<p>23:2&nbsp;<em>The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses seat</em>- This appears to some to be a past tense: They sat themselves in Moses' seat, the place from where Moses taught Jewish teachers sat to teach, i.e. they had in the past appropriated to themselves the authority or seat of Moses. This retranslation avoids the apparent difficulty of the Lord otherwise claiming that they had equal authority to Moses. In this case, His command &quot;That observe and do&quot; (:3) would need to be rendered as His observation rather than His command- 'Whatever they tell you to do, that you observe and do'. But it is also possible to understand the Lord to be teaching submission, for the moment, to the religious leaders- rather than rank revolution against them. For the time to rise up in literal protest was still not yet, rather does the Lord's teaching urge that the revolt He has in mind is purely internal, deep within the human heart and psyche. By bidding obedience to those men, He would have been appealing to Dt. 17:11: &quot;And you shall observe to do according to all that they (the religious leaders) shall teach you&quot;.&nbsp;</p>