Mark 12:18

Mar_12:18; Mar_12:27

In the resurrection.

More in Scripture than as first appears

These words of Christ show us how much more there is in Scripture than at first sight appears. God spoke to Moses in the bush, and called Himself the God of Abraham; and Christ tells us, that in this simple announcement was contained the promise, that Abraham should rise again from the dead. In truth, if we may say it with reverence, the All-wise All-knowing God cannot speak, without meaning many things at once. He sees the end from the beginning; He understands the numberless connections and relations of all things one with another. Every word of His is full of instruction looking many ways; and, though it is not often given to us to know these various senses, and we are not at liberty to attempt lightly to imagine them, yet, as far as they are told us, and as far as we may reasonably infer them, we must thankfully accept them. (J. H. Newman.)

Christs proof of immortality

Christ raises the question: Could God call Himself Abrahams God if He had permitted his hopes to be disappointed, and his whole life to be dissipated by the touch of death? Whatever we love we seek to keep alive, and, if God loved Abraham, would He let him die? If the Sadducee was right, Abraham was at the time a handful of desert dust in which certainly God could take no peculiar interest. The fact that man can engage the interest of God, speak to Him, enter into covenant with Him; be beloved, embraced, protected by God, is the proof of immortality. Because God lives, he will live also whom God loves. There are many arguments that go to prove immortality, but this is chief, that God loves man, delights in him, and would be Himself bereaved, and spend a desolate eternity, if death robbed Him of the spirits that trust Him. (R. Glover)

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The error of the Sadducees

1. Knowledge of the Scriptures may be very superficial.

2. Christ shows us how to conduct controversy.

3. Jesus enlarges our thoughts of what life is.

4. We are not to measure the unseen by the seen.

5. We cannot ignore one truth without danger of losing our hold on others.

6. The future life differs from the present

(1) In its constitution;

(2) in its blessedness.

7. A higher existence hereafter suggests the folly of expecting perfection here.

8. Our friends, who sleep in Jesus are not dead. (F. Wagstaff.)

Materialism and the Resurrection

I. The argument. It may be presented in three aspects.

1. After the three patriarchs were dead, and had been in the grave for centuries, God spoke of Himself as their God. If the words assume their then conscious existence as spirits, then it followed

(1) that the negative portion of the system of the Sadducees was destroyed. There are spiritual existences.

2. Supposing they do not exist in a state of consciousness, still God considers Himself as sustaining relations to them; He is their God. This, again, disposes of materialistic Sadduceeism. For God cannot sustain that relationship to what has been annihilated-to what has ceased to be-to nothing.

3. The emphasis may be put on the term God. I am the God, etc. What is it to be God to a being who has a religious nature, is capable of worship and happiness through Divine relations? How had He shown them He was their God? He called, led, educated, tried them, and taught them to rest implicitly on His word. He promised them a wonderful possession. What seemed to be conveyed by the words was never actually enjoyed. Yet they lived in faith, and died in the exercise of this faith-that in bestowing this possession He would prove Himself to be their God. If the Sadducees were right, there was an end of them and of the Divine faithfulness. It was a commencement without a conclusion, a porch without a temple, a beginning of promise without the termination.

II. Now, this subject will cast light upon two others.

1. The manner in which Christ threw light upon the future condition of man. He did not bring life and immortality to light as a new thing. There were indications of it in the ancient Church. He brought out in distinctness, and clearness, and fulness what was involved in mist and fog. Speaking with Divine authority,

(1) He took the affirmative side-always took it: resisted the objectors, threw against them arguments from the power of God, and the Scriptures of God.

(2) He raised men from the dead.

(3) He threw light upon the resurrection-the life of men in glory-long after their bodies had passed away.

(4) Then He illustrated and embodied in His own Person everything He taught. He died, was buried, was raised, was changed, was glorified.

(5) But greatest of all, by His redemptive work He shows how all could be done according to, and in harmony with, the principles of the Divine government, and the perfection of Gods nature.

2. Light is cast upon the state of the pious and holy dead. They live.

Martyred saints committed their spirits to the Lord Jesus.

1. If men choose to live without God here, they will find hereafter that there is a sense in which the actual relation between Him and them has not been destroyed.

2. The dignity and glory of a religious life. They are to be glorious immortals who love God, cherish religious faith, cultivate acquaintance with the infinite, and walk in holy obedience. The character of faithful worshippers is to be perpetuated and become eternal.

3. It is of infinite importance that all possess this Divine faith, and live the real life based upon the truth of God and the Gospel of Christ. (Thomas Binney.)

Immortality and love

I never saw a man that did not believe in the immortality of love when following the body of a loved one to the grave. I have seen men under other circumstances that did not believe in it; but I never saw a man that, when he stood looking upon the form of one that he really loved stretched out for burial, did not revolt from saying, It has all come to that: the hours of sweet companionship; the wondrous interlacings of tropical souls, the joys, the hopes, the trusts, the unutterable yearnings-there they all lie. No man can stand and look in a coffin upon the body of a fellow creature, and remember the flaming intelligence, the blossoming love, the whole range of Divine faculties which so lately animated that cold clay, and say, These have all collapsed and gone. No person can witness the last sad ceremonials which are performed over the remains of a human being-the sealing down of the unopenable lid, the following of the rumbling procession to the place of burial, the letting of the dust down into dust, the falling of the earth upon the hollow coffin, with those sounds that are worse than thunder, and the placing of the green sod over the grave-no person, unless he be a beast, can witness these things, and then turn away and say, I have buried my wife; I have buried my child; I have buried my sister, my brother, my love. (H. W. Beecher.)

A type of the Resurrection

One bright summer day I stood beside a large water butt, watching the insect life which skimmed its surface and the lower forms of life which revelled and rejoiced in its depths. Whilst thus engaged, I saw a little creature, in the shape of a worm, come up with zig-zag course apparently from the bottom of the butt to its surface. There was a little agitation-the shell broke, and a bright and beautiful insect flew away towards heaven. To my apprehension that was the most beautiful type of the resurrection ever beheld, and thus has our gracious God filled all nature with appropriate and instructive emblems of the glorious doctrine of the resurrection. (S. Cocks.)

The Resurrection

In Dr. Browns work on the resurrection, their is a beautiful parable from Halley. The story is of a servant, who, receiving a silver cup from his master, suffers it to fall into a vessel of aquafortis, and, seeing it disappear, contends in argument with a fellow servant that its recovery is impossible, until the master comes on the scene, and infuses salt water, which precipitates the silver from the solution; and then, by melting and hammering the metal, he restores it to its original shape. With this incident a sceptic-one of whose great stumbling blocks was the resurrection-was so struck, that he ultimately renounced his opposition to the gospel, and became a partaker of the Christian hope of immortality. (S. S. Teacher.)

Heaven will reveal itself

John Bunyan was once asked a question about heaven which he could not answer, because the matter was not revealed in the Scriptures; and he thereupon advised the inquirer to live a holy life and go and see. (Christian Age.)

Progressive knowledge of the Bible

It is curious to compare old and new maps, and to mark the progress of discovery. The black space of ocean is followed by a faint outline of a few miles of coast, marking the termination of an intrepid voyage. Then further portions of the same coast are laid down at intervals as supposed islands. Then by and by these portions are connected, and the outline of a great continent begins to be developed. The undiscovered passes into the region of the known and familiar. Thus it is with the Bible. What progress is being made in the discovery of its meaning! How much better acquainted is the Church of Christ now with its spirit, its allusions, its inner and outer history, than the same church during a former period! What a far more true and just idea of the mind of Christ, as manifested in and by the Apostolic Church, have we now than the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries possessed! Distance has increased the magnitude, the extent, the totality, the grandeur in the heaven-kissing mountain range. Individually I find in daily study of the Bible a daily discovery. What was formerly unknown becomes known, and what seemed a solitary coast becomes a part of a great whole, and what seemed wild and strange and lonely becomes to me green pasture and refreshing water-the abode of my fireside affections. And surely I shall read the Bible as an alphabet in heaven. It was my first school book here, and I hope it will be my first there. What I shall I never know the Spirit which moves the wheels, whose rims are so high that they are dreadful? The only true theory of development is the development of the spiritual eye for the reception of that light which ever shineth. (Norman Macleod, D. D.)

Our knowledge of the future state imperfect

Whatever correct ideas we have about the heavenly state, are of course derived from the revelation God has made. And yet from the very nature of the subject our ideas must necessarily be vague, and perhaps even incorrect. The information may be, and doubtless is, the very best God could give us; but the unsatisfactoriness of it clearly remains, just because the subject is so far beyond our present attainments and conceptions. It is like talking of the higher mathematics to a child who has only begun to comprehend the simplest relations of numbers, and to whom the multiplication table is an Ultima Thule. (Christian World Pulpit.)

Like the angels

The children of God, in the resurrection, our Saviour says, shall be equal to the angels; or, perhaps, more properly, they shall be like the angels in attributes, station, and employments. Like the angels, they will possess endless youth, activity, power, knowledge, and holiness; enjoy the same immortal happiness, dignity, and Divine favour; be lovely, beautiful, and glorious in the sight of God, and shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Like the angels, shall they be sons, and kings, and priests to God, and live and reign with Him forever and ever. (Pres. Dwight.)

Individual relation to God

In our mysterious being we have a double existence; we are part of a body, and God deals with men collectively as communities: yet also we are as much single spirits as if we were alone in the world, each running separately and apart its individual course. To teach men from the first the awful, the difficult truth, that they have each of them a soul-this was the meaning of that discipline of Abraham and the Patriarchs; and the whole history has shown how necessary it was. The visible world is all about us, early and late, wrapping us around, occupying eye and thought and desire; we seem to belong to it, and to it alone; it seems as if we must take our chance with it. And, on the other hand, we know how easily men come to think that being one of a body-even though it were the seed of Abraham, or the Church of Christ-made it less necessary to remember their personal singleness, their personal responsibility. To belong to a good set, to a religions family, seems to give us a security for ourselves; insensibly, perhaps, we take to ourselves credit for the goodness of our friends, we look at ourselves as if we must be what they are. The soul has indeed to think and to work with others and for others, and for great aims and purposes, out of and beyond itself. For others, and with others, the best parts of its earthly work is done. But first, the soul has to know that sublime truth about itself: that it stands before the Everlasting by itself, and for what it is. Abraham learned it, like Moses, like Elijah, like Isaiah, like St. Paul: in Job and the Psalter we see the early fruits of that discipline. The soul knew itself alone with God; no words could tell the incommunicable secret of the presence of God; and in that secret was wrapped up the seed of its conviction of its mysterious immortality-God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. This is the first lesson of the masters of the spiritual life. This is the first opening of the eyes to the reality of religion, when it comes upon us in our heart of hearts, in the deep certainties of conscience, that in spite of all that fills the eye and is not ourselves, there is ourself and there is God; and we begin by degrees, as it has been said, to perceive that there are but two beings in the whole universe-two only supreme and luminously self- evident beings-our own soul, and the God who made it. (Dean Church.)

As the angels.-

Employment in heaven

What shall we do in heaven? Well, our employments will accord with our state and disposition. Some one of you may perhaps be an artist. Now to paint a fine picture to hang upon somebodys wall on earth is accounted a great thing. Pooh! In heaven, your canvas shall be a soul, and your picture a loving spirit which under your guidance shall become a being of grace and beauty for evermore. On earth, an artist generally paints to make himself a name and earn both money and glory, but in heaven the object and aim of an artist shall be, Oh, that I might train this soul to be like Christ! Oh, that my work might glorify God! Someone else here may, I think, be an architect in heaven, not with bricks, stone, mortar, ladders, and rubbish. No; you build houses here; there you shall build human souls into angels. If life in heaven is to be as the angels, we have the joy of knowing that useful and congenial occupation will be our lot. (W. Birch.)

