleverness of Jesus's words lost in translation.

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Each article provides detailed information on all the Greek words in each verse with links simplifying your own research. It compares the Greek to popular translations to show where words are confused, changed, left out, and added. This site offers research available nowhere else, such as how often Jesus uses a specific Greek word and links to a list of every verse in which he uses a given word.