What sorrow awaits you! For you build monuments for the prophets your own ancestors killed long ago.
Parallel translations
- WEB Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.
- KJV Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.
- BSB Woe to you! You build tombs for the prophets, but it was your fathers who killed them.
- ESV Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed.
- NKJV Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them.
- NASB Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and it was your fathers who killed them.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Jesus pronounces woe on those who build the prophets' tombs while their fathers killed them. Honoring dead prophets while resisting God's word is hypocrisy.
Overview
Building memorials to the prophets looks pious but masks continuity with those who killed them. Their hearts reject the living word as their fathers did. The woe exposes a reverence for the past that refuses to obey God in the present.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 3
- Acts 7:51“You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do.
- 1 Th 2:15who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and drove us out, and didn’t please God, and are contrary to all men;
- Matt 23:29–33“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and decorate the tombs of the righteous,
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Luke shows Jesus the Savior for all — outsiders, the poor, the nations — the one who, on the Emmaus road, opened all the Scriptures to show they were about himself.
How Luke 11:47 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Greek word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.