While almost all of the works in this vault use Victorian translations, due to the only English translation of this commentary being in copyright, it was machine-translated (by Claude, 2026) from the public-domain Latin. It has not been checked by a human translator.
Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, written about 353–356, before his exile to the East. Chapter 24: On Moses’ seat, in which the scribes and Pharisees sit; on their shutting the kingdom of heaven, devouring widows’ houses, compassing sea and land, and saying, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; on their tithing mint and anise, and building the tombs of the prophets; and on Jerusalem, which kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her.
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Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat, and the rest. He brought forward the glory of the Law, which bears witness of Him, and which had expressed in itself the image of the truth to come. For in all things it was meditating the coming of Christ; whatever it contained was taken up for the advance of making known the knowledge of Him. So He bids them obey the precepts of the Pharisees, because they sat in Moses’ seat: He bids them obey all the commandments of the Law, but keep away from their deeds and works; so that it is the manners and the unbelief of men that are to be shunned, not the teaching of the Law. For they themselves lay the heaviest burdens of the Law on the people subject to them, without putting even their own finger to touch them. Indeed they command that the Lord be loved with the whole heart and one’s neighbour as oneself, while they themselves, against the testimony of the Law given them, persecute God in Christ with sufferings. They enlarge the glory of their words as phylacteries, though by them God, the author of eternal life, was not understood in Christ; and they magnify themselves, as if put forth from the honour of the Law like the borders of a garment, being ignorant of the whole Law and knowing neither the works nor the power of that very Law. They love the uppermost rooms at feasts, who are appointed to eternal fire, the Gentiles rather feasting with Abraham; and the chief seats in the synagogues, though they do not know their teacher according to the testimonies of the Law and the prophets; and greetings in the markets, though humility of heart and service of all is commanded them. They wish also to be called masters by men, ignorant of the teaching of the Law and rejecting the Master of everlasting salvation. And because all these things were profane and perverse, they are condemned for imitation of their deeds. But hearing of the Law, and obedience to its words, is required, because they spoke of Christ.
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On the contrary, He sets out for the disciples, who now know Him, the precepts of all humility: that they should remember that they are all brethren, that is, sons of one Father, and through the begetting of a new birth have gone beyond the beginnings of an earthly origin; and that they all have one Master of heavenly teaching; and that the glory of eternal honour is to be seized by the consciousness of humility: because God will make the insolent humble, and will lift up humility to glory.
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But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven. He condemns their pretence by a word that signifies punishment. For “woe” is the cry of one in grief. And He says that they shut up the kingdom of heaven because they hide in the Law the meditation of the truth which is in Christ, and conceal with a pretence of teaching the bodily coming preached by the prophets; and, not going themselves on the road of eternity in Christ, they do not let others go either.
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Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses. Hence come those denials of the truth, hence the hindering of others from coming to salvation, and the barring of the heavenly kingdom: that ambition may be kept up by going round widows’ houses, that the widows may be stripped for the condescension of a long prayer, that heavenly knowledge may be sought from these men as from a treasure of hoarded wealth, that the dignity of the Law may last on through silence about grace. And so they will receive the greater damnation, because they will owe both the penalty of their own sin and the guilt of others’ ignorance.
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Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land. By the going over sea and land He signifies that in all the ends of the world they will speak against the Gospel of Christ, and will bring some under the yoke of the Law against the justification of faith: for proselytes are those received from the Gentiles into the Synagogue. Their fewness in time to come is shown in the word “one”: for after the preaching of Christ no faith was left in their teaching. But whoever has been won over to that people becomes a child of hell, the offspring of punishment and the inheritance of eternal judgment: because adoption out of the Gentiles was to make up the family of Abraham. And he will be a child of double punishment, because he has neither obtained the remission of the Gentiles’ sins, and has followed the fellowship of those who persecuted Christ.
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Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing. He reproaches them for their reverence for human observances and their slight upon the prophetic tradition: because they gave honour to empty things and took it from things to be honoured. For He Himself had given the Law; and the Law did not hold the effect, but meditated it. For the adorning of the altar and the temple did not win dignity from the worship, but fashioned a likeness of things to come from its beauty. For gold, silver, brass, orichalc, pearls and crystal hold each a proper meaning according to the nature of each material. So He rebukes them because they venerated the gold of the temple and the gifts of the altar for the reverence of the mysteries; whereas the honour of the altar and the temple was the greater, since it was for the likeness of things to come that the gold was dedicated to the temple and the gift to the altar. And so, at the coming of Christ, confidence in the Law is useless: because it was not Christ who was sanctified in the Law, but the Law in Christ, in which a seat and throne as it were had been set for Him. And this, since it is held sacred, must have received its sacredness from Him who sits upon it: and so they are fools and blind, venerating what was sanctified, while passing over what sanctifies.
