Matthew 23:23-39

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you collect tithes on mint and dill and cumin, but you have abandoned the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, while not omitting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat, while swallowing a camel! Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you clean what is outside the cup and the dish, but on the inside you are full of avarice and impurity. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the dish, and then what is outside becomes clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed sepulchers, which outwardly appear brilliant to men, yet truly, inside, they are filled with the bones of the dead and with all filth. So also, you certainly appear to men outwardly to be just. But inwardly you are filled with hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, who build the sepulchers of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the just. And then you say, 'If we had been there in the days of our fathers, we would not have joined with them in the blood of the prophets.' And so you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of those who killed the prophets. Complete, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers! How will you escape from the judgment of Hell? For this reason, behold, I send to you prophets and wisemen, and scribes. And some of these you will put to death and crucify; and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall all the blood of the just, which has been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the temple and the altar. Amen I say to you, all these things shall fall upon this generation. Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and stone those who have been sent to you. How often I have wanted to gather your children together, in the way that a hen gathers her young under her wings. But you were not willing! Behold, your house shall be abandoned to you, having been deserted. For I say to you, you shall not see me again, until you say: 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.' "