The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they scoffed at him.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 14. Now the Pharisees, and so forth Christ had admonished the Scribes and Pharisees not to presume too much on their own sanctity, but to receive repenting sinners, and to redeem their own sins with alms. But they derided these precepts of mercy and humility; either because they esteemed what he commanded them to be useless, or because they thought they had already complied with them. Ven. Bede.—The Pharisees considered temporal riches as true goods, and the recompense which God had promised to such as observed his laws; they therefore laughed at the doctrine of Jesus Christ, which extolled liberality and alms-deeds, and despised the Master who, on all occasions, testified his great regard for poverty in his discourses, in his conduct, in the choice of his apostles, who were all poor, and had no pretensions whatever to exterior pomp or show. Calmet.