---
title: "Matthew 23 – Catholic Bible (CPDV) & Latin Vulgate · Bless"
url: https://blessbible.app/bible/matthew/23/
description: "Christ admonishes the people to follow the good doctrine, not the bad example… Matthew 23 in the Catholic Public Domain Version, with the Latin Vulgate."
---

# Matthew 23

Matthew 23 is chapter 23 of 28 in the Gospel of Matthew. Here are all 39 verses in the Catholic Public Domain Version, with the Latin of the Clementine Vulgate beside them.

> Christ admonishes the people to follow the good doctrine, not the bad example of the scribes and Pharisees. He warns his disciples not to imitate their ambition and denounces divers woes against them for their hypocrisy and blindness.
>
> — Bp. Richard Challoner, chapter summary

## Matthew 23 (Catholic Public Domain Version)

1. Then Jesus spoke to the crowds, and to his disciples,
2. saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees have sat down in the chair of Moses.
3. Therefore, all things whatsoever that they shall say to you, observe and do. Yet truly, do not choose to act according to their works. For they say, but they do not do.
4. For they bind up heavy and unbearable burdens, and they impose them on men’s shoulders. But they are not willing to move them with even a finger of their own.
5. Truly, they do all their works so that they may be seen by men. For they enlarge their phylacteries and glorify their hems.
6. And they love the first places at feasts, and the first chairs in the synagogues,
7. and greetings in the marketplace, and to be called Master by men.
8. But you must not be called Master. For One is your Master, and you are all brothers.
9. And do not choose to call anyone on earth your father. For One is your Father, who is in heaven.
10. Neither should you be called teachers. For One is your Teacher, the Christ.
11. Whoever is greater among you shall be your minister.
12. But whoever has exalted himself, shall be humbled. And whoever has humbled himself, shall be exalted.
13. So then: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you close the kingdom of heaven before men. For you yourselves do not enter, and those who are entering, you would not permit to enter.
14. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you consume the houses of widows, praying long prayers. Because of this, you shall receive the greater judgment.
15. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you travel around by sea and by land, in order to make one convert. And when he has been converted, you make him twice the son of Hell that you are yourselves.
16. Woe to you, blind guides, who say: ‘Whoever will have sworn by the temple, it is nothing. But whoever will have sworn by the gold of the temple is obligated.’
17. You are foolish and blind! For which is greater: the gold, or the temple that sanctifies the gold?
18. And you say: ‘Whoever will have sworn by the altar, it is nothing. But whoever will have sworn by the gift that is on the altar is obligated.’
19. How blind you are! For which is greater: the gift, or the altar that sanctifies the gift?
20. Therefore, whoever swears by the altar, swears by it, and by all that is on it.
21. And whoever will have sworn by the temple, swears by it, and by him who dwells in it.
22. And whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and by him who sits upon it.
23. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you collect tithes on mint and dill and cumin, but you have abandoned the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, while not omitting the others.
24. You blind guides, straining out a gnat, while swallowing a camel!
25. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you clean what is outside the cup and the dish, but on the inside you are full of avarice and impurity.
26. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the dish, and then what is outside becomes clean.
27. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed sepulchers, which outwardly appear brilliant to men, yet truly, inside, they are filled with the bones of the dead and with all filth.
28. So also, you certainly appear to men outwardly to be just. But inwardly you are filled with hypocrisy and iniquity.
29. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, who build the sepulchers of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the just.
30. And then you say, ‘If we had been there in the days of our fathers, we would not have joined with them in the blood of the prophets.’
31. And so you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of those who killed the prophets.
32. Complete, then, the measure of your fathers.
33. You serpents, you brood of vipers! How will you escape from the judgment of Hell?
34. For this reason, behold, I send to you prophets and wise men, and scribes. And some of these you will put to death and crucify; and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city,
35. so that upon you may fall all the blood of the just, which has been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the temple and the altar.
36. Amen I say to you, all these things shall fall upon this generation.
37. Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and stone those who have been sent to you. How often I have wanted to gather your children together, in the way that a hen gathers her young under her wings. But you were not willing!
38. Behold, your house shall be abandoned to you, having been deserted.
39. For I say to you, you shall not see me again, until you say: ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

