My Notes
What Does Matthew 15:7 Mean?
"Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying." Jesus calls the Pharisees and scribes hypocrites and says Isaiah predicted them. The Isaiah quotation (29:13) that follows describes people who honor God with their lips while their hearts are far from him. Jesus applies a seven-hundred-year-old prophecy to the religious leaders standing in front of him: you are what Isaiah saw. The prophet wasn't just describing his own generation. He was describing you.
The word "hypocrites" (hypokritai — actors, stage performers, people who wear masks) identifies the fundamental problem: the Pharisees' religion is a performance. The external display doesn't match the internal reality. They play the part of godliness without possessing it.
Reflection Questions
- 1.Where is the gap between your lips (what you say about God) and your heart (where your heart actually is)?
- 2.How does religious precision (doing everything 'right') sometimes mask the heart's absence?
- 3.What would it look like to close the gap between external devotion and internal reality?
- 4.Why does Jesus use a seven-hundred-year-old prophecy — and what does that say about the persistence of this pattern?
Devotional
Hypocrites. Actors. Mask-wearers. Jesus looks at the most religious people in Israel and calls them performers — people whose external display of devotion is a role they play rather than a reality they live.
Well did Isaiah prophesy of you. The word 'well' (kalōs) means accurately, correctly, precisely. Isaiah nailed it. Seven hundred years before these Pharisees existed, Isaiah described them perfectly. The prophecy wasn't just about Isaiah's contemporaries. It was about every generation of religious performers who honor God with their mouths while their hearts are on vacation.
The Isaiah quote (v. 8-9): "This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me." Close mouths. Distant hearts. The distance between the lips and the heart is the measure of the hypocrisy. The closer the mouth gets to God, the more obvious the heart's absence becomes — because the contrast is greater.
Jesus' accusation isn't that the Pharisees are secretly atheists. They believe. They study. They teach. They practice. The hypocrisy isn't belief without belief. It's performance without heart. The external devotion is real — they actually do honor God with their lips. The lips aren't fake. The heart is just... elsewhere.
The Pharisees had spent their lives building the most impressive religious exterior in Israel's history. Tithes calculated to the decimal. Sabbath observance measured to the step. Ritual purity maintained to the molecule. And Jesus says: Isaiah saw you coming. Because the external precision makes the internal absence more scandalous, not less.
The person with the most impressive religious performance has the most to lose from this verse. Because the better the acting, the further the heart can wander without anyone noticing — except the one who sees hearts.
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
Ye hypocrites,.... After our Lord had given so full a proof of their making void the commandments of God by their…
See also Mar 7:1-9. Then came to Jesus ... - Mark says that they saw the disciples of Jesus eating with unwashed hands.…
Evil manners, we say, beget good laws. The intemperate heat of the Jewish teachers for the support of their hierarchy,…
well did Esaias prophesy A common Jewish formula for quoting a saying of the prophets.