They know full well what they are doing

"Woe to you, O scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. You neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, O scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves." (Matthew 23:13-15,