## Matthew 23 in Latin (Clementine Vulgate, 1592)

1. Tunc Jesus locutus est ad turbas, et ad discipulos suos,
2. dicens: Super cathedram Moysi sederunt scribæ et pharisæi.
3. Omnia ergo quæcumque dixerint vobis, servate, et facite: secundum opera vero eorum nolite facere: dicunt enim, et non faciunt.
4. Alligant enim onera gravia, et importabilia, et imponunt in humeros hominum: digito autem suo nolunt ea movere.
5. Omnia vero opera sua faciunt ut videantur ab hominibus: dilatant enim phylacteria sua, et magnificant fimbrias.
6. Amant autem primos recubitus in cœnis, et primas cathedras in synagogis,
7. et salutationes in foro, et vocari ab hominibus Rabbi.
8. Vos autem nolite vocari Rabbi: unus est enim magister vester, omnes autem vos fratres estis.
9. Et patrem nolite vocare vobis super terram: unus est enim pater vester qui in cælis est.
10. Nec vocemini magistri: quia magister vester unus est, Christus.
11. Qui major est vestrum, erit minister vester.
12. Qui autem se exaltaverit, humiliabitur: et qui se humiliaverit, exaltabitur.
13. Væ autem vobis scribæ et pharisæi hypocritæ, quia clauditis regnum cælorum ante homines! vos enim non intratis, nec introëuntes sinitis intrare.
14. Væ vobis scribæ et pharisæi hypocritæ, quia comeditis domos viduarum, orationes longas orantes! propter hoc amplius accipietis judicium.
15. Væ vobis scribæ et pharisæi hypocritæ, quia circuitis mare, et aridam, ut faciatis unum proselytum, et cum fuerit factus, facitis eum filium gehennæ duplo quam vos.
16. Væ vobis duces cæci, qui dicitis: Quicumque juraverit per templum, nihil est: qui autem juraverit in auro templi, debet.
17. Stulti et cæci: quid enim majus est? aurum, an templum, quod sanctificat aurum?
18. Et quicumque juraverit in altari, nihil est: quicumque autem juraverit in dono, quod est super illud, debet.
19. Cæci: quid enim majus est, donum, an altare, quod sanctificat donum?
20. Qui ergo jurat in altari, jurat in eo, et in omnibus quæ super illud sunt.
21. Et quicumque juraverit in templo, jurat in illo, et in eo qui habitat in ipso:
22. et qui jurat in cælo, jurat in throno Dei, et in eo qui sedet super eum.
23. Væ vobis scribæ et pharisæi hypocritæ, qui decimatis mentham, et anethum, et cyminum, et reliquistis quæ graviora sunt legis, judicium, et misericordiam, et fidem! hæc oportuit facere, et illa non omittere.
24. Duces cæci, excolantes culicem, camelum autem glutientes.
25. Væ vobis scribæ et pharisæi hypocritæ, quia mundatis quod deforis est calicis et paropsidis; intus autem pleni estis rapina et immunditia!
26. Pharisæe cæce, munda prius quod intus est calicis, et paropsidis, ut fiat id, quod deforis est, mundum.
27. Væ vobis scribæ et pharisæi hypocritæ, quia similes estis sepulchris dealbatis, quæ a foris parent hominibus speciosa, intus vero pleni sunt ossibus mortuorum, et omni spurcitia!
28. Sic et vos a foris quidem paretis hominibus justi: intus autem pleni estis hypocrisi et iniquitate.
29. Væ vobis scribæ et pharisæi hypocritæ, qui ædificatis sepulchra prophetarum, et ornatis monumenta justorum,
30. et dicitis: Si fuissemus in diebus patrum nostrorum, non essemus socii eorum in sanguine prophetarum!
31. itaque testimonio estis vobismetipsis, quia filii estis eorum, qui prophetas occiderunt.
32. Et vos implete mensuram patrum vestrorum.
33. Serpentes, genimina viperarum, quomodo fugietis a judicio gehennæ?
34. Ideo ecce ego mitto ad vos prophetas, et sapientes, et scribas, et ex illis occidetis, et crucifigetis, et ex eis flagellabitis in synagogis vestris, et persequemini de civitate in civitatem:
35. ut veniat super vos omnis sanguis justus, qui effusus est super terram, a sanguine Abel justi usque ad sanguinem Zachariæ, filii Barachiæ, quem occidistis inter templum et altare.
36. Amen dico vobis, venient hæc omnia super generationem istam.
37. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, quæ occidis prophetas, et lapidas eos, qui ad te missi sunt, quoties volui congregare filios tuos, quemadmodum gallina congregat pullos suos sub alas, et noluisti?
38. Ecce relinquetur vobis domus vestra deserta.
39. Dico enim vobis, non me videbitis amodo, donec dicatis: Benedictus, qui venit in nomine Domini.

