Did Jesus Swear At The Pharisees?

[AJB4]

OK, so I'd just finished reading a recent entry on Isaac The Syrian's blog regarding swearing, and I thought of something I read in the 'Is Swearing/Cussing okay' thread in CF Polls.

OK, here's the posts in succession:

Hmmm... I'll leave you with some of Jesus' more emotionally-charged comments:

"You fools and blind men! Which is more important, the gold or the temple that sanctified the gold?. . . Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. . . You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?
- Matthew 23:17,27,33. NASB. bolding mine.

Wow...

Jesus still didn't profane.. You'd never catch my Lord cursing someone out. So those scriptures don't apply.

Caedmon's quote of Our Lord was very profane to Our Lord's hearers. Brood of vipers does not come across in our idiom as a curse, but it was. Translating such phases is difficult from any language because the same phase in a different language does not carry the impact of the source language. It would have the same meaning if the translators were interested in giving the impact of the statement on the hearers by translating it as S*** o* B******.
Jeff the Finn

ReadNilus is/was an Eastern Orthodox when he posted this in 2004.

Was he mistaken, or did Jesus really do what would have been the modern-day equivalent of swearing at the Pharisees?

Of course, regardless, it wouldn't be advisable to swear (at least not much), of course, but this is really interesting.

[buzuxi02]

I believe he did swear. I just dont know how bad those words were during his era and culture.

For instance in our culture if Jesus called someone a pile of dung, that would be bad.
But he definately had strong words.

[icxn]

Nonsense!

It was because He loved them that He said those words in order to humble the proud opinion that they had of themselves. It wasn't a curse but a blessing, a call to repentance so to speak.

Just like calling the above opinions nonsense. I was correcting you out of love, certainly not cursing you. ;)

Quote from Elder Ephraim about his spiritual father, soon to be declared a Saint, Elder Joseph the Hesychast:

"...in those twelve years I lived with him, rarely did I hear him call me by name. To call me or address me, he used all kinds of insults with appropriate adjectives. But the driving force behind all that masterful verbal abuse and insult was true paternal affection and a sincere interest in the cleansing of my soul. How grateful my soul is now for that paternal affection!"

[Shubunkin]

I always thought the "you brood of vipers!" comment was more of a "you snakes in the grass!" type of thing. Look at what the Pharisees did, though, misleading people, just like some here on CF trying to... um, nevermind. :)