f diligence in keeping bright the outside of a tomb could stay
the putrescence going on within, so no externals of pretended
righteousness could mitigate the revolting corruption of a heart reeking
with iniquity. Jesus had before compared Pharisees with unmarked graves,
over which men inadvertently walked and so became defiled though they
knew it not;[1141] on the occasion now under consideration He denounced
them as whitened tombs, flauntingly prominent, but sepulchres
nevertheless.

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the
tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And
say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been
partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be
witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed
the prophets." National pride, not wholly unlike patriotism, had for
centuries expressed itself in formal regard for the burial crypts of the
ancient prophets, many of whom had been slain because of their righteous
and fearless zeal. Those modern Jews were voluble to disavow all
sympathy with the murderous deeds of their progenitors, who had martyred
the prophets, and ostentatiously averred that if they had lived in the
times of those martyrdoms they would have been no participators therein,
yet by such avouchment they proclaimed themselves the offspring of those
who had shed innocent blood.

With scorching maledictions the Lord thus consigned them to their fate:
"Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation
of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I
send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye
shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your
synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come
all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous
Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between
the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall
come upon this generation." To their sanctimonious asseverations of
superiority over their fathers who had slain Jehovah's envoys, Jehovah
Himself replied by predicting that they would dye their hands in the
blood of prophets, wise men, and righteous scribes, whom He would send
amongst them; and thus would they prove themselves literal sons of
murderers, and murderers the