Matthew 23:16 — ExegesisTAB

The verse opens with the denunciatory formula ouai hymin {Οὐαὶ ὑμῖν | Ou-aì hy-mîn} “woe to you,” a direct address that frames the whole saying as an oracle of judgment. The appositional noun phrase hodegoi typhloi {ὁδηγοὶ τυφλοὶ | ho-dē-goi typh-loi} “blind guides” places the expected role (guides) before the qualifying adjective (blind), highlighting the irony of leaders who themselves lack sight. The participle legontes {λέγοντες | lé-gon-tes} “saying” is a substantival participle governed by the article hoi {οἱ | hoi}, effectively meaning “you, the ones who say,” and it introduces the content of their teaching as direct speech. Inside the quotation, two parallel generic relative clauses structured with hos an {Ὃς ἂν | Hòs an} and hos de an {ὃς δ᾽ ἂν | hos de an} create a contrast. The combination of the relative pronoun hos with the particle an plus the aorist subjunctive omosē {ὀμόσῃ | o-mó-sē} yields a generalizing “whoever should swear” construction, functionally equivalent to a conditional “if anyone swears.” Both clauses use the prepositional phrase en tō naō / en tō chrysō tou naou {ἐν τῷ ναῷ / ἐν τῷ χρυσῷ τοῦ ναοῦ | en tō na-ō / en tō khry-sō tou na-ou} where en with the dative marks the object “by which” the oath is sworn. The predicate of the first clause, ouden estin {οὐδέν ἐστιν | ou-dén é-stin} “it is nothing,” dismisses such an oath as having no binding force, while the second clause concludes simply with the verb opheilei {ὀφείλει | o-phéi-lei} “he owes, is obligated,” implying a binding responsibility when the oath is taken “by the gold of the temple.” The syntactic parallelism of the two hos-clauses, differing only in what the oath is taken by and in their predicates, exposes the inconsistency of valuing the temple’s gold over the temple itself. In English, the relative clauses can be rendered either as “whoever swears …” or as conditional “if someone swears …” to convey the generic, hypothetical force of the Greek construction, while preserving the sharp contrast between “it is nothing” and “he is obligated.”