Luke 11:46

And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(46) Ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne.—See Note on Matthew 23:4.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

11:37-54 We should all look to our hearts, that they may be cleansed and new-created; and while we attend to the great things of the law and of the gospel, we must not neglect the smallest matter God has appointed. When any wait to catch something out of our mouths, that they may insnare us, O Lord, give us thy prudence and thy patience, and disappoint their evil purposes. Furnish us with such meekness and patience that we may glory in reproaches, for Christ's sake, and that thy Holy Spirit may rest upon us.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

See the notes at Matthew 23:4.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

46. burdens grievous, &c.—referring not so much to the irksomeness of the legal rites (though they were irksome, Ac 15:10), as to the heartless rigor with which they were enforced, and by men of shameless inconsistency.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

See Poole on "Matthew 23:4".

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And he said, woe unto you also, ye lawyers,.... Christ was so far from calling back what he had said or suggested, that he repeats and confirms it, and more particularly names them, and enlarges on their evil practices:

for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers;, Matthew 23:4.

Geneva Study Bible

And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

Luke 11:46. See on Matthew 23:4.

Expositor's Greek Testament

Luke 11:46. Jesus fearlessly proceeds to say what He thinks of the class.—καὶ ὑμῖν, yes! to you lawyers also woes. Three are specified: heavy burdens (Matthew 23:3), tombs of the prophets (Matthew 23:29-31), key of knowledge (Matthew 23:14).—φορτίζετε (with two accusatives only in N.T.), ye lade men with unbearable burdens.—προσψαύετε, ye touch, here only in N.T.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

46. burdens grievous to be borne] These burdens of the Oral Law became yearly more and more grievous, till they were enshrined in the boundless pedantry of ceremonialism which fills the Talmud. But even at this period they were an intolerable yoke (Acts 15:10), and the lawyers had deserved the Woe pronounced by Isaiah on them “that decree unrighteous decrees, and write grievousness which they have prescribed,” Isaiah 10:1. “Gradus: digito uno attingere, digitis tangere, digito movere, manu tollere, humero imponere. Hoc cogebant populum; illud ipsi refugiebant.” Bengel.

Bengel's Gnomen

Luke 11:46. Ἑνὶ, with one) There is an ascending climax, of which the steps are—to touch with one finger, to touch with the fingers, to move with the fingers, to lift with the hand, to lay on the shoulder [Matthew 23:4]. The latter they used to compel the people to: the former they shrank back from themselves.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 46. - Ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Then the Lord turned to the accomplished Jerusalem scholar, and with withering emphasis pronounced upon his famous and influential order those scathing reproaches which for eighteen centuries have been the woeful inheritance of all hypocritical self-deceivers. How true was the expression, "burdens grievous to be borne," a very superficial study of the Talmud will amply show; for although even the earliest parts of that stupendous compilation were not committed to writing until some time after, yet very much of what we now peruse in those strange, weary treatises existed then in the oral tradition. which it was the life-work of scholars and pedants, like the lawyer to whom Jesus was then speaking, to learn, to expound, and to amplify; and these vexatious and frivolous ordinances which the lawyers and scribes pressed home upon the people with such urgency were often shirked and avoided by the learned and cultured scribe-class as a body. Luke 11:46

Vincent's Word Studies

Also (καὶ)

Emphatic. "Even or also unto you lawyers, woe." Note the article as in the address to the Pharisees (Luke 11:43): You, the lawyers.

Ye lade

Compare heavy laden, Matthew 11:28.

Grievous to be borne (δυσβάστακτα)

Only here and Matthew 23:4.

Touch (προσψαύετε)

Only here in New Testament. A technical term in medicine for feeling gently a sore part of the body, or the pulse. Matthew 23:4, has κινῆσαι, move.