## Catechism of the Catholic Church

Paragraph numbers and the Catechism's own section headings (never quoted); text at vatican.va.
- CCC ¶ 2367: The Love of Husband and Wife ([vatican.va index](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM))
- cf. CCC ¶ 526: The Mysteries of Christ's Life ([vatican.va index](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM))
- cf. CCC ¶ 2111: "You Shall Have No Other Gods Before Me" ([vatican.va index](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM))
- CCC ¶ 558: The Mysteries of Christ's Life ([vatican.va index](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM))
- cf. CCC ¶ 674: He Will Come Again in Glory ([vatican.va index](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM))

## The saints

- “For you I am a bishop; with you I am a Christian.” — St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 340, c. 411 (On this theme: verse 8)

## Bishop Challoner's notes

Bp. Richard Challoner, notes on the Douay-Rheims (1750); they comment on its older wording.
- Verse 5: “Phylacteries” … that is, parchments, on which they wrote the ten commandments, and carried them on their foreheads before their eyes: which the Pharisees affected to wear broader than other men; so to seem more zealous for the law.
- Verse 9: Neither be ye called masters. The meaning is that our Father in heaven is incomparably more to be regarded, than any father upon earth: and no master to be followed, who would lead us away from Christ. But this does not hinder but that we are by the law of God to have a due respect both for our parents and spiritual fathers, (1 Cor. 4. 23: 15,) and for our masters and teachers.
- Verse 29: This is not blamed, as if it were in itself evil to build or adorn the monuments of the prophets: but the hypocrisy of the Pharisees is here taxed; who, whilst they pretended to honour the memory of the prophets, were persecuting even unto death the Lord of the prophets.
- Verse 35: Not that they should suffer more than their own sins justly deserved; but that the justice of God should now fall upon them with such a final vengeance, once for all, as might comprise all the different kinds of judgments and punishments, that had at any time before been inflicted for the shedding of just blood.

## Read at Mass (US)

- Tue, Feb 23, 2027: Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent — Gospel, Matthew 23:1-12
- Sat, Aug 21, 2027 (computed): St. Pius X, Pope — Alleluia, Matthew 23:9b, 10b; Gospel, Matthew 23:1-12
- Mon, Aug 23, 2027 (computed): Monday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time — Gospel, Matthew 23:13-22
- Wed, Aug 25, 2027 (computed): Wednesday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time — Gospel, Matthew 23:27-32

4 more dates through December 31, 2028, in the [liturgical calendar](https://blessbible.app/calendar/).

Citations as published in the USCCB liturgical calendar (principal Mass, first option). Dates after May 31, 2027 are computed by Bless from the US Lectionary cycle — confirm with your parish.

Source: Catholic Public Domain Version (Ronald L. Conte Jr., 2009), public domain; Latin: Clementine Vulgate (1592).