(48) Truly ye bear witness that ye allow.—The better MSS. give, Truly are ye witnesses, and ye allow. The word “allow” has, as always in the English Bible, the meaning of “approving of,” “consenting to,” “having pleasure in.” The last phrase is the rendering of the same Greek word in Romans 1:32, and would express the meaning here. The derivation of “allow” from the French allouer and the Latin adlaudare, shows this to be the true sense. On the rest of the verse, see Note on Matthew 23:31.

11:37-54 We should all look to our hearts, that they may be cleansed and new-created; and while we attend to the great things of the law and of the gospel, we must not neglect the smallest matter God has appointed. When any wait to catch something out of our mouths, that they may insnare us, O Lord, give us thy prudence and thy patience, and disappoint their evil purposes. Furnish us with such meekness and patience that we may glory in reproaches, for Christ's sake, and that thy Holy Spirit may rest upon us.See the notes at Matthew 23:29-36.47, 48. ye build, &c.—Out of pretended respect and honor, they repaired and beautified the sepulchres of the prophets, and with whining hypocrisy said, "If we had been in the days of our fathers, we should not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets," while all the time they "were witnesses to themselves that they were the children of them that killed the prophets" (Mt 23:29, 30); convicting themselves daily of as exact a resemblance in spirit and character to the very classes over whose deeds they pretended to mourn, as child to parent.Ver. 11:48. See Poole on "Luke 11:47"

Truly ye bear witness, that ye allow the deeds of your fathers,.... Or "ye bear witness, and ye allow"; that is, they both witnessed that their fathers killed the prophets, and they consented to what they did, and approved of their actions:

for they indeed killed them; it must be owned, and not their sons:

and ye build their sepulchres; which was a bearing and keeping up a testimony against them, and a continuing a remembrance of their crimes; and which looked as though they approved of them, or otherwise they should have been content to have the prophets lie buried in silence, and not erected stately monuments over them, which seemed to be raised more for the honour of those that put them to death, than of the prophets themselves. Or, whereas they did this under specious pretences of disliking their fathers' sins, which yet secretly they loved, and were of the same wicked disposition against the ministers of the word, and which they would quickly show; this discovered their hypocrisy, and confirmed the character Christ had before given of them; for it follows,

Truly {k} ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres.

(k) When you persecute God's servants like mad men, even as your fathers did, though you try and cover it with a pretence of godliness, yet nonetheless, by beautifying the sepulchres of the prophets, what else are you doing but glorying in your father's cruelty, and setting up monuments (as it were) in glory and triumph of it?