<p>23:15- see on 17:12.&nbsp;<br /><em>Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees. Hypocrites For you compass sea and land to make one proselyte- Periago</em>&nbsp;(&quot;compass&quot;) is only elsewhere used in the Gospels of the Lord &lsquo;walking around&rsquo; the villages around the sea of Galilee (4:23; 9:35). Again, their behaviour was a conscious inversion of His.</p><p><em>And when he has become so, you make him twofold more a son of Gehenna than yourselves</em>- The condemnation of anyone is partly their fault, and partly the fault of others. They stopped people entering the Kingdom (:13) and thus made them inherit condemnation. This is the danger of legalism. Despite such huge missionary efforts and apparent devotion, imposing legalism upon others leads to their condemnation and the worse woe, therefore, upon the missionary. They made the person be condemned in that they had made him a proselyte. The same Greek word is used both times for &ldquo;made&rdquo;. By becoming a proselyte, the person became responsible to judgment and would be condemned. Here is proof enough that knowledge makes responsible to judgment. The Jews didn&rsquo;t give men the good news of Christ and God&rsquo;s grace; rather they gave only partial knowledge of the whole picture, of God&rsquo;s demands upon men. They persuaded men to enter covenant relationship with Him, undertaking to keep His commandments, whilst not explaining grace and the love of God. And thereby they made those people condemned. This is just as easily done today in the preaching of a one-sided message which lacks any real Gospel, or good news of salvation by faith and grace.</p><p>In &quot;twofold more&quot; we again see the idea of degrees of punishment. The Lord has just said that the Pharisees would have greater condemnation than others (:14), and now He says that their converts would have double even that. Perhaps the implication of that is that these proselytes were not mere passive converts, but were inspired by the example of their teachers to be even more extreme in their legalism and lack of true faith. A case could be made that the Hellenistic Jews who persecuted Paul so fiercely were in fact Gentile proselytes. Reflect too how Saul was more obsessed against Christians than his teacher, the Pharisee Gamaliel. This is all so true to human observation, that the converts of legalists become typically even more fanatic than their spiritual fathers.</p>