Congenial occupation in heaven

A lad, who served as a milk vendor, stood one day in Antwerp cathedral before the glorious picture by Rubens of the bringing down of Christ from the cross. The boy drank in all the beauty of the painting as if it were a thing of life; and it seemed as if the hunger in his soul were satisfied while he gazed upon the marvellous glory of that scene. At length, he turned away with a sigh in his heart, but a light in his eye, saying, I, also, have in me the soul of a painter! But he was only a poor boy, who went with a dog and a little cart carrying milk cans from the country to the people of Antwerp. In his soul he said, I in soul am an artist! But he had to go back to his dog and cart and milk cans, and that sort of humdrum work continued to be his daily employment, until having lost his living through a false accusation, and he and his dog being refused bread, they wandered up and down in the cold of the winter until one day they found themselves weary and starving at the door of the cathedral. The poor boy, with the soul of an artist, followed by his dog, more faithful to him than men and women, walked up the grand aisle of the cathedral, and stood before the glorious picture of Christ. Being weary, he lay down, when the poor dog crouched close to his starving master to warm him, and the boy kissed the head of the faithful beast and fixed his eyes on the sacred canvas. In the morning, the people found a boy and dog both dead, and clasped together. He had the soul of a painter, but he was poor and cold and hungry, yet he died feeling the love of his dog and beholding the picture whose glory had inspired his soul. And the people wept, and mourned over the poor boy whose circumstances had prevented the realization of his hearts desire. In the other world there will be no obstruction to lawful desires, and the possibilities of the human heart shall be granted. Every one of us shall have our opportunity of congenial employment. That which is within the soul and forms our real nature shall come out and have an opportunity of being employed in the service of God and mankind. A man with a musical soul one day went into a shop where he saw a beautiful violin for sale, and with all the money he had, he bought it. He came exultingly out of the shop the possessor of the glorious instrument. Then somebody said to him, My friend, where is the bow? He had the fiddle, but he had no bow. In a corresponding way, many of you have the violin in your nature, the capacity for harmony, but circumstances are against you; you cannot realize your earnest resolves because there is something wanting, You were meant to be a poet, and yet are, perhaps, a brick setter; or you were made to be an artist, and may be only a chimney sweep; or you may have the instincts of an engineer, and yet are probably chained to a desk in some dingy office, or may be a shoemaker sitting at a stall all day mending boots. These are some of the disciplinary contradictions of this life, where round people are continually found in square holes, and square people in round holes. But in the better land all these odds shall be made even, and an opportunity given to everyone to bring out that which God has put within us, and we shall be and do that which harmonizes with our angelic nature and inclination. (W. Birch.)

Leisure in heaven

Most earnest men are too busy in this world to find time to really live and know themselves. They are too much engrossed in the maddening maze of things to watch and pray and practise self-examination. They are like a steamer which is of excellent build and power of speed, and which is so profitable to its owners that they send it about from port to port and never put it into harbour to survey and restore it; and at length when stress of weather comes, the beautiful, powerful steamer gives way and sinks. Thousands of business men are like that steamer; they perish for want of overhauling and renovation. They are too busy to think of God, and death, and judgment. They are too busy to do a good deed in any way except putting their hand into their pocket to give something to a charitable institution, or throwing a copper to some unfortunate beggar. In the other world these over busy men will bare time to think of God and of themselves. The life of the other world will without doubt be progressive. Progress or development is the law of creation. There is progress on earth, and there will be progress in heaven. Your life is to be as a pure river which cannot be defiled or overshadowed by evil. We shall have to learn to forgive, learn to be pure, learn to be loving, learn to be kind. Have you learned these things on earth? Not fully; but you are trying to learn them; if so, you shall be as the angels and finish your education in heaven. There has been only One who went perfect into heaven. That perfect being was Jesus, and He has promised that His Spirit shall be with everyone who desires to follow Him. (W. Birch.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mar 12:18-20. These verses are explained in the notes on Mat 22:23-33. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living — That is, (if the argument be proposed at length,) since the character of his being the God of any persons, plainly intimates a relation to them, not as dead, but as living; and since he cannot be said to be at present their God at all, if they are utterly dead; nor to be the God of human persons, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, consisting of souls and bodies, if their bodies were to abide in everlasting death; there must needs be a future state of blessedness, and a resurrection of the body, to share with the soul in it.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

THE SADDUCEES ATTACK JESUS, Mar_12:18-27.

(See notes on Mat_22:23-33.)

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

Mar_12:19. “The statute must be regarded as relative to some exceedingly offensive matrimonial condition which had prevailed, probably polyandry. When such a custom has unhappily got ingrained in the habits of a degraded people, it is not possible to induce them to leap, at a bound, to a lofty pinnacle of marital purity. The ascent must be gradual; the utmost that can be achieved by progressive legislators is to take one step at a time.” See Dr. J. Morison’s note in loco, from which the above is quoted.

Mar_12:24. Do ye not therefore err.—Is it not on this account that ye wander in a maze, because … Instead of accusing them point-blank of error, and so alienating them still farther, our Lord deals with them as if they had come in good faith to have a difficulty solved; and He at once points them to the true source of their pretended perplexity—ignorance of the Scriptures.

Mar_12:26. See R.V.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mar_12:18-27

(PARALLELS: Mat_22:23-33; Luk_20:27-38.)

Christ’s argument against the Sadducees.—The Sadducees were a libertine sect of the Jews who, for the sake of indulging their lusts, and to remove the dread of an after-reckoning, thought proper to reject the belief of a resurrection and a life to come. But yet, to save appearances, and to keep up an outward shew of religion among their countrymen, they professed a great regard to the same common Scriptures as the oracles of God, and sought out colours from those very Scriptures whereby to countenance or seemingly to authorise their wanton and wicked opinions. They came to our Lord, and propounded a captious question to Him, grounded upon Moses’ law, artfully insinuating as if Moses himself must have been in their sentiments. Our Lord in reply corrected their fond mistake in judging of a life to come by the life that now is, when circumstances would be widely different. In this world, where mankind go off and die daily, there is a necessity of a constant and regular succession to supply the decays of mortality. But in a world to come, where none die any more, the reason then ceases, inasmuch as there will be no occasion for any further supplies. Our Lord, by thus distinguishing upon the case, defeated the objection; but to shew further how ill the Sadducees had contrived in appealing to Moses as a favourer of their sentiments, He reminds them of a famous passage in Moses’ law which was directly contrary to their principles, being indeed a full and clear proof of a resurrection and future state.

I. What the distinguishing principles of the ancient Sadducees really were.—They denied a future state; they did not allow that the soul survived the body. They looked upon the doctrines of a resurrection and future state to be so nearly allied, or so closely connected with each other, that they might reasonably be conceived to stand or fall together. Wherefore they denied both, as on the other hand the Pharisees admitted both. There is one difficulty in St. Luke’s account of the Sadducees (Act_23:8), relating to their denial of the existence of angels. Other accounts of Jewish writers are silent on that head; and it might seem very needless for the Sadducees to clog their cause with it, since it was sufficient for their purpose to reject only the separate subsistence of human souls; and it is odd that they should run so flatly counter to the history of the Old Testament (which is full of what concerns angels) when they had really no great necessity for it, nor temptation to it, so far as appears. But perhaps they thought it the shortest and surest way to reject the whole doctrine of spirits, or at least of created spirits, and so to settle in materialism, after the example of some pagan philosophers; and therefore they at once discarded both angels and separate souls. And as to the Old Testament standing directly against them with respect to angels, there are so many various ways of playing upon words, especially in dead writings, that men resolute to maintain a point (whatever it be) can never be at a loss for evasions. Possibly, however, St. Luke, knowing that the word “angel” had been used to mean no more than a human soul, might mean only to say that the Sadducees rejected the doctrine of the resurrection and the other doctrine of separate souls, whether called angels, as by some, or spirits only, as by others. This account will appear the better when it is considered that St. Luke says the Pharisees admitted both. Both what? There had been three things mentioned, if angel makes a distinct article. But if angel there means no more than a human soul, then the articles are reduced to two only; and so it was very proper to say both, namely, both the resurrection and the separate state of the soul.

II. Inquire why our Blessed Lord chose to confront the Sadducees with a text out of Moses’ writings, rather than out of any other part of the Old Testament.—Some have given it for a reason of our Lord’s choice, that Moses’ books were the only ones which the Sadducees received as Canonical Scripture. But the fact is disputable at least, if not certainly false. Others say that our Lord chose to confute them out of the Book of the Law, as being of prime value and of greatest authority. And that indeed is a consideration not without weight. But I conceive that we have no occasion to look far for reasons, when the text itself, with what goes along with it, sufficiently accounts for the whole thing. The Sadducees had formed their objection upon the books of Moses, claiming Moses as a voucher on their side. In such a case it was extremely proper and pertinent (if it could be done) to confute them from Moses himself. It was vindicating Moses’ writings at the same time that it was doing justice to an important truth. Our Lord therefore applied Himself entirely to the clearing up Moses’ sentiments in that article; and He effected it two ways: first, by observing that what the Sadducees had cited from him did not prove what they wished for; and, secondly, by shewing that what he had taught elsewhere fully and clearly disproved it.

III. Consider the force of our Lord’s argument, which was then so clearly apprehended at first hearing by friends and adversaries, and admired by all.—The words which the argument is grounded upon occur in Exo_3:6 : “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” “I am,” not, “I was.” God was then God of those three patriarchs, the latest of whom had been dead above a hundred and seventy years. Still He continued to be their God. What could that mean? Is He a God of lifeless clay, of mouldered carcases, of dust and rottenness? No, sure. Besides, with what propriety of speech could the ashes of the ground be yet called Abraham or Isaac or Jacob? Those names are the names of persons, not of senseless earth; and person always goes where the intelligence goes. Therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still living and intelligent, somewhere or other, when God declared He was still their God—that is to say, they were alive as to their better part, their souls. He is not a God of the dead, but of the living; therefore the soul survives the body. Therefore the Sadducees, who denied the separate subsistence of souls or spirits, were confuted at once, and that by a very clear and plain text, produced even from the books of Moses. But it will be asked, “How does this prove the resurrection of the body, which was the point in question?” I answer that was not the only point, nor the main point, though it follows this other, as I shall shew presently. But even if the argument really reached no further than what I have mentioned, yet it was a very considerable point gained, and the rest was not worth disputing. What they were afraid of was a future account. Now whether men shall give an account in the body or without the body, it would come much to the same; for still there would be an account to be given, and there would remain the like dreadful apprehension of a judgment to come. Here lay the main stress of the dispute; and therefore when our Lord had undeniably proved a future state, He had gone to the very root of the Sadducean principles, and if they once yielded thus far they might readily grant the rest. For if it be considered that death was the punishment of sin, and that every person remaining under that sentence and under the dominion of death still carries about him the badges of the first transgression and the marks of Divine displeasure, it cannot reasonably be supposed that the souls of good men whom God has owned for His shall for ever remain in that inglorious state, but will some time or other be restored to their first honours, or to what they were first ordained to in paradise before sin entered. Wherefore since God is pleased to acknowledge Himself still God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it is highly reasonable to presume that He will in due time restore them to their original privileges, removing from them the chains of death by reuniting soul and body together in a happy and glorious resurrection. Thus the same thread of argument which our Lord began with, and which directly proves the immortality of the soul, does also in conclusion lead us on by just and clear consequences to the resurrection of the body.—Archdeacon Waterland.

OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Mar_12:24-27. Christ’s reply to the Sadducees.—

1. God is able to preserve old forms of life and to produce new.

2. Marriage, birth, and death belong only to the earthly life.

3. The mission of Moses was confirmed by the testimony of Christ.

4. They who are now dead to men still live with God.—J. H. Godwin.

Mar_12:26. The fulness of Scripture.—How much more there is in Scripture than at first sight appears! God spoke to Moses in the burning bush, and called Himself the God of Abraham; and Christ tells us that in this simple announcement was contained the promise that Abraham should rise again from the dead. In truth, if we may say it with reverence, the All-wise, All-knowing God cannot speak without meaning many things at once. He “sees the end from the beginning”; He understands the numberless connexions and relations of all things, one with another. Every word of His is full of instruction, looking many ways; and though it is not often given to us to know these various senses, and we are not at liberty to attempt lightly to imagine them, yet, as far as they are told us, and as far as we may reasonably infer them, we must thankfully accept them (Psa_119:96).—J. H. Newman, D.D.

