Dr. Waite's son, D.A. jr is the footnote author of the Defined and put the Greek in where it "may" help, and writes "mistakes may have inadvertantly crept in" besides other disclaimers and defers to the translators. If you look on the page opposite of Genesis 1, you'll see The Golden Rule of Bible Interpretation. "When the PLAIN SENSE of Scripture makes COMMON SENSE, SEEK NO OTHER SENSE." I believe Brother Tim has done that with Mat 23:24, and that Dr. Waite would concur. I read part of Matthew Henry's commentary on this in this overdone thread, and he concurs that strained AT is the common sense rendering. COMMENTARIES-PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!!...
Matthew Henry:
2. They avoided lesser sins, but committed greater (Mt 23:24); Ye blind guides; so he had called them before (Mt 23:16), for their corrupt teaching; here he calls them so for their corrupt living, for their example was leading as well as their doctrine; and in this also they were blind and partial; they strained at a gnat, and swallowed a camel. In their doctrine they strained at gnats, warned people against every the least violation of the tradition of the elders. In their practice they strained at gnats, heaved at them, with a seeming dread, as if they had a great abhorrence of sin, and were afraid of it in the least instance; but they made no difficulty of those sins which, in comparison with them, were as a camel to a gnat; when they devoured widows' houses, they did indeed swallow a camel; when they gave Judas the price of innocent blood, and yet scrupled to put the returned money into the treasury (Mt 27:6); when they would not go into the judgment-hall, for fear of being defiled, and yet would stand at the door, and cry out against the holy Jesus (Joh 18:28); when they quarrelled with the disciples for eating with unwashen hands, and yet, for the filling of the Corban, taught people to break the fifth commandment, they strained at gnats, or lesser things, and yet swallowed camels. It is not the scrupling of a little sin that Christ here reproves; if it be a sin, though but a gnat, it must be strained at, but the doing of that, and then swallowing a camel. In the smaller matters of the law to be superstitious, and to be profane in the greater, is the hypocrisy here condemned.
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