For the Pharisees, religion meant obedience to the law, forgetting that it can regulate only what a man does, not what he is. Where there is inward purity, outward conduct can be allowed to look after itself. Again, legalistic religion concentrates on not doing wrong, instead of on active and positive goodness. The Pharisees' concentrating on externals, while ignoring inner attitudes, reminds Jesus of white-washed tombs, nice to look at, but full of decay within. People were contaminated by contact with these men, who prided themselves on being so clean and were happy to be acknowledged publicy, for what they were not in private. Hypocrites!

The Pharisees' ancestors were responsible for killing the prophets, while they showed the same guilt. Their crime was that by their own attitude to prophecy, they made certain that the work of the prophets was entombed with their bones.

We might question ourselves about our own attitudes to the prophets. Are they as good as dead for us, or is theirs a living word, with the Lord Himself speaking directly to us as we read their message in the Bible?