<p>23:23&nbsp;<em>Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees. Hypocrites For you tithe</em>- The Greek can equally mean to both take or receive tithes. They demanded and perhaps paid themselves tithes on absolutely everything.&nbsp;</p><p><em>Mint and anise and cumin</em>- These plants grew on windowsills, and a tenth of their 'crop' would've been very light in weight. The lightness of the 'crop' is contrasted with the 'heavier' things which were required of believers. Again, the Lord could've deployed convincing Biblical arguments that the tithe was to be paid from harvested crops, and given to the Levites / priests- not the Pharisees. For they were not the same as the priests. There is no hint in the Mosaic legislation that a tenth of such things was to be given to support the livelihood of the priests. But the Lord goes along with their position- and doesn't say they should not do this. Rather He lifts the issue to a higher and 'heavier' level. In engagement with those who wilfully misunderstand Scripture, it's easy to present a strictly Biblical case which demolishes their position. And the Lord could so easily have done this in the matter of tithing kitchen herbs. But He doesn't. He simply raises weightier issues and principles.&nbsp;</p><p><em>Yet have left undone</em>- The Greek&nbsp;<em>aphiemi</em>&nbsp;occurs three times in this verse; clearly a word play is intended. For the Lord concludes the sentence by saying: &quot;... and not to leave <em>aphiemi</em> the other undone <em>aphiemi</em>&quot;. And He uses it again at the end of His speech: &quot;Your house is left <em>aphiemi</em> unto you desolate&quot; (:38), and there would therefore not be left <em>aphiemi</em> one stone upon another in that temple / house (24:2); not one part of the masonry would be omitted or overlooked, every stone would be thrown down. They had omitted the weightier matters of justice etc., thinking they were justified in this because they did not omit to tithe kitchen herbs. But the Lord is saying that effectively they&nbsp;<em>had</em>&nbsp;omitted &quot;the other&quot;, the tithing of kitchen herbs; they had omitted what they had omitted. The double use of&nbsp;<em>aphiemi</em>&nbsp;in the last clause is to give the sense of how totally they had omitted <em>aphiemi</em> &quot;the other&quot;, the tithing of kitchen herbs. So although they did tithe them, effectively they had not done so. Because they had omitted the weightier matters of justice, mercy and faith. So they tithed, but they did not tithe. Just as we can pray, but not pray; think we believe, when we do not; forgive, when we do not really; read God's word, when we do not really do so as the Lord often pointed out to them in saying &quot;Have you never read...?&quot;, when clearly on one level they had read. Omitting justice, mercy and faith meant that their tithing of the small stuff was also omitted, in God's final view of them. The spiritual life is intended to be all encompassing, it's not a case of a series of specific obediences to a long list of specific commandments, whereby our omission of the heavier issues is compensated for by our commission of the lighter issues. And this again is a challenge to us all; for surveying God's expectations of us, we can so easily cut ourselves slack in some areas because we feel we are being obedient in others. Thus the failure of the Pharisees in this becomes not something to merely shake our heads at, but a challenge to our deepest internal reasonings in our own walk before God.&nbsp;</p><p><em>The weightier matters of the law</em>- The heavy burdens tied on men by the Pharisees were in fact relating to the lighter matters s.w. :4 &quot;heavy burdens&quot;. Clearly the Lord saw there was a variation in God's requirements, ranging from light to heavy. This of course was and is anathema to any legalistic mind, who sees obedience to specific statements as paramount. The Lord is trying to show that life before God is lived in a spirit of life in which omitting the weightier matters means that specific obedience to the lighter matters is thereby rendered void.&nbsp;</p><p><em>Justice, mercy</em>- These were &quot;matters of the Law&quot;, these were what the various specific commandments of the Mosaic Law sought to inculcate. Why these three matters? Mercy is part of justice, in that justice must be shown with mercy if we have any awareness of our own moral frailty (James 2:13); just as God integrates mercy with justice in His judgment of men. Mercy and justice are what David praises God for (Ps. 89:14; 101:1). God's judgment of men is connected with His mercy (Is. 16:5; 30:18), and human judgment of situations must likewise be a mixture of justice and mercy (Hos. 12:6; Zech. 7:9). But to exercise these things requires faith- faith that God's judgment of us and others is mixed with mercy. For those like the Pharisees with no sense of their own sins and experience of God's judgment-mercy, this was all a foreign language, just as it is for the many self-righteous legalists of today. Our calling is to reflect God's mixture of justice and mercy on the basis of our own experience of it, and this was the intention of the entire legal apparatus of the Mosaic law.</p><p><em>And faith. These you ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone-&nbsp;</em>Faith is something which ought to be 'done', the Lord is teaching. Faith never exists alone. James argues that there is no essential difference between faith and works. 'Faith' is not just credulity or a vague feeling of hope, but an active, driving force. There is &quot;the work of faith&quot; (1 Thess. 1:3; 2 Thess. 1:11). Knowledge and faith are paralleled in John's thought (Jn. 8:32 cp. 14:1; and 6:69 cp. 11:27)- in stark contrast to this world's emphasis upon works rather than faith. Hence Isaiah's appeals to&nbsp;<em>know</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>believe</em>&nbsp;Yahweh (43:10); and the Lord's parallel of 'little faith' with little understanding (Mt. 16:7,8).&nbsp;<em>Pistis</em>, one of the NT words for 'faith', is translated in the LXX as both 'faith' (e.g. Dt. 32:20; Prov. 12:22) and 'truth' (Prov. 12:17; 14:22; Jer. 5:1). Indeed, another word used in the LXX is 119 times translated 'truth' and 26 times 'faith'. There&nbsp;<em>is</em>&nbsp;a connection between true knowledge of the Gospel and faith. And this faith is the basis for our works. We don't just learn the propositions of the one faith before baptism, and forget them. The triumphant spiritual life&nbsp;<em>lives them out</em>.</p>