Mar_12:27. The Divine estimate of death.—In the Infinite view there is not a cemetery in the universe, not a grave on any globe that gleams in the sky. For there is no cessation or interruption of life caused by that which seems to us death. The body, as He looks upon it, is the spirit’s garment only; and however we are called to meet death—whether by slow disease or by water or by fire or by tempest, at the end of years or in youth or in the full powers of manhood, on the sick-bed or the battle-field—to His vision it is but the stripping off of a robe and the liberation of the clothed essence into higher forms of being.—T. Starr King.

Effect on character of belief as to future life.—The belief in a fuller life beyond the grave must influence character indefinitely. Even in days before Christianity, among heathens, it did so. Herodotus tells us of a tribe among the Thracians who believed themselves immortal. “The men of this tribe,” he says, “were the bravest and the most honourable.” It cannot but make a difference whether our hopes end with the grave or not.—W. R. Hutton.

The communion of saints.—Long before light and immortality were brought to light by the gospel, the greatest moral philosopher of the ancient world discussed this question of the relation of the dead to the living in memorable words, and he came to the conclusion that to suppose the departed unmindful of the friends who survive them is too heartless a notion to be entertained. Truly and spiritually, in all the essentials of unity, the departed are with us and we with them: we are still members of the same family of God; one and the same roof is still over us; they have but passed into a brighter and better compartment of the same great home and house of Christ; and whatever they are doing, beholding or enjoying, we cannot believe that they cease to think of us or to pray for us; nay, we cannot but suppose that they think of us now with a purer interest and a deeper love than was ever possible here. Few things are more remarkable than the contrast between the faith of the Church and our practice. Many of us are far behind the heathen in fidelity to our dead. We profess to accept the glorious consolation which is ours through the Risen Christ; we profess to believe that they are all living in God, and that we are one with them, that the whole Church this side the veil and beyond it is one and the same household; and yet we sink into chill indifference, we suffer new interests, new excitement, new faces, to usurp their place and to turn into solemn mockery the hopes and regrets we once inscribed upon their grave. I suppose there can be little doubt that the chief cause of that habit of mind which has made the communion of saints so unreal is the modern disuse of prayers for the departed. They are all but banished from our devotions. For thousands of years, let it be remembered, prayers for the dead were a part of the instituted service of God’s people; they were in use among the Israelites hundreds of years before Christ; they were in use in the synagogue and Temple worship in which He was wont to join, and they are used by the Jews to this day. They are to be found in every ancient liturgy of the Christian Church which has come down to us. But, whatever be the decision to which we see our way on this particular point, let us realise the duty and the blessedness of strengthening by all legitimate means our faith in the indestructible bond which knits in holy communion and fellowship the whole redeemed family of God. We talk and act as though we on this side of the veil constituted the whole Catholic Church; we forget that the majority is elsewhere, that we are but a fraction of it: we forget the great cloud of witnesses gathered during the ages growing day by day, the unseen multitude which no man can number: we think but seldom of that paradise of God, that land of the living, where loyal hearts and true stand ever in the light. Ah, brethren, it is we who are in the shadows and the darkness, not they. Let us be true to their memories: let the thought of what they are and where they are be a continual inspiration; let it lift us above the earthliness and littleness of the present, and shed more and more over mind and heart the solemnising powers of the world to come.—Canon Duckworth.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 12

Mar_12:18-27. Universal belief in immortality.—Almost every religion which has gathered adherents from among the different tribes of men has not only affirmed the doctrine of a future life, but has inculcated it—if not as a basis of morality, as a promise of reward for virtue and right living. “In all the leading nations of the earth the doctrine is a tradition handed down from immemorial antiquity, embalmed in sacred books which are regarded as infallible revelations.” You will find it in some form as well in the ancient religions as in those of later times. Brahminism teaches it; so does Mohammedanism. It forms part of the Confucian theology, and is one of the chief features of the revelation of Christianity. Amid the apparent Nihilism and Atheism of the teaching of Buddha there are gleams of light on the great problem of an immortal future. The Zendavesta unfolds a state beyond death in which man’s destiny is the consequent result of character; and when the Persians decorated the splendid walls of Persepolis, they embodied in sculpture the dominant dogma of their faith—the doctrine of ever-lastingness. In the theology and religious symbolism of ancient Egypt the doctrine of immortality held a most conspicuous place. It was not a dream of the Egyptian priesthood, but a fixed and firm persuasion of the people. And the natives embalmed their dead not merely to preserve them from putrefaction, but as significant of eternal continuance. When we come to Greece and Rome, we find the idea so mixed up with all that is best in the literature of these great nations that we cannot help seeing how largely it affected the faith and hope of the leaders of learning, philosophy, and religion. The best of the Greek poets caught sight in imagination of their favourite heroes transported beyond the waves of death’s dark river—immortal in a land of life. They sang of the Elysian plains, where the εἴδωλα καμόντων—the shadowy images of the dead—moved in a world of shadows, and of “the Islands of the Blest where Achilles and Tydides unlaced the helmets from their flowing hair.” It has been thought that the organisation of the Greek mysteries was the outcome of the nation’s best aspirations for immortal life. The conception of an immortal future so possessed the best of Rome’s philosophers and orators that they declared the troubles of life unworthy to be borne “unless man had within himself the assurance of an after-destiny.” Cicero represents Cato as thus addressing his young friends Scipio and Lælius; “No one shall persuade me, Scipio, that your worthy father, or your grandfathers, Paulus and Africanus, or many other excellent men whom I need not name, performed so many actions to be remembered by posterity without being sensible that futurity was their right. And if I may be allowed an old man’s privilege to speak for myself, can you imagine that I should have submitted to so much painful toil by night and by day, in the forum, in the Senate, and in the field, had I apprehended that my existence and reputation were to terminate with this life? But … I feel myself transported with delight at the thought of again seeing and joining your father, whom on earth I highly respected and dearly loved.… Oh! glorious day when I shall be admitted into the assembly of the wise and the good, … when amidst the happy throng of the immortals I shall find thee also, my son, my Cato, best, most amiable of men.” Seneca—one of Rome’s greatest philosophers—writing to Marcia to console her on the loss of her son, says: “The sacred assembly of the Scipios and Catos, who have themselves despised life, and obtained freedom by death, shall welcome the youth to the region of happy souls.” Centuries before that Cyrus, addressing his sons, as he lay on the bed of death, had given utterance to the same assurance: “Do not imagine, oh, my dear children! that when I leave you I shall cease to exist. For even when I was yet with you my spirit you could not discern; but that it animated this body you were fully assured by the actions I performed. Be assured that it will continue the same, though you see it not. I can never suffer myself to be persuaded that man lives only while he is in the body, and dies when it is dissolved, or that the soul loses all intelligence on being separated from an unintelligent lump of clay; but rather that on being liberated from all mixture with the body, pure and entire, it enters upon its true intellectual existence.” In the Phædo Plato describes Socrates as calmly discussing with his friends, in his last moments, the conditions of the immortal state into which he was about to enter. “Those,” he says, “who have passed through life with peculiar sanctity of manners are received on high into a pure region, where they live without their bodies to all eternity, in a series of joys and delights which cannot be described.” When some reference was made to the interment that was to follow the fatal draught, he replied: “You may bury me if you can catch me.” And then, with a smile, and with an intonation of unfathomable tenderness, he added: “Do not call this poor body Socrates. When I have drunk the poison I shall leave you, and go to the joys of the blessed. I would not have you sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the interment, ‘Thus we lay out Socrates’; or, ‘Thus we follow him to the grave, or bury him.’ Be of good cheer; say that you are burying my body only.”

Mar_12:27. Heaven the land of the living.—A dying lady once said to her brother who was about to take his leave of her without any hope of seeing her again in this world: “Brother, I trust we shall meet in the land of the living. We are now in the land of the dying.”

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

4. The Attack of the Sadducees, and their Overthrow. Mar_12:18-27.

(Parallels: Mat_22:23-33; Luk_20:27-40.)

18     Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying, 19Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man’s brother die, and leave his7 wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. 20Now there were seven8 brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed. 21And the second took her, and died, neither left he9 any seed: and the third likewise. 22And the seven had her, and left no seed: 10 last of all the wo man died also. 23In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife. 24And Jesus answering, said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? 25For when they shall rise11 from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven. 26And as touching the dead, that they rise; have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? 27He is not the God of the dead, but the God12 of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

See Matthew, and the parallel in Luke.—In this section, Mark’s individuality appears only in the more pictorial description of the seven successive marriages; in special supplemental strokes; in the more positive tracing of the error of the Sadducees up to a want of knowledge of the Scriptures and to unbelief; and in the final statement, Ye therefore do greatly err. While the immediate effect of Christ’s word is not presented till the Evangelist comes to relate the next history.

Mar_12:28. When they shall rise.—The immediate, special reference is to the seven. Perhaps doubt is also expressed.

Mar_12:26. How in the bush; that is to say, in the appropriate passage, where the thorn-bush is spoken of—which ye will find something of a thorn-bush.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. Comp. Matthew, and the conclusion of the Apostles’ Creed, Resurrection of the body, etc. John 5; 1 Corinthians 15; 2 Corinthians 5; Daniel 12, etc. Comp the doctrine of the Scripture on the Resurrection, as unfolded in the works upon Biblical Theology, and the teaching of the Church as given in works on Dogmatics; the hopes of immortality cherished by the nations, recorded in histories of religion. Comp. the proofs of an immortality. The writings bearing on the topic from Plato’s Phœdo down.

2. Unbelief has always two springs: 1. The want of historic faith (Te know not the Scriptures); 2. the want of personal faith (Ye know not the power of God).

3. Belief in immortality and belief in angels, or a world of spirits, are most intimately united: so also the respectively opposed elements of unbelief.

4. Unbelief is, on the one hand, united with rude sensuality (“marrying” in that world too); and, on the other, with a wild phantasy (indulging in phantasies upon the future state), and a carnal view of the uniformity obtaining throughout God’s universe (tout comme chez nous).

5. Unbelief, which attacks one part of the truth, understands nothing of that part upon which it intends to support itself in attacking.

6. They tempted the Lord to the abandonment of the doctrine of the resurrection, or to the retaining of it, coupled with polygamy in the future as its consequence. They supposed, He must either state an absurdity, or be struck dumb by their supposed deductio ad absurdum. But they had political designs in addition. Comp. Matthew. They intended that, by a denial of the resurrection, He should deny His work, or should present Himself as an enthusiast, and yield up to the profane world the secret of His hope. Christ sent the especially “wise” home as the especially “foolish.”

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Comp. Matthew.—The Sadducees constitute the historical counter-picture to the Pharisees.—The Sadducees, the deniers of immortality, are immortal.—They invented an improbable, indecent tale to deny a most trustworthy and glorious reality.—They find in the Bible a thorny bush indeed, but not the burning bush.—The sentimental expectations of a bodily sight and possession are not tenable: 1. Too great for the reason; 2. for faith too little; 3. for both preposterous.—The external revelation is not in itself weak through too strong faith, but through credulity springing from too little faith, which believes, 1. Many things, but not much; 2. the extraordinary, but not the miraculous; 3. the spectral, but not the spiritual; 4. the earthly in heavenly hue and dress, but not the heavenly as the glorification of the earthly.—The Sadducees and their faith: I. How they attack faith (while they propound the most improbable views), either, 1. with an improper explanation of Scripture and of the law, 2. with an improper picture of life, and 3. with an improper view of the world; or, 1. with improper reasoning, 2. with improper wit. 2. How faith replies: with, 1. a deeper exposition of Scripture, 2. higher pictures of life, 3. a holier contemplation of the world in the light of God.—They say, our unbelief comes from our knowing: He says, it comes from your not knowing.—The belief in the angels makes the belief in the resurrection a necessity.—One truth of faith explains and strengthens another.—Unbelief in immortality a radical error: 1. A positive confusion; 2. a positive mistake.

Quesnel:—The devil gives the Christian no rest. If one temptation does not entangle, another is tried; hence watchfulness is essential.—Hedinger:—Preformed opinions constitute a hindrance to the truth.—Oh that there were none among Christians who doubt the resurrection! If they venture not to acknowledge their doubt, they manifest nevertheless by their deeds that they believe in no other life.—The thoughts of carnal men regarding the heavenly life are carnal and disreputable.—Canstein:—Christians must stir themselves up, in thinking of the eternal life, to separate themselves ever more and more from the lusts of the body and fleshly-mindedness.

Braune:—It was the extreme fleshly-minded (the Sadducees) who could not comprehend the reality and truth of the spiritual world.—The Gospel of the Risen One has brought forward more clearly for the spirit of man the kingdom of God and the hope of resurrection, of which we have frequent relations in the Acts of the Apostles, where the Sadducees repeatedly appear as foes.—The Saviour unites the Scriptures and the power of God. Hence comes Augustine’s statement, The more we see of the Scripture, the more we die to the world; the more we live to the world, the less we see.—“Reason digs beside (Scripture), Frivolity stalks by, and Pride flies away over” (Zinzendorf). Many of the Rabbis dreamed of marriages according to passages in the prophets, as Isa_65:20; Isa_65:23, where we read of a new heaven and a new earth; and this was not once deemed base by the Pharisees.—Of marriage, accordingly, that alone remains which was spiritual, just as sex in regard to physical distinctions is lost, and that alone remains which had spiritually been developed; for the distinction between sexes, consisting in the development of what relates to spirit, and in that which lays hold of the mind’s most inner nature, continues undoubtedly for ever.—Death breaks all bands, but destroys not existence.

Brieger:—He who has not in various ways experienced that God is the Living One, cannot from the heart believe in any resurrection. Is God called the God of Abraham? much more must He be called the God of Jesus Christ, Joh_5:29; 1Co_15:19; Rom_14:8.

Gossner:—One sort of evil men after another come to Jesus to trouble Him, to tempt Him, instead of seeking their salvation from Him.

Footnotes:

[7][Mar_12:19.—The αὐτοῦ after γυναῖκα is omitted by B., C., L., Δ., Meyer.]

[8][Mar_12:20.—After ἐπτά, Elzevir and Fritzsche have οὖν; it is not found in A., B., C., E., F., L.]

[9][Mar_12:21.—Instead of καὶ οὐδε αὐτὸς ἀφῆκε, B., C., L., Tischendorf read μὴ καταλιπών.]

[10]Mar_12:22.—The reading, καὶ οἱ ἑπτὰ οὐκ ἀφῆκαν σπέρμα, [omitting ἔλαβον αὐτὴν and the second καί,] is strongly supported by B., C., L., Δ., [Tischendorf]; but the demands of the context go to strengthen the Codd. which give the other reading. That no seed was left by the seven, is in and for itself of no importance; it is merely the occasion of the seven taking the same woman to wife.

[11]Mar_12:23.—̓́Οταν ἀναστῶσι is omitted by B., C., L., Δ. Lachmann puts it in parenthesis; Cod. A., &c., support it; and the consideration, that its omission is easier to account for than its insertion, is an additional argument in favor of this reading.

[12]Mar_12:27.—Θεός is wanting with ζώντων in A., B., C., D., Griesbach, Lachmann, and Tischendorf. [Tischendorf omits ὑμεῖς οὖν, after B., C., L., Δ.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

THE RESURRECTION

Mat 22:23-33; Mar 12:18-27; Luk 20:27-40. “And certain ones of the Sadducees coming to Him, who deny that there is a resurrection, interrogated Him, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote to us [Deu 25:5], If the brother of any one may die, having a wife, and he may die childless, that his brother must take his wife, and raise up seed to his brother. Then there were seven brothers; the first taking a wife, died childless. And the second. took the wife, and he died childless. And the third received her; and likewise also the seven; and they left no children, and died. And last of all the woman also died. Therefore in the resurrection whose wife is she? for the seven had her a wife. And Jesus, responding, said to them, The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those considered worthy to reach that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are they given in marriage; for they are not able to die any more: for they are equal to the angels, and they are the sons of God, being the sons of the resurrection. And that the dead rise, Moses mentioned at the bush, as he says the Lord is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto Him. And certain ones of the scribes, responding, said, Teacher, you spoke well. And no one any more dared to ask Him anything.” While the Sadducees were the richest denomination of the Jewish Church, they leaned much to materialism, being heterodoxal on the resurrection, as well as the great spiritual truths of the Bible generally. The Pharisees, boasting of their orthodoxy, were rivals and antagonists of the Sadducees, as well as the Herodians. While these three parties were all antagonistical, either to other, it is remarkable how they united and cooperated in their constant and uncompromising opposition to Jesus. They felt that in the case of the woman surviving the seventh husband, they certainly. would get Him into a puzzle. But while in this they were signally mistaken, the multitude are astounded over the deep truths brought out in His answers to their questions.

a. He here corroborates the Scripture with reference to another age following this, as He says, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those being found worthy to attain unto that age, indeed the resurrection which is from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage;” showing up the/act that the present probation and the resurrection state constitute two distinct ages, yet contrastive either with other, the resurrection age beginning at the second coming of Christ, when He will raise the saints, who shall reign with Him during the millennium. (Revelation 21.)

b. We see from these utterances of our Lord that matrimony is peculiar only to these material bodies in this probationary age, there being no such thing as sexual distinction in the kingdom of grace and glory. In Him there is neither male nor female. (Gal 3:26.) Consequently the matrimonial state does not survive the present probationary, age.

c. Our Lord also says that in the resurrection state, we are isaggeloi, from isos, “equal,” and aggelos, “an angel.” Therefore you see that the glorious resurrection confers on us angelic perfection. Angels have often been seen upon the earth. Hence they must have some kind of a body or form. While in the resurrection we will receive these identical bodies in which we now live, yet they will be perfectly free from matter or anything like physical organism. They will be pure spiritual entities, yet identical with themselves in the present life, but having all ponderable matter eliminated away. Hence you see that in the resurrection age we will be like the angels, and immortal forever.

d. How beautiful, and yet how conclusive, His argument deduced from the burning bush, proving the resurrection in a way never thought of by mortal man, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!” Now, as He says, He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. God does not do a fragmentary work, but solid and complete. Hence these patriarchs, as well as all the rest of us, must have bodies in order to completion in the highest sense. In the Divine estimation, the future is all present and under His eye. Hence He looks upon Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the resurrection state. It is equally true that He thus contemplates all. Here, again, we see His critics so dumfounded that they interrogate Him no more.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTER 12:18-27 (Mar_12:18-27)

CHRIST AND THE SADDUCCEES

"And there come unto Him Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection: and they asked Him, saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man's brother die, and leave a wife behind him, and leave no child, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. There were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed; and the second took her, and died, leaving no seed behind him; and the third likewise: and the seven left no seed. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife. Jesus said unto them, Is it not for this cause that ye err, that ye know not the Scriptures, nor the power of God? For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as angels in heaven. But as touching the dead, that they are raised; have ye not read in the book of Moses, in the place concerning the Bush, how God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: ye do greatly err." Mar_12:18-27 (R.V.)

CHRIST came that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed. And so it was, that when He had silenced the examination of the hierarchy, and baffled their craft, the Sadducees were tempted to assail Him. Like the rationalists of every age, they stood coldly aloof from popular movements, and we seldom find them interfering with Christ or His followers, until their energies were roused by the preaching of His Resurrection, so directly opposed to their fundamental doctrines.

Their appearance now is extremely natural. The repulse of every other party left them the only champions of orthodoxy against the new movement, with everything to win by success, and little to lose by failure. There is a tone of quiet and confident irony in their interrogation, well befitting an upper-class group, a secluded party of refined critics, rather than practical teachers with a mission to their fellow-men. They break utterly new ground by raising an abstract and subtle question, a purely intellectual problem, but one which reduced the doctrine of a resurrection to an absurdity, if only their premises can be made good. And this peculiarity is often overlooked in criticism upon our Lord's answer. Its intellectual subtlety was only the adoption by Christ of the weapons of His adversaries. But at the same time, He lays great and special stress upon the authority of Scripture, in this encounter with the party which least acknowledged it.

Their objection, stated in its simplest form, is the complication which would result if the successive ties for which death makes room must all revive together when death is abolished. If a woman has married a second time, whose wife shall she be? But their statement of the case is ingenious, but only because they push the difficulty to an absurd and ludicrous extent, but much more so because they base it upon a Divine ordinance. If there be a Resurrection, Moses must answer for all the confusion that will ensue, for Moses gave the commandment, by virtue of which a woman married seven times. No offspring of any union gave it a special claim upon her future life. "In the Resurrection, whose wife shall she be of them?" they ask, conceding with a quiet sarcasm that this absurd event must needs occur.

For these controversialists the question was solely of the physical tie, which had made of twain one flesh. They had no conception that the body can be raised otherwise than as it perished, and they rightly enough felt certain that on such a resurrection woeful complications must ensue.

Now Jesus does not rebuke their question with such stern words as He had just employed to others, "Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?" They were doubtless sincere in their conviction, and at least they had not come in the disguise of perplexed inquirers and almost disciples. He blames them, but more gently: "Is it not for this cause that ye err, because ye know not the Scriptures, nor the power of God?" They could not know one and not the other, but the boastful wisdom of this world, so ready to point a jibe by quoting Moses, had never truly grasped the meaning of the writer it appealed to.

Jesus, it is plain, does not quote Scripture only as having authority with His opponents: He accepts it heartily: He declares that human error is due to ignorance of its depth and range of teaching; and He recognizes the full roll of the sacred books "the Scriptures."

It has rightly been said, that none of the explicit statements, commonly relied upon, do more to vindicate for Holy Writ the authority of our Lord, than this simple incidental question.

Jesus proceeded to restate the doctrine of the Resurrection and then to prove it; and the more His brief words are pondered, the more they will expand and deepen.

St. Paul has taught us that the dead in Christ shall rise first (1Th_4:16). Of such attainment it is written, Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection (Rev_20:6).

Now since among the lost there could be no question of family ties, and consequent embarrassments, Jesus confines His statement to these happy ones, of whom the Sadducee could think no better than that their new life should be a reproduction of their existence here,--a theory which they did wisely in rejecting. He uses the very language taken up afterwards by His apostle, and says, "When they shall rise from the dead." And He asserts that marriage is at an end, and they are as the angels in heaven. Here is no question of the duration of pure and tender human affection, nor do these words compromise in any degree the hopes of faithful hearts, which cling to one another. Surely we may believe that in a life which is the outcome and resultant of this life, as truly as the grain is of the seed, in a life also where nothing shall be forgotten, but on the contrary we shall know what we know not now, there, tracing back the flood of their immortal energies to obscure fountains upon earth, and seeing all that each has owed half unconsciously to the fidelity and wisdom of the other, the true partners and genuine helpmeets of this world shall forever drink some peculiar gladness, each from the other's joy. There is no reason why the close of formal unions which include the highest and most perfect friendships, should forbid such friendships to survive and flourish in the more kindly atmosphere of heaven.

What Christ asserts is simply the dissolution of the tie, as an inevitable consequence of such a change in the very nature of the blessed ones as makes the tie incongruous and impossible. In point of fact, marriage as the Sadducee thought of it, is but the counterpoise of death, renewing the race which otherwise would disappear, and when death is swallowed up, it vanishes as an anachronism. In heaven "they are as the angels," the body itself being made "a spiritual body," set free from the appetites of the flesh, and in harmony with the glowing aspirations of the spirit, which now it weighs upon and retards. If any would object that to be as the angels is to be without a body, rather than to possess a spiritual body, it is answer enough that the context implies the existence of a body, since no person ever spoke of a resurrection of the soul. Moreover it is an utterly unwarrantable assumption that angels are wholly without substance. Many verses appear to imply the opposite, and the cubits of measurement of the New Jerusalem were "according to the measure of a man, that is of an angel" (Rev_21:17), which seems to assert a very curious similarity indeed.

The objection of the Sadducees was entirely obviated, therefore, by the broader, bolder, and more spiritual view of a resurrection which Jesus taught. And by far the greater part of the cavils against this same doctrine which delight the infidel lecturer and popular essayist of today would also die a natural death, if the free and spiritual teaching of Jesus, and its expansion by St. Paul, were understood. But we breathe a wholly different air when we read the speculations even of so great a thinker as St. Augustine, who supposed that we should rise with bodies somewhat greater than our present ones, because all the hair and nails we ever trimmed away must be diffused throughout the mass, lest they should produce deformity by their excessive proportions (De Civitate Dei, 22:19). To all such speculation, he who said, To every seed his own body, says, Thou fool, thou sowest not that body that shall be. But though Jesus had met these questions, it did not follow that His doctrine was true, merely because a certain difficulty did not apply. And, therefore, He proceeded to prove it by the same Moses to whom they had appealed, and whom Jesus distinctly asserts to be the author of the book of Exodus. God said, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living: ye do greatly err."

The argument is not based upon the present tense of the verb to be in this assertion, for in the Greek the verb is not expressed. In fact the argument is not a verbal one at all; or else it would be satisfied by the doctrine of the immortality of the spirit, and would not establish any resurrection of the body. It is based upon the immutability of God, and, therefore, the imperishability of all that ever entered into vital and real relationship with Him. To cancel such a relationship would introduce a change into the Eternal. And Moses, to whom they appealed, had heard God expressly proclaim Himself the God of those who had long since passed out of time. It was, therefore, clear that His relationship with them lived on, and this guaranteed that no portion, even the humblest, of their true personality should perish. Now the body is as real a part of humanity, as the soul and spirit are, although a much lowlier part. And, therefore, it must not really die.

It is solemn to observe how Jesus, in this second part of His argument, passes from the consideration of the future of the blessed to that of all mankind; "as touching the dead that they are raised." With others than the blessed, therefore, God has a real though a dread relationship. And it will prove hard to reconcile this argument of Christ with the existence of any time when any soul shall be extinguished.

"The body is for the Lord," said St. Paul. arguing against the vices of the flesh, "and the Lord for the body." From these words of Christ he may well have learned that profound and far-reaching doctrine, which will never have done its work in the Church and in the world, until whatever defiles, degrades, or weakens that which the Lord has consecrated is felt to blaspheme by implication the God of our manhood, unto Whom all our life ought to be lived; until men are no longer dwarfed in mines, nor poisoned in foul air, nor massacred in battle, men whose intimate relationship with God the Eternal is of such a kind as to guarantee the resurrection of the poor frames which we destroy.

How much more does this great proclamation frown upon the sins by which men dishonor their own flesh. "Know ye not," asked the apostle, carrying the same doctrine to its utmost limit, "that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost?" So truly is God our God.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

12:18-27 This is the third controversy story of the series begun in 11:27. As in most New Testament references to the Sadducees, the setting is the Temple (Matt 22:23-33 // Luke 20:27-40; Acts 4:1-3; 5:12, 17; 22:30–23:10; the exceptions are Matt 3:7; 16:1-12). • The Sadducees’ question (Mark 12:19-23) was carefully crafted and based on a commandment of Moses (Deut 25:5-6; see Gen 38:6-11; Ruth 4:1-22). Since all seven men could not have the woman as wife in the resurrection, and since none of them had a special claim, the Sadducees thought that they had proven the absurdity of the doctrine of the resurrection and refuted the Pharisees and Jesus (cp. Matt 12:41-42; Luke 16:19-31; see also Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34).

12:18 This is the only place in Mark where the Sadducees are mentioned by name, although they are included in references to the leading priests (see 8:31; 10:33; 11:18, 27). Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection from the dead (see Acts 4:1-2; 23:8).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Mar_12:18-27.[149] See on Mat_22:23-33, who narrates more briefly and smoothly. Comp. Luk_20:27-40.

ἐπηρώτων] Imperfect, as at Mar_12:17.

Mar_12:19. ὅτι is recitative, and ἵνα is the imperative to be explained by the volo that lies at the root of the expression (see on 2Co_8:7; Eph_5:33). Comp. on ὅτι before the imperative, Plat. Crit. p. 50 C: ἴσως ἂν εἴποιεν (the laws), ὅτι … μὴ θαύμαζε τὰ λεγόμενα.

The ἐπιγαμβρεύσει, which Matthew has here, is a later annexation to the original text of the law. Anger, Diss. II. p. 32, takes another view (in favour of Matthew).

Mar_12:20. ἑπτά] emphatically prefixed, and introduced in a vivid way without οὖν.

Mar_12:21. καὶ οὐδὲ αὐτός] and also not he.

καὶ ὁ τρίτος ὡσαύτ.] namely, he took her and died without children; comp. what has gone before.

Mar_12:23. ὅταν ἀναστῶσι] when they shall have risen, not an epexegesis of ἐν τῇ ἀναστάσει: but the discourse goes from the general to the particular, so that the seven brothers and the woman is the subject of ἀναστῶσι.

Mar_12:24. διὰ τοῦτο] does not point back to what has gone before (ipse sermo vester prodit errorem vestrum, Bengel), which must have been expressed, but forward to the participle which follows: do ye not err on this account, because ye do not understand? See Maetzner, ad Antiph. p. 219; Bornemann in the Stud. u. Krit. 1843, p. 137 f.; Winer, p. 146 f. [E. T. 201 f.].

Mar_12:25. ὅταν … ἀναστῶσιν] generally, not as at Mar_12:23.

γαμίζονται] The form γαμίσκω (Arist. Pol. vii. 14. 4) is not indeed to be read here (see the critical remarks), but neither is it, with Fritzsche, altogether to be banished out of the N. T. It is beyond doubt genuine in Luk_20:34 f.

Mar_12:26. ὅτι ἐγείρονται] that they, namely, etc.; this is the conclusion to be provedthe doctrinal position denied by the interrogators.

ἐπὶ τοῦ βάτου] belongs to what has preceded (in opposition to Beza) as a more precise specification of ἐν τῷ βιβλ. M.: at the (well-known) thorn-bush, i.e. there, where it is spoken of, Exo_3:6. See on quotations of a similar kind, Jablonsky, Bibl. Hebr. praef. § 37; Fritzsche, ad Rom_11:2. Polybius, Theophrastus, and others have βάτος as masculine. It usually occurs as feminine (Luk_20:37; Deu_33:16), but at Exo_3:2-4, likewise as masculine.

Mar_12:27. According to the amended text (see the critical remarks): He is not God of dead men, but of living! Much ye err!

[149] Hitzig, Joh. Mark. p. 219 ff., places the Pericope of the adulteress, Joh_7:53 ff., after ver. 17, wherein Holtzmann, p. 92 ff., comparing it with Luk_21:37 f., so far follows him as to assume that it had stood in the primitive-Mark, and had been omitted by all the three Synoptists. Hilgenfeld (in his Zeitschr. 1863, p. 317) continues to attribute it to John. It probably belonged originally to one of the sources of Luke that are unknown to us.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mar 12:18-27 . The resurrection question (Mat 22:23-33 , Luk 20:27-30 ).

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The resurrection of the body is avouched against the foolish ignorance and malice of the Sadducees.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

The Sadducees, who were the deists of that age, here attack our Lord Jesus, it should seem, not as the scribes, and Pharisees, and chief-priests, with any malicious design upon his person; they were not bigots and persecutors, but sceptics and infidels, and their design was upon his doctrine, to hinder the spreading of that: they denied that there was any resurrection, and world of spirits, any state of rewards and punishments on the other side of death: now those great and fundamental truths which they denied, Christ had made it his business to establish and prove, and had carried the notion of them much further that ever it was before carried; and therefore they set themselves to perplex his doctrine.

I. See here the method they take to entangle it; they quote the ancient law, by which, if a man died without issue, his brother was obliged to marry his widow, Mar 12:19. They suppose a case to happen that, according to that law, seven brothers were, successively, the husbands of one woman, Mar 12:20. Probably, these Sadducees, according to their wonted profaneness, intended hereby to ridicule that law, and so to bring the whole frame of the Mosaic institution into contempt, as absurd and inconvenient in the practice of it. Those who deny divine truths, commonly set themselves to disparage divine laws and ordinances. But this was only by the by; their design was to expose the doctrine of the resurrection; for they suppose that if there be a future state, it must be such a one as this, and then the doctrine, they think, is clogged either with this invincible absurdity, that a woman in that state must have seven husbands, or else with this insolvable difficulty, whose wife must she be. See with what subtlety these heretics undermine the truth; they do not deny it, nor say, There can be no resurrection; nay, they do not seem to doubt of it, nor say, If there be a resurrection, whose wife shall she be? as the devil to Christ, If thou be the Son of God. But, as though these beasts of the field were more subtle than the serpent himself, they pretend to own the truth, as if they were not Sadducees, no not they; who said that they denied the resurrection? They take it for granted that there is a resurrection, and would be thought to desire instruction concerning it, when really they are designing to give a fatal stab, and think that they shall do it. Note, It is the common artifice of heretics and Sadducees to perplex and entangle the truth, which they have not the impudence to deny.

II. See here the method Christ takes to clear and establish this truth, which they attempted to darken, and give a shock to. This was a matter of moment, and therefore Christ does not pass it over lightly, but enlarges upon it, that, if they should not be reclaimed, yet others might be confirmed.

1. He charges the Sadducees with error, and charges that upon their ignorance. They who banter the doctrine of the resurrection as some do in our age, would be thought the only knowing men, because the only free thinkers, when really they are the fools in Israel, and the most enslaved and, prejudiced thinkers in the world. Do ye not therefore err? Ye cannot but be sensible of it yourselves, and that the cause of your error is, (1.) Because ye do not know the scriptures. Not but that the Sadducees had read the scriptures, and perhaps were ready in them; yet they might be truly said not to know the scriptures, because they did not know the sense and meaning of them, but put false constructions upon them; or they did not receive the scriptures as the word of God, but set up their own corrupt reasonings in opposition to the scripture, and would believe nothing but what they could see. Note, A right knowledge of the scripture, as the fountain whence all revealed religion now flows, and the foundation on which it is built, is the best preservative against error. Keep the truth, the scripture-truth, and it shall keep thee. (2.) Because ye know not the power of God. They could not but know that God is almighty, but they would not apply that doctrine to this matter, but gave up the truth to the objections of the impossibility of it, which would all have been answered, if they had but stuck to the doctrine of God's omnipotence, to which nothing is impossible. This therefore which God hath spoken once, we are concerned to hear twice, to hear and believe, to hear and apply - that power belongs to God, Psa 62:11; Rom 4:19-21. The same power that made soul and body and preserved them while they were together, can preserve the body safe, and the soul active, when they are parted, and can unite them together again; for behold, the Lord's arm is not shortened. The power of God, seen in the return of the spring (Psa 104:30), in the reviving of the corn (Joh 12:24), in the restoring of an abject people to their prosperity (Eze 37:12-14), in the raising of so many to life, miraculously, both in the Old Testament and in the New, and especially in the resurrection of Christ (Eph 1:19, Eph 1:20), are all earnests of our resurrection by the same power (Phi 3:21); according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.

2. He sets aside all the force of their objection, by setting the doctrine of the future state in a true light (Mar 12:25); When they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage. It is a folly to ask, Whose wife shall she be of the seven? For the relation between husband and wife, though instituted in the earthly paradise, will not be known in the heavenly one. Turks and infidels expect sensual pleasures in their fools' paradise, but Christians know better things - that flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God (Co1 15:50); and expect better things - even a full satisfaction in God's love and likeness (Psa 17:15); they are as the angels of God in heaven, and we know that they have neither wives nor children. It is no wonder if we confound ourselves with endless absurdities, when we measure our ideas of the world of spirits by the affairs of this world of sense.

III. He builds the doctrine of the future state, and of the blessedness of the righteous in that state, upon the covenant of God with Abraham, which God was pleased to own, being after Abraham's death, Mar 12:26, Mar 12:27. He appeals to the scriptures; Have ye not read in the book of Moses? We have some advantage in dealing with those that have read the scriptures, though many that have read them, wrest them, as these Sadducees did, to their own destruction. Now that which he refers them to is, what God says to Moses at the bush, I am the God of Abraham; not only, I was so, but I am so; I am the portion and happiness of Abraham, a God all-sufficient to him. Note, It is absurd to think that God's relation to Abraham should be continued, and thus solemnly recognised, if Abraham was annihilated, or that the living God should be the portion and happiness of a man that is dead, and must be for ever so; and therefore you must conclude, 1. That Abraham's soul exists and acts as a state of separation from the body. 2. That therefore, some time or other, the body must rise again; for there is such an innate inclination in a human soul towards its body, as would make a total and everlasting separation inconsistent with the ease and repose, much more with the bliss and joy of those souls that have the Lord for their God. Upon the whole matter, he concludes, Ye therefore do greatly err. Those that deny the resurrection, greatly err, and ought to be told so.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 18. See this question, concerning the resurrection, explained in detail on Mt 22:23-32.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(18-27) Then come unto him the Sadducees.—See Notes on Mat_22:15-22.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

18–27. The Question of the Sadducees Respecting the Resurrection

18. the Sadducees] Hitherto the Sadducees, “few, rich, and dignified,” had stood aloof, and affected to ignore the disciples of the despised “Prophet of Nazareth.”

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now there were seven brethren,.... In a certain family, at a certain place; perhaps at Jerusalem, who were brethren by the father's side; for such only were reckoned so, and such only did this law oblige:

and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed: no child: hence it is clear that the ancient Jews used the word seed, of a single person, as these Sadducees did; though modern ones deny such an use of it in our present controversies with them about the sense of Gen 3:15; See Gill on Mat 22:25.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

18 Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying,

Ver. 18. {See Trapp on "Mat 22:23"}

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

See this passage fully explained in the notes at Mat 22:23-33.

Mar 12:25

Are as the angels - That is, as the angels in respect to connections and relations. What those connections and relations may be we know not, but this passage teaches that the special relation of “marriage” will not exist. It does not affirm, however, that there will be no recollection of former marriages, or no recognition of each other as having existed in this tender relation.

Mar 12:26

How in the bush - At the burning bush. See Exo 3:16. The meaning is, “in that part of the book of Exodus which contains the account of the burning bush. When there were no chapters and verses, it was the easiest way of quoting a book of the Old Testament “by the subject,” and in this way it was often done by the Jews.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 18-23. And there come unto him Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection. Josephus states that in the time of Judas Maceabaeus there were three sects of the Jews, differing amongst themselves, namely, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The Hebrew word Zadoc, from which the Sadducees derive their name, means "just." or" righteous." These Sadducees accepted the Pentateuch, and probably more than the Pentateuch; but they rejected any oral tradition. They were known in the time of our Lord as denying those doctrines which connect us more immediately with another world, such as the existence of spirits and of angels, and the resurrection of the body. They altogether denied fate, affirming that all things are in our own power. They heard Christ preach the resurrection, and by means of it persuade men to repentance and a holy life. They therefore proposed to him a question which appeared to them to be fatal to the doctrine of a future state and a resurrection. The case supposed is that of seven brethren, who, in compliance with the Law of Moses, one after another, as each died in succession, took the same woman to wife. It is probable that such a case may actually have occurred; at any rate, it was a possible case. And the question founded upon it by the Sadducees was this Whose wife would she be of them in the resurrection? Here, then, they hoped to entangle him, and to show that the doctrine of the resurrection was absurd. For if our Lord should say that in the resurrection she would be the wife of one only, the other brethren would have been excited to envy and continual strife. Nor could he have said that she would be common to the seven brothers. Such were the absurdities which, as they intimated, would flow out of his doctrine of the resurrection, if it could be proved. But our Lord scatters to the winds all this foolish reasoning, by adding one clause omitted by them, and overlooked by men of mere earthly minds, namely, that in the world to come this widow would be the wife of none of the seven brethren.

Vers. 18-27. Sadducees confuted.

Of all the subjects which awaken the speculative curiosity and inquiry of men, none approaches, in dignity and importance, the future life. The nobler spirits, in every civilized and cultured community, have either held as an article of faith, or have cherished with fondest hope, the prospect of immortality. Annihilation is a prospect which none but the degraded and sinful can consent to accept without shuddering horror. It has often been observed as very remarkable, though not inexplicable, that the Pentateuch contains no express, explicit statement regarding a future life. It appears that the revelation of immortality was progressive; for expectations regarding a conscious existence of happiness after death are certainly found with growing frequency in the later books of the Old Testament. The psalmists and prophets rejoiced in the hope of a heavenly rest and an imperishable fellowship with the Father of spirits. At the time of our Lord"s ministry there was a division among the religious authorities of the Jewish people upon this all-important subject; the Pharisees holding to the doctrines of immortality and resurrection, and the Sadducees denying and apparently ridiculing both. Amongst the Sadducees were many of the most intellectual of the upper classes of society. They also retained in their own leading families the office of high priest. Both our Lord Christ and his apostle Paul took a very decided stand against the Sadducaic doctrine and party. During the last week of our Lord"s ministry, when the conflict with his enemies was reaching its height, many assaults were made from various quarters against Jesus and his claims and teaching. This passage records the attack of the rationalistic party upon the Divine Master, and his original and conclusive repulse of that attack.

I THE REASONING OF THE SADDUCEES AGAINST THE TEACHING OF OUR LORD UPON IMMORTALITY AND RESURRECTION.

1. It was indirect reasoning. Instead of attacking the doctrine, they simply attacked a supposed inference from it, viz. the continuance of physical human relations in another life.

2. It was frivolous reasoning. They must have found it hard to state with serious faces a case so absurd. It would have been childish had they supposed the woman to have married twice; the supposition that she should confront in the resurrection life the rival claims of seven husbands was ridiculous. This is not the temper in which great problems regarding human destiny should be discussed.

3. It was inconclusive; for no one of the alternative solutions of the difficulty proposed would have been incompatible with a future life.

II THE GENERAL REPLY OF THE LORD JESUS TO THIS REASONING.

1. He refutes the argument, if it can be so called, which they had adduced. Marriage is an earthly institution, and is especially adapted to a mortal race, providing that generation shall succeed generation. Love is indeed imperishable, and shall be perfected in heaven; but marriage shall no longer be necessary when men shall be equal to the angels, and shall sin and die no more. Therefore no reasoning founded upon the continuance of this physical relationship has place with reference to the life beyond the grave. He bases the doctrine of the future life upon the power of God, which they strangely overlooked. It is the reasoning which was repeated by St. Paul, "Why should it be thought a thing impossible with you that God should raise the dead?" The omnipotence which first called human nature into being is surely able to revive the spirit and perpetuate its consciousness and activity. This is an unanswerable argument still against all dogmatic denial of the future life. It does not in itself establish the doctrine, but it is conclusive against those who deny it. It removes the presumption from the opponents to the upholders of immortality.

2. He refers to the Scriptures for grounds for belief in a future life. Those who admitted their authority would find it hard to reconcile such admission with disbelief in the resurrection.

III THE SPECIAL ARGUMENT BY WHICH THE LORD JESUS ESTABLISHES FAITH IN IMMORTALITY AND A FUTURE LIFE.

1. Jesus refers to an authority which the Sadducees professed emphatically to revere the Pentateuch. "The Law" was their especial pride, and they may have justified their scepticism by the absence of explicit teaching upon this great doctrine from the books of Moses.

2. Jesus quotes a familiar passage, in which he reads, or from which he deduces, a new and striking and convincing argument. It is upon record that God declared himself to Moses as "the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob." Now, what did this imply? That God had been their God, but that, they having ceased to exist, he was no longer? Or, that he was the God of their mouldering or dispersed dust, which, upon the theory of annihilation, was all that remained of them? Either those who had been wont to read this passage must have passed it over without reflection, or they must have been satisfied with an interpretation crude and empty. Or else they must have drawn the inference which the great Master now drew: "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." Once he declares himself his people"s God, he remains such for ever; and they remain his, conscious recipients of his favor, and responsive partakers of his Divine and Fatherly love. He is a covenant God; his promises are never broken, and his declarations never fail. An immortal God involves the immortality of those whom he has created in his image, redeemed by his grace, renewed by his Spirit. If he is what he has revealed himself as being, if his people are what he has declared them to be, then death has no power over them; they are destined to "glory, honor, and immortality." For "all live in him.

Vers. 18-27. The puzzle of the Sadducees.

I THE CASE STATED. An extreme one; and probably a locus classicus in the works of the rabbins. It was supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum of all theories of resurrection or immortality. "In the resurrection" is used apparently in a pregnant sense, as including the judgment, when all questions would be decided, and the conditions of the future state settled.

The case as stated referred only to legal and external conditions, questions of sentiment or spiritual attachment being ignored. The only case in Scripture of Christ coming into direct collision with the Sadducees. That the questioners were not maliciously disposed in presenting these difficulties may be inferred from the manner in which they are answered: not indignantly, or with an epithet expressing moral condemnation; but in a straightforward, matter-of-fact way, although censure is also expressed a kind of censure peculiarly distasteful to such men, who generally pretend to grit originality and critical acumen. They are accused of ignorance and spiritual inexperience.

II How CHRIST DISPOSED OF IT.

1. By reference to the possibilities of Divine power. "In the resurrection state there will not be a repetition, pure and simple, of present conditions; there will be advance of inward and outward development. Love will continue; but in the case of the holy it will be sublimed. "The power of God" is adequate, not only to the re-formative, but also to the transformative changes that may be requisite; and his wisdom will see to it that they be in harmony with the perfectibility of individual personality and the general procession of the ages. Even on earth there are loftier loves than those that are merely marital" (Morison). "They neither marry, nor are given in marriage." "His words teach absolutely the absence from the resurrection life of the definite relations on which marriage rests in this, and they suggest an answer to the yearning questions which rise up in our minds as we ponder the things behind the veil... The old relations may subsist under new conditions. Things that are incompatible here may there be found to coexist. The saintly wife of two saintly husbands may love both with an angelic, and therefore a pure and unimpaired, affection. The contrast between our Lord"s teaching and the sensual paradise of Mahomet, or Swedenberg"s dream of the marriage state perpetuated under its earthly conditions, is so obvious as hardly to call for notice" (Plumptre). "The present life is but a partial revelation of the Divine power. All the relations of earthly families do not continue in heaven" (Godwin).

2. By interpretation of Scripture. Not the letter of Scripture is appealed to, but the underlying truth involved in the statement of Scripture, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. " The copula connecting the first clause of the quotation is not in the original, so that no argument can be founded upon it. Professor Plumptre"s explanation principle implied in the reasoning is, that the union of the Divine Name with that of a man, as in "I am the God of Abraham," involved a relation existing, not in the past only, but when the words were uttered. They meant something more than "I am the God whom Abraham worshipped in the past is, therefore, manifestly inadequate. That of Dr. Morison is more explicit and profound: "It amounted to this: If there was at all a patriarchal dispensation, embracing a Messianic, or redemptive scheme, and thus involving a Divinely commissioned Messiah or Redeemer, who was to be in due time incarnated, then there must be a life to come. But there was such a dispensation, if it be the case that God became the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," in any distinctive sense whatever. And then, moreover, as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob took personal advantage of the Messianic covenant into which God entered with them, they "live" They have "life," "everlasting life," in the intense acceptation of the term" (in loc. ). Cf. Heb_11:13, Heb_11:14, Heb_11:16. A more direct proof might have been obtained in other portions of the Old Testament, but the skill of this argument lay in the reference to a book received by the Sadducees, and in the unexpected interpretation of familiar words. Thus their liberalism and narrowness were rebuked, and the popular longing of the Jews confirmed. The line of evidence led by Christ not only meets the objection to resurrection, but includes the proof of that of which resurrection is only a portion, viz. immortality. If such depth of meaning lay in the words of an old pre-Christian revelation, what may not the gospel itself unfold, when spiritually interpretated in the light of new conditions and experiences

Vers. 18-27. The resurrection from the dead.

A new class of antagonists now assail the great "Master" with a case of casuistry, designed evidently to bring the doctrine of the resurrection into contempt. "In the resurrection whose wife shall she be of them?" Was this one of the flimsy, difficulties on which they relied for a defense of their position, as so often men screen their scepticism behind a mere veil of difficulty? And did they depend in any real degree upon an imaginary inconsistency to warrant them in denying the grandest hopes of the human heart? Be it so or not, they gave opportunity for the most precious defense of the common faith. The Church to-day is rich in an inheritance of defensive writing drawn from the pens of holy apostles and righteous men. But though it is of unspeakable value to her to read the inestimable words of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, yet to them who have wholly committed themselves to Jesus, who truly own him as "Master," and no other, it is most comforting to find him entering the lists against all Sadducean unbelief for all ages. It is enough: Jesus is the defender of the faith. We want no more. In one sentence we read both an answer to the difficulty and a confirmation of the truth: "For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as angels in heaven." Thus is clearly revealed

(1) The fact of the resurrection; and

(2) the conditions of the resurrection life.

I The first clear teaching is, THE DEAD LIVE. "That the dead are raised even Moses showed;" so little had these sons of Moses understood his words. And now Jesus shows it more clearly, and points to the life as an immortal life: "Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection." True, this is affirmed of them "that are accounted worthy to attain to that world, and the resurrection from the dead." But that "the dead that is, all the dead raised Moses showed, as touching the dead that they are raised." Oh, precious words! Thanks be to God, life does not end in a tomb I Abraham and Isaac and Jacob live; yea, "all live unto him," if unto us they die. Jesus points to the source of all error on this as on so many subjects: "Ye know not the Scriptures, nor the power of God." On these two hang all the true faith of men. No one can read "the Scriptures" and deny the resurrection. In Jesus" view the old Scriptures sufficiently affirmed the great truth. And he who in these days would defend himself against the assaults of unbelief must sit at the feet of Jesus. No one can doubt his belief in the resurrection. "And why is it judged incredible?" All difficulties vanish in presence of "the power of God." If the question of the "foolish one" be urged, "How? How are the dead raised?" the only answer faith should vouchsafe is, "The power of God." And if the further demand is pressed, but "with what manner of body do they come?" it must still be replied, "God giveth it a body." Let the true believer stand by the Word of God. The resurrection rests not for its certainty on a foundation of human ratiocination or scientific deduction, neither is it by them to be overturned. The one impregnable wall of defense for this most precious article of human faith and this most precious condition of human life is in the combined words, "The Scriptures: the power of God.

II As to the CONDITION OF THE RESURRECTION LIFE. We wait to know this. One only truth is enough to carry with us, an earnest of all angels in heaven." The truths are almost antiphonal: "Neither can they die any more; as angels in heaven. G.

Vers. 18-27. Sadducean error.

I DIFFICULTIES OF RELIEF ARE OFTEN IDLE LUXURIES OF THE MIND. One cannot suppose that these men were really troubled by such a question as they raised. It was sheer idleness, bred of useless school life. And so with many theoretical questions pretended to be of serious importance: pressing into what is inaccessible and kept in reserve by God. They are "solved by walking." Act act rightly here and now, and the question will solve itself, or cease to interest.

II DISINGENUOUS REASONING FALLS INTO STUPIDITY. What else but childish is this confusion of earthly relations with the spiritual kingdom? Marriage, birth, and death are time-changes; belong to the idea of earth and time, not to eternity. And the least instructed mind feels that this is so. There are enough mysteries in the present life to engage our attention without prying into those beyond.

III THE RAY OF TRUTH. The one great historic Word, the basis of the national consciousness, sheds its sufficient light upon the question. God does not claim dead objects for his own. Souls that he calls his, "do of his own dear life partake," and "never will he them forsake." It was a mystical interpretation of the ancient Word; and often there are times when we may take refuge in the mystical interpretation, and feel that it is the deepest and the best. "Those who are now dead to men still live in God. J.

Vers. 18-27. Parallel passages: Mat_22:23-33 Luk_20:27-40. Question of the Sadducees touching the resurrection.

I IMPORTANCE OF THE QUESTION. Though the question propounded in this section was proposed for a captious purpose, and in order to entangle, yet, divested of its technicalities, it is a most important one. There is no subject more closely connected with the immortal hopes of man than that to which the above section refers. The doctrine of the resurrection is implied, or directly inculcated, in several passages of the Old Testament. In the New, in which life and immortality are so clearly brought to light, we find many plain statements in regard to it. The whole subject is discussed at large, and fully elaborated in that magnificent chapter, the fifteenth of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, while our Lord, in the Scripture under consideration, puts the argument pithily and pointedly in reply to a question from the Sadducees.

II AN ASSUMPTION. In clearing away the rubbish, with which they overlaid the difficulty whereby they thought to ensnare him, the Savior charges them with ignoring the mighty power of God, who quickeneth the dead and calleth the things which be not as though they were. He taxes them with resting their reasoning on an unwarrantable assumption, to the effect that the condition of life in heaven would be the same as here on earth, while, on the contrary, the occupants of that spirit-world are as the angels of God. Having, moreover, affirmed their ignorance of those Scriptures which they themselves acknowledged, he proceeds to the proof of the doctrine impugned.

III IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. By his quotation from the third chapter of Exodus, he establishes the immortality of the soul. God is the God of the living, for the relationship thus indicated is connected with the bestowal of benefits and blessings, while the dead are beyond the reach of these: but the passage quoted affirms God to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; therefore these patriarchal men, whose earthly tabernacles, long dissolved, had mouldered and mingled with kindred dust, still lived in some sense and state and place. Their souls lived in God"s sight and in God"s presence and to God"s praise. The-immortality of the soul is thus a clear enough conclusion, but the proof is not so plain with regard to the resurrection of the body; and yet this is the very point in dispute. It is a well-known fact that several of the heathen philosophers who believed in the immortality of the soul, seem never to have dreamt of the resurrection of the body. How, then does our Lord"s plain proof of the former doctrine serve-the purpose of establishing the latter? This is the difficulty of the passage. The following considerations will resolve it:

IV GROUND OF SADDUCEES" DENIAL OF THE RESURRECTION. The chief reason of the Sadducees denying the resurrection of the body was their disbelief in the immortality of the soul. They repudiated the last-named doctrine, and on this very ground rejected the former. They said the soul does not exist apart from, or after, the dissolution of the body. "They gainsay the duration of the soul" is the testimony of Josephus to their opinion on this point. From this they inferred that there is no likelihood of, nor need for, the body to be raised up, as, according to this erroneous opinion of theirs, there was no soul to reanimate, or reinhabit, or be reunited therewith. Our Lord meets inference with inference. Having proved, as we have seen, the immortality of the soul, he thus prepares the way for the corollary, that the body would be raised from the dust of death, and that soul and body would be then and for ever reunited. They insisted on the extinction of the soul at the death of the body, or its non-existence as distinct from that body, and so wished it to be inferred therefrom that the body would not be raised, and no reunion ever take place. The Savior proves the distinct and undying existence of the soul, and leaves the Sadducees to infer the resurrection of the body and its reunion with that soul from which death had for a time separated it. In this way he opposed the inferential part of his argument to the inferential part of their doctrine, inasmuch as they did not, it would seem, employ expanded argument or developed reasoning. Having demolished the main pillar of their system, he left the frail fabric erected thereon to fall of itself. Our Lord"s reasoning, though concise, was nevertheless conclusive.

V CONFIRMATION. This view of the subject derives some confirmation from a custom of the ancient Egyptians. They embalmed the bodies of their dead, and so preserved them for centuries. Their object, as is with strong probability supposed, was that the mummy corpse might be prepared for the reception of the returning soul, and for reoccupancy by that former inhabitant, if such were their belief; it was doubtless a ray of light derived from revelation, but distorted as usual in such cases. While they anticipated the glorious fact of a reunion of soul and body, they added thereto the fancy that the same body, unaltered and unimproved, would be its receptacle. Revelation, however, confirms the one, but corrects the other; for these vile bodies shall be raised spiritual bodies, and fashioned like unto Christ"s glorious body.

VI OTHER EXPLANATIONS. Some, we are aware, understand by resurrection in this passage merely a renewal of life, restricting that life to the soul. In this way they remove to some extent the difficulty involved in the reasoning, but destroy at the same time the proper meaning of the word, as might easily be shown from other Scriptures. Paul, for example, speaks of the resurrection in the ordinary and usual sense when he asks," How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?" Besides, it is to be observed that, in our Lord"s quotation, God is not called the God of the souls of the patriarchs, but of their compound being, consisting of both soul and body. The reference to marriage in the verses preceding also points to the resurrection of the body as well as to the life of the soul Life is thus implied in relation to both the constituent parts of man present life for the soul, future life for the body. Others there are who, understanding the argument to relate exclusively to those who die the death of the righteous, elucidate it in this manner. The Scripture cited by our Lord, in which God declares himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, involves the Father-ship of God and the sonship of believers, as appears from such Scripture statements as "I will be to him a God, and he shall be to me a son;" also, "I will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters." Again, our adoption as children of God includes the redemption of the body, and consequent recovery from the power of the grave, as may be gathered from Rom_8:23, "We wait for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." Now, though this explanation plausible, yet it appears too restricted, and not quite in harmony with our Lord"s own words in Joh_5:28, Joh_5:29, "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.

VII Practical Observations.

1. A few practical thoughts connect themselves with this subject. We learn hence the value of an accurate acquaintance with the Scriptures of the Old as well as of the New Testament. Our Lord refuted his adversaries as he repelled Satan, by an appeal to the Law and to the testimony. He took every opportunity of putting honor on, and claiming respect for, the Divine Word. It is our safeguard against error. His quotation is from a portion of that Pentateuch which has in recent times been the object of repeated and insidious attacks.

2. We see how our Master meets his opponents on their own chosen ground, and reasons with them after their own favourite mode. They put their objections inferentially; our Lord, who always adapted his discourse, whether sermon, or parable, or argument, to his audience, adopts the selfsame method. The Sadducees believed, at least, the five books of Moses; he quotes from an early portion of those books. He denounced their error with mildness, and demonstrated it from the very Scriptures to the authority of which they themselves deferred. He took the ground from under their feet by hard arguments, not by hard words. Persuasiveness, not abusiveness, characterizes his reasoning.

3. Let us seek grace that we may appreciate as we ought the comfort of this doctrine. Our very dust is dear to God. The visible sky above us may pass away, but no particle of this dust shall perish. Let us realize the duty of seeking a part in the resurrection of the just. Let the doctrine have a practical effect upon our lives. With this prospect in view, "what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness"? "Those bodies that corrupted fall Shall incorrupted rise, And mortal forms shall spring to life, Immortal in the skies. Having this hope within us, let us purify ourselves, and by grace keep the bodily temple undefiled. J.J.G.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Matt. xxi, 23; Luke xx, 27.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Sadducees

(See Scofield "Mat 3:7"). Also, Mr12: 22,23

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The question of the Sadducees:

v. 18. Then come unto Him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked Him, saying,

v. 19. Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man’s brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.

v. 20. Now there were seven brethren; and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed.

v. 21. And the second took her and died, neither left he any seed; and the third likewise.

v. 22. And the seven had her and left no seed. Last of all the woman died also.

v. 23. In the resurrection, therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? For the seven had her to wife.

