Luke 11:46

Luke 11:46, in plain English

Jesus doesn't back down. He says: 'You load people down with impossible religious rules, but you won't lift a finger to help them carry the burden.' They make religion exhausting for everyone but themselves.

Why it's here

The lawyers kept adding more and more religious requirements to people's lives while finding convenient exceptions for themselves. Jesus exposes the cruelty of that system.

Who's speaking

Jesus turns directly to the legal experts and exposes their specific brand of hypocrisy.

Where it sits in the story

Jesus responds to the lawyer's protest by getting more direct, not less. These experts created a crushing religious system and then excused themselves from following it.

The scholarly reading

Jesus addresses the lawyers with equal severity: they load people with phortia dysbastakata (unbearable burdens) through their legal interpretations but will not lift a single finger (daktylō) to ease the load. Their scholarship oppresses rather than liberates.

Language and setting

The 'burdens' refer to the complex system of oral law that expanded Torah into hundreds of additional regulations. The lawyers created these rules but found ways to exempt themselves from their most onerous requirements.

Voice

Jesus pronounces the first woe against the legal experts, exposing their hypocrisy in burdening others while exempting themselves.

Significance

Jesus turns His attention to the lawyers. They've created an oppressive system of rules and then found loopholes for themselves while ordinary people are crushed under the weight.

44Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without even noticing.”

45One of the experts in the law told Him, “Teacher, when You say these things, You insult us as well.”

46“Woe to you as well, experts in the law!” He replied. “For you weigh men down with heavy burdens, but you yourselves will not lift a finger to lighten their load.

47Woe to you! For you build tombs for the prophets, but it was your fathers who killed them.

48So you are witnesses consenting to the deeds of your fathers: They killed the prophets, and you build their tombs.

Read all of Luke 11 — The disciples ask for a prayer, and Jesus gives them words that have echoed for two thousand years. Then he warns against empty religion.