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Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and all manner of herbs, and the rest. He rebukes the hidden things of the mind and the dark wickedness of their wills: that they do what the Law prescribes in the tithes of mint and anise, so as to be thought by men to fulfil the Law; but have left mercy and justice and faith and every disposition of goodwill, which is the proper duty of man. For that tithing of herbs, which was useful as a foreshadowing of things to come, ought not to have been left out; but this ought to have been done: that, performing our part in faith and justice and mercy, we should please by the works of a will not feigned in imitation but kept in truth. And because it would be less guilt to pass over the tithing of herbs than the duty of goodwill, He mocks their care in straining out gnats while they are careless in swallowing camels: that is, they avoid light sins and devour grievous ones. The same threat of punishment is made against those who wash the outside of the cup and the platter and do not cleanse the inside: who, pursuing the boast of a useless zeal, leave aside the service of perfect usefulness. For the use of a cup is within: if that is foul, what will it profit to have washed the outside? And so the brightness of the inward conscience must be kept, so that the things of the body may be washed clean outwardly. He compared them also to sepulchres, which shine with human work and adornment, but within are foul with the bones of the dead and the uncleanness of corpses: that is, they show a fair appearance of righteousness in empty words, but have within them the stench of their conscience and mind.
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Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and the rest. The figure of the judgment is plain, and on each of us, from the nature of our understanding, a sense of equity is laid: so that the less one has knowledge of equity been lacking, the less pardon will the work of iniquity have. For the people of the Law killed all the prophets. For they were kindled to hate them by the bitterness of their rebukes: for the prophets publicly convicted it of thefts, murders, adulteries and sacrileges. And because they declared it unworthy of the heavenly kingdom for these works, and preached that the Gentiles would be heirs of God’s testament, they were destroyed by various kinds of punishment. But posterity so abhorred the deeds of its fathers that it venerates the books of prophecy, adorns their memorials, restores their tombs: and by such reverence testifies that it is outside the guilt of its fathers’ crime.
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Those, then, who confess that the prophets were slain with the gravest guilt — with what pardon will they condemn Christ, who is the work of the prophets, when they carry out with a multiplied crime the very things they abhor? And so they are both serpents and a generation of vipers, because they will fill up the measure of their fathers’ will. And how shall they escape the judgment, abhorring the murder of the prophets and persecuting their Lord to the death of the cross? From them, on account of the apostles — prophets in the revealing of things to come, wise men in the knowledge of Christ, scribes in the understanding of the Law — beaten, stoned, crucified, and chased from city to city, all the blood of the righteous has overflowed, from Abel to Zacharias: so that, whereas, had these been obeyed, pardon would have been given for their own crimes, for the slaying of these same men the punishment of their fathers’ crimes too should be heaped up upon those who slew them.
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O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, and so on. Among many kinds of rebuke He always declares the feeling of His mercy: and hence comes His whole complaint, that they refused to return to the salvation He was offering. For Jerusalem had killed the prophets and stoned those sent to her. In the naming of the city the crime of its inhabitants is shown. And therefore the blood of Abel and of Zacharias is shown as coming upon this their posterity: because Christ had now suffered, dwelling and preaching among them. But if He had been believed, the faith of those who believed would not only have been outside the punishment for the murder of the prophets, but would have obtained pardon for that very sentence on the Lord’s Passion. But since He was not believed even after the resurrection, vengeance for the blood of Abel and of Zacharias will also be required of them.
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For though He speaks these things in the body, and, found as a man, gives help to all, yet often He wished to gather them by the preaching of the prophets. But He spent this love in vain and to no purpose. As a hen gathers her chickens, He wished to hold them under His wings: having become now, that is, an earthly and homely bird, giving warmth of immortal life as to His chickens by a kind of covering of His body, as with wings, and bringing them forth to flight as by a new birth. For chickens have one way of being born and another of flying. For first they are held in the shells of the eggs as in the enclosure of a body; then afterwards, warmed by the care of the parent, they go out to fly. After the manner of this familiar and almost earthbound bird, then, He wished to gather them within Himself: so that those who had already been brought forth by the condition of birth, being now reborn by the rising of another generation and by the warmth of Him who cherished them, might fly up into the heavenly kingdom as with winged bodies. And because they would not, their house will be left to them desolate and empty: that is, they will be unworthy of the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. For they began to be their own house, not God’s: and, remaining in the stubbornness of unbelief, they will not see Him until that time when, as He returns in the name of the Lord, they will bless Him, even with the confession of an unwilling unbelief.