The apparent meaning of Matthew 23:2
is actually the best reading here—namely, Jesus acknowledges the validity of
the Pharisees’ interpretation. Jesus could have urged the people to go and live
the written law of Moses and not to listen to the interpretations of the
scribes and Pharisees since they were certainly not the only ancient Jews who
taught and interpreted the law of Moses. The New Testament is full of stories
of Jesus and his followers learning from the scriptures and interpreting them, including
the living of the Sabbath. In Matthew, Jesus tells the people to listen to the
Pharisees (v. 3). A reading that Jesus is condemning the Pharisaic halakah is
necessary only if one assumes that Jesus is opposed to the oral law and halakic
discourse as a concept. This does not mean that Jesus even needs to agree with
the specific halakah of the Pharisees (indeed, he often does not, especially
when it comes to the Sabbath). It does mean, however, that Jesus approves of
the process of discussing and interpreting the commandments which he himself
gave on Mount Sinai (see 3 Nephi 15:5).
Indeed, this difficulty may perhaps be
explained most easily by suggesting that the “heavy burdens” in Matthew 23:4 do
not refer to halakic discussion of the commandments, but instead are being
presented as evidence for Jesus’s actual condemnation of the scribes and the
Pharisees: the fact that “they say, and do not” (v. 3). In this reading the “heavy
burdens” are actual physical burdens. The Pharisees make other people lift
things for them but do not work themselves. The Pharisees’ failing is grounded
in the tendency of elites to have others do their physical labor for them. Thus
Jesus’s problems with the Pharisees as religious leaders is not their interpretation
of the commandments as such, but their unwillingness to follow even their own interpretations,
just like they are unwilling to do their own work. This explains how Jesus can
both tell the people to do whatever the Pharisees instruct them to do as well
as warn them against the actions of the scribes and the Pharisees. (Avram R. Shannon,
"The Sabbath in Rabbinic Judaism: Exploring the How of Keeping the Commandments,"
in Sacred Time: The Sabbath as a Perpetual Covenant, ed. Gaye Strathearn
[Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book,
2022], 154-55)
