hotcoffee
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The Fifth Woe on the Teachers of the Law and Pharisees
Back on the tablet this morning....
According to the commentaries, it was the practice to coat the tomb with lime right before Passover. This would keep the Jews from touching the tombs accidentally before attempting to go into the Temple. The law said that if you touched the dead you could not go into the Temple until you were clean. The ritual cleaning after touching the dead lasted seven days.
The practicality of this law goes back to the spread of leprosy. Rather than have the disease spread, people had to go into a type of quarantine for seven days. People use to travel for days to get to the city in time to visit the Temple in time for Passover. It would have been a real pain if they traveled all that way to have to sit in quarantine for seven days and miss the service. So, the tombs were whitewashed before Passover to mark the tombs. That way people would steer clear of them.
This reminds me of a saying. "You clean up good." Jesus said the teachers of the law and Pharisees cleaned up good but they were still dead on the inside.
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. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
Back on the tablet this morning....
According to the commentaries, it was the practice to coat the tomb with lime right before Passover. This would keep the Jews from touching the tombs accidentally before attempting to go into the Temple. The law said that if you touched the dead you could not go into the Temple until you were clean. The ritual cleaning after touching the dead lasted seven days.
The practicality of this law goes back to the spread of leprosy. Rather than have the disease spread, people had to go into a type of quarantine for seven days. People use to travel for days to get to the city in time to visit the Temple in time for Passover. It would have been a real pain if they traveled all that way to have to sit in quarantine for seven days and miss the service. So, the tombs were whitewashed before Passover to mark the tombs. That way people would steer clear of them.
This reminds me of a saying. "You clean up good." Jesus said the teachers of the law and Pharisees cleaned up good but they were still dead on the inside.