The Herodians and the Pharisees had been obliged to retreat with little glory. Now come the Sadducees, the deniers of the resurrection of the dead. They hope to have much better success. In fact, their confident manner is tinged with facetiousness, as though they were perpetrating a huge joke upon the Galilean Rabbi. They had no idea that the joke would be turned upon them so quickly and easily. They preface their remarks with the announcement that Moses had given them a certain precept. They were referring to the so-called levirate marriage, "the ancient custom of marriage between a man and the widow of his brother, required by the Mosaic law when there was no male issue. " Deu 25:5-10. Whether their story was taken from facts or fancy is immaterial. They recite it with much circumstantial detail, to make it all the more ridiculous by the long explanation. Seven brothers, one after another, had this woman for their wife. Surely the situation at the time of resurrection, in case all the seven should claim her for wife, would be disagreeable, to say the least. Arguments of this kind are being used by unbelievers even to the present day; their great wisdom will not permit them to believe in such an unreasonable fact as the resurrection of the dead.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Our blessed Saviour having put the Pharisees and Herodians to silence in the former verses, here he encounters the Sadducees. This sect derived its name from one Sadock, who denied the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, and angels, and spirits. Here they propound a case to our Saviour, of a woman who had seven brethren successively to her husbands: they demand whose wife of the seven this woman should be at the resurrection? As if they had said, "If there be a resurrection of bodies, surely there will be of relations too; and the other world, if there be such a place, will be like this, in which men will marry as they do here; and if so, whose wife of the seven shall this woman be, they all having an equal claim to her?"

Now our Saviour, for resolving of this question, first shews the different state of men in this and in the other world. The children of this world, says our Savioiur, marry and are given in marriage, but in the resurrection they do neither. As if Christ had said, "After men have lived a while in this world, they die, and therefore marriage is necessary to maintain a succession of mankind; but in the other world, man shall become immortal, and live forever, and then the reason of marriage will wholly cease; for when men can die no more, there will be no need of any new supplies of mankind."

Observe, secondly, That our Saviour having got clear of the Sadducees objection, by taking away the foundation and ground work of it, he produceth an argument for the proof of the soul’s immortality and the body’s resurrection. Those, to whom Almighty God pronounces himself a God, are certainly alive; but God pronounced himself a God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, many hundred years after their bodies were dead, therefore their souls are yet alive; for otherwise God could not be their God; because he is not God of the dead, but of the living.

From the whole, note, 1. That there is no opinion so monstrous and absurd, that having had a mother, will die for lack of a nurse. The beastly opinion of the mortality of the soul and the annihilation of the body, find Sadducees to profess and propagate it.

Note, 2. The certainty of another life after this, in which men shall be eternally happy, or intolerably miserable, accordingly as they behave themselves here. Though some men live like beast, yet they shall not die like them, nor shall their last end be like theirs.

Note, 3. That glorified saints in the morning of the resurrection, shall be like the glorious angels; not like them in essence and nature, but like them in their properties and qualities, in holiness and purity, in immortality and incorruptibility; as also in their manner of living, they shall stand in no more need of meat and drink than the angels do, but shall live the same heavenly, immortal, and incorruptible life that the angels live.

Note, 4. That all those who are in covenant with God, whose God the Lord is, their souls do immediately pass into glory, and their bodies at the resurrection shall be sharers in the same happiness with their souls; if God be just, their souls must live, and their bodies must rise; for good men must be rewarded, and wicked men punished somewhere; either in this life or in another. God will most certainly, at one time or other, plentifully reward the righteous, and punish the wicked doers. But, this being not always done in this life, the justice of God requires that it must be done in the next.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CIX. B. Concerning the Resurrection].

CIX. JEWISH RULERS SEEK TO ENSNARE JESUS. (Court of the Temple. Tuesday, April 4, A. D. 30.) Subdivision B. SADDUCEES ASK ABOUT THE RESURRECTION. aMATT. XXII. 23-33; bMARK XII. 18-27; cLUKE XX. 27-39.

a23 On that day there came bcome unto him ccertain of the the Sadducees, they that bwho say there is no resurrection [As to the Sadducees, see Deu_25:5, Deu_25:6. The object of this law was to preserve families. But the custom was older than the law-- Gen_38:6-11], cthat bIf a man's brother die, chaving a wife, and he be childless, band leave a wife behind him, and leave no child, that his brother should take his cthe wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. aMoses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. 25 Now there were ctherefore awith us seven brethren: and the first ctook a wife, amarried and deceased, band dying left no seed; cand died childless; aand, having no seed left his wife unto his brother: b21 And a26 In like manner the second also, btook her, and died, leaving no seed behind him; and the third likewise: ctook her; aunto the seventh. cand likewise the seven also left no children, bleft no seed. cand died. 32 Afterward [600] bLast of all a27 And after them all, bthe woman also died. a28 In the resurrection therefore whose wife shall she be of the seven? bof them? for the seven aall had her. bto wife. [This was evidently a favorite Sadducean argument against the resurrection. On the assumption that the marital state is continued after the resurrection, it makes the doctrine of a resurrection appear ridiculous, because, seemingly, it involves difficulties which even brothers could hardly settle amicably, and which even God would have in a sense to settle arbitrarily.] c34 And a29 But Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do not err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. bIs it not for this cause that ye err, that ye know not the scriptures, nor the power of God? [The relevancy of these statements will be discussed in the treatment of Act_23:8), but the basal principle of their infidelity was the denial of spirits. It was, as it were, the tree trunk from which their other errors sprang as branches. If there were such things as spirits, it was not worth while to deny that there was an order of them known as angels. If man had a spirit which could survive his body, it was reasonable to believe that God, having so fashioned him that a body is essential to his activity and happiness, would in some manner restore a body to him. Jesus therefore does not pursue the argument until he has proved a resurrection; but rests when he has proved that man has a spirit. Jesus proves that man has a spirit by a reference from the Pentateuch, that part of Scripture which the Sadducees accepted as derived from God through Moses. The reference shows that God was spoken of and spoke of himself as the God of those who were, humanly speaking, long since dead. But the Sadducees held that a dead man had ceased to exist, that he had vanished to nothingness. According to their view, therefore, God had styled himself the God of nothing, which is absurd. The Sadducees could not thus have erred had they known or understood the significance of this Scripture, and they could not have doubted the resurrection had they known the absolute power with which God deals with material such as that of which the body is formed. See verses 24 and 39 supra.] a33 And when the multitude heard it, they were astonished at his teaching. c39 And certain of the scribes answering said, Teacher, thou hast well said. [Some of the scribes of less bitter spirit could not refrain from expressing their admiration at the ease with which Jesus answered an argument which their own wisdom could not refute.] [602]

[FFG 600-602]

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

18–27. Then come the Sadducees. For notes on this interview with the Sadducees, see Matt. 22:23–33. Compare Luke 20:27–40.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

who say there is no resurrection

This phrase explains who the Sadducees were. This can be written more clearly. AT: "who say there is no resurrection from the dead" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

Moses wrote for us, 'If a man's brother dies

The Sadducees are quoting what Moses had written in the law. Moses' quote can be expressed as an indirect quote. AT: "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies" (See: Direct and Indirect Quotations)

wrote for us

"wrote for us Jews." The Sadducees were a group of Jews. Here they use the word "us" to refer to themselves and all Jews.

the man should take the brother's wife

"the man should marry his brother's wife"

raise up a descendant for his brother

"have a son for his brother." The man's first son would be considered to be the dead brother's son, and the son's descendants would be considered to be the dead brother's descendants. This can be stated clearly. AT: "have a son who will be considered to be the dead brother's son" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

translationWords

Sadducee

resurrection

teacher

Moses

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

18–27. THE SADDUCEES’ QUESTION ABOUT RESURRECTION

Mat 22:23-33. Luk 20:27-28

18. Σαδδουκαῖοι. Mk mentions them nowhere else; nor does Lk., except in Acts. Jn nowhere mentions them. In Mt. they are six times coupled with the Pharisees. We may regard them as the priestly aristocracy. They were much less numerous than the Pharisees and much less popular. Josephus (Ant. XVIII. i. 4) says that Sadducees who became magistrates professed the views of the Pharisees, otherwise the people would not have tolerated them, for a belief in a resurrection had become popular (2Ma 6:26; 2Ma 7:9; 2Ma 7:14; 2Ma 12:43; 2Ma 14:46). Their denial of a resurrection grew out of their attitude towards the oral tradition, which the Pharisees held to be binding, while the Sadducees said that it was not. Both agreed that the doctrine could not be proved from Scripture, for against what is said on one side (Job 19:26; Psa 16:9-11; Psa 17:15; Isa 26:19) must be set what is said on the other (Psa 6:5; Psa 88:11; Psa 115:17; Ecc 9:4-10; Isa 38:18-19). To the Sadducees this meant that resurrection was an open question, and they refused to believe it (Act 23:8; Joseph. Ant. XVIII. i. 4, B.J. II. viii. 4). Excepting Luk 2:34, ἀνάστασις in N.T. is always resurrection from the dead, a meaning which is very rare and late in LXX. (2Ma 7:14). It is doubtful whether οἵτινες, “who are of such a class as to,” refers to the Sadducees as a whole, or to those who came to question our Lord. All Sadducees said that resurrection was not an article of faith, but some may have believed that it was true. Lk. confines the denial to those who came; τινες τῶν Σαδ. οἱ λέγοντες, not τῶν λεγόντων. In all three the denial is given as a matter of opinion, μὴ εἶναι, as in Act 23:8. The Corinthian sceptics declared as a fact that there is no such thing as a resurrection of dead people, ὅτι ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν οὐκ ἔστιν (1Co 15:12). These Sadducees knew that Christ had discomfited their opponents the Pharisees, and they hoped to succeed where their adversaries had failed.

ἐπηρώτων. Conversational imperf. (Mar 5:9, Mar 7:17, Mar 8:23; Mar 8:27; Mar 8:29, etc.). Mt. and Lk. have the aor.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

18-27.] Reply to the Sadducees concerning the Resurrection. Mat 22:23-33.Luk 20:27-40Luk 20:27-40. The three reports are very much alike in matter, and now and then coincide almost verbally (Matt. ver. 27, Luke ver. 32. Mark ver. 23 end, Luke ver. 33). The chief additions are found in Luke, vv. 34-36, where see notes, and on Matt. throughout.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

18-27. The next attack on Jesus comes from another source. The Sadducees, the priestly class, being disbelievers in the resurrection, bring to him what is apparently their standing objection, of a woman having seven husbands here, and ask him whose wife she will be in the resurrection. Jesus’ answer is in two parts: first, that there is no marriage in the resurrection state; and secondly, that when God calls himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, their continued life is implied. Anything else is inconsistent with that relation.

18. Σαδδουκαῖοι—The word denotes the sect as Zadokites. There is little doubt that the word itself comes from this proper name Zadok, and not from צַדִּיק, meaning righteous. Probably, the particular Zadok meant is the priest who distinguished himself by his fidelity in the time of David. 2Sa 15:24 sq., 1 K. 1:32 sq. After the return from the exile, among the different families constituting the priesthood, the sons of Zadok seem to have occupied the chief place. They were the aristocracy of the priesthood, and Ezekiel assigns them exclusive rights to its functions. Eze 40:46, Eze 43:19, Eze 44:15, Eze 48:11. The Sadducees, that is to say, were the party of the priests, and especially of the priestly aristocracy. As a school of opinion, they were characterized by the denial of the authority of tradition, maintaining the sole authority of the written Scriptures. As corollaries of this, they denied the resurrection, and the existence of angels or spirits.1 καὶ ἐπηρώτων αὐτὸν, λέγοντες—and they questioned him, saying.

ἐπηρώτων, instead of ἐπηρώτησαν, Tisch. Treg. WH. RV. א BCDL Δ 33, Latt. Pesh. Memph.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Who [οιτινες] . This pronoun marks the Sadducees as a class : of that party characterized by their denial of the resurrection. Asked [επηρωτων] . Stronger. They questioned.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.