Blind guides
Matthew 15:12-14; Matthew 23:13-28; Luke 6:39-42; Isaiah 56:9-11; Romans 2:17-21.
What leads up to it
Jesus's sharpest uses of the word all fall on religious teachers. In Matthew 15 the Pharisees have just objected to His disciples eating with unwashed hands. In Matthew 23 He pronounces seven woes on the scribes and Pharisees. Luke's saying sits among teachings on judging others. Isaiah had used the same picture of Israel's watchmen six centuries earlier, and Paul turns it on anyone who is sure he is "a guide for the blind."
What it says
A blind guide is a leader who cannot see where he is taking people, so both fall into the pit. Jesus calls the Pharisees blind guides, blind fools, blind men, blind Pharisee, for straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel, for cleaning the outside of the cup and not the inside. Isaiah's watchmen are blind and asleep while the beasts come. Paul's point is that a man who is certain he can guide others may be the one who most needs to look at himself.
What the picture assumes about the blind
The figure assumes that a blind man cannot guide, that he has no business leading anyone anywhere. That is the picture everyone in the crowd shared, and Jesus used it because it worked. The rest of Scripture complicates it: blind Ahijah told the disguised queen who she was and what was coming, blind Eli recognized the voice of God when the sighted boy did not, and Jacob, nearly blind, crossed his hands on purpose while his sighted son tried to correct him. The figure is about sight as knowledge. It is not a judgment on blind people, and it has often been read as one.
Who is called blind
Every person called a blind guide in these passages could see. The scribes and Pharisees, the watchmen of Israel, the man who boasts of the law. Not one blind person is called a blind guide anywhere in Scripture. The insult is reserved for the sighted who will not look.
From Brian
It does not trouble me when people use the word blind for someone cut off from the truth. I say "See you later" and "It's good to see you" all the time, with no physical vision at all. It is a statement of recognition, and recognition can be done in a lot of ways.
I find it interesting to think about flatly disqualifying blind people from leading other blind people. We cannot cover every condition, but if we weigh what conditions were like back then, the statement is mostly true. I lead other blind people around all the time myself, but I do it with a white cane in my hand telling me what is around us.
I also think the Bible's "blind" usually gets read as total blindness, like mine, rather than visual impairment. I know many people in our group whom I consider blind, across a very wide spectrum, who do not even need a cane to travel. Believe me, their hardships are just as real.
Other voices
Open: other blind people and their families will be asked the same question, and their answers will appear here with their permission.
The place and the time
What the old books and the archaeologists can add. Each paragraph names its source.
The commentators read "blind guides" as a picture of knowledge and pride, never of eyesight. Henry: the Pharisees were blind leaders because they did not understand the spiritual meaning of the law and were proud enough to lead anyway; had they owned their blindness and come to Christ for eye-salve, they might have seen. Edersheim calls the woe of Matthew 23:16 a rebuke of "moral blindness."
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Matthew 15 and Luke 6; Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book V, chapter IV.
The setting of the woes, by Edersheim's reckoning, is the third day of the last week, "the last day in the Temple," after the Sadducees' question and the great commandment. He and Henry both count eight woes set against the eight Beatitudes, though Edersheim doubts verse 14 belongs to the original text.
Source: Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book V, chapter IV; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Matthew 23.
Two of the figures rest on real practice. The oath: Henry explains that the teachers held an oath by the Temple did not bind, while an oath by the Temple's gold did, and he suspected the rule was meant to bring gold to the treasury. The gnat and the camel: Easton notes that wine was carefully strained because the law counted insects unclean, and Edersheim ties the saying to tithing extended even to garden herbs.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Matthew 23; Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897), entries "Gnat" and "Camel"; Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book V, chapter IV.
The quarrel behind Matthew 15 was hand-washing. Edersheim says it was openly admitted to be a tradition of the elders and not a law of Moses, and adds a detail that lands differently on this site: some rabbis defended washing after meals on health grounds, because something left on the hands might injure the eyes.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Matthew 15; Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), Book III, chapter XXXI.
Isaiah's watchmen, Henry says, should have been watchmen of the flock, posted to see the beasts coming; he allows that the phrase may mean the false prophets and priests of Isaiah's day, the wicked princes, or, in Jesus's time, the chief priests and scribes, and he ties it to Matthew 15:14. The 1915 encyclopedia gives the plain office: a watchman was a sentinel on the city wall. Paul's "guide for the blind," Henry notes, was the boast the teachers made of themselves; Paul is quoting their self-image back.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on Isaiah 56 and Romans 2; International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), entry "Watchman."
Henry himself supplies the counterexample to the figure. Of Ahijah of Shiloh, blind with age, he writes that the prophet was "still blest with the visions of the Almighty, which need not bodily eyes, but are rather favoured by the want of them." A commentator who read "blind guides" as a charge of pride knew perfectly well that a blind man could see what the sighted missed.
Source: Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1721), on 1 Kings 14.
The passage
Matthew 15:12-14
12 Then the disciples came to Him and said, “Are You aware that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”
13 But Jesus replied, “Every plant that My heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by its roots.
14 Disregard them! They are blind guides. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”
Matthew 23:13-28
13 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let in those who wish to enter.
15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You traverse land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
16 Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’
17 You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes it sacred?
18 And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.’
19 You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes it sacred?
20 So then, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it.
21 And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the One who dwells in it.
22 And he who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the One who sits on it.
23 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.
24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
25 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.
26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, so that the outside may become clean as well.
27 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of impurity.
28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to be righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
Luke 6:39-42
39 Jesus also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit?
40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.
41 Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?
42 How can you say, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while you yourself fail to see the beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Isaiah 56:9-11
9 Come, all you beasts of the field; eat greedily, all you beasts of the forest.
10 Israel’s watchmen are blind, they are all oblivious; they are all mute dogs, they cannot bark; they are dreamers lying around, loving to slumber.
11 Like ravenous dogs, they are never satisfied. They are shepherds with no discernment; they all turn to their own way, each one seeking his own gain:
Romans 2:17-21
17 Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God;
18 if you know His will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law;
19 if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those in darkness,
20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—
21 you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal?