01. They taught about God.
They taught about God but did not love God, they did not enter the kingdom of heaven themselves, nor did they let others enter.
02. They devoured widows houses.
They devoured widows houses and for a pretence made a long prayer, for which they would receive a greater damnation.
The meaning of this stems from that in ancient times widows held little or no power in the courts. Often the dead husband will have appointed in his will a legal expert, i.e. the scribe or Pharisee, to be the executor of his estate. It would not be hard for a corrupt lawyer or attorney to find legal ways to move this house and other property away from the widow, potentially, benefiting themselves.
03. They preached about God.
They preached God but converted people to dead religion, thus making those converts twice as much sons of hell as they themselves were.
04. They taught that an oath sworn by the temple or altar was not binding.
They taught that an oath sworn by the temple or altar was not binding, but that if sworn by the gold ornamentation of the temple, or by a sacrificial gift on the altar, it was binding. The gold and gifts, however, were not sacred in themselves as the temple and altar were, but derived a measure of lesser sacredness by being connected to the temple or altar. The teachers and Pharisees worshipped at the temple and offered sacrifices at the altar because they knew that the temple and altar were sacred. How then could they deny oath-binding value to what was truly sacred and accord it to objects of trivial and derived sacredness?
05. They taught the law but did not practice some of the most important parts of the law.
They taught the law but did not practice some of the most important parts of the law, justice, mercy, faithfulness to God. They obeyed the minutiae of the law such as tithing spices but not the weightier matters of the law.
06. They presented an appearance of being clean.
They presented an appearance of being clean (self-restrained, not involved in carnal matters), yet they were dirty inside, they seethed with hidden worldly desires, carnality. They were full of greed and self-indulgence.
07. They exhibited themselves as righteous on account of being scrupulous keepers of the law.
They exhibited themselves as righteous on account of being scrupulous keepers of the law, but were in fact not righteous: their mask of righteousness hid a secret inner world of ungodly thoughts and feelings. They were full of wickedness. They were like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but full of dead mens bones.
08. They professed a high regard for the dead prophets of old.
They professed a high regard for the dead prophets of old, and claimed that they would never have persecuted and murdered prophets, when in fact they were cut from the same cloth as the persecutors and murderers, they too had murderous blood in their veins.