Matthew 22:23

Conversation of Jesus with the Sadducees respecting the resurrection - See also Mar 12:18-27; Luk 20:27-38.

Mat 22:23

The same day came the Sadducees - For an account of the Sadducees, see the notes at Mat 3:7.

No resurrection - The word “resurrection” usually means the raising up the “body” to life after it is dead, Joh 11:24; Joh 5:29; 1Co 15:22. But the Sadducees not only denied this, but also a future state, and the separate existence of the soul after death altogether, as well as the existence of angels and spirits, Act 23:8. Both these doctrines have commonly stood or fallen together, and the answer of our Saviour respects both, though it more distinctly refers “to the separate existence of the soul, and to a future state of rewards and punishments,” than to the resurrection of the body.

Mat 22:24

Saying, Master, Moses said ... - Deu 25:5-6. This law was given by Moses in order to keep the families and tribes of the Israelites distinct, and to perpetuate them.

Raise up seed unto his brother - That is, the children shall be reckoned in the genealogy of the deceased brother; or, to all civil purposes, shall be considered as his.

Mat 22:25-28

There were with us seven brethren - It is probable that they stated a case as difficult as possible; and though no such case might have occurred, yet it was supposable, and in their view it presented a real difficulty.

The difficulty arose from the fact, that they supposed that, substantially, the same state of things must take place in the other world as here; that if there is such a world, husbands and wives must be there reunited; and they professed not to be able to see how one woman could be the wife of seven men.

Mat 22:29

Ye do err, not knowing ... - They had taken a wrong view of the doctrine of the resurrection.

It was not taught that people would marry there. The “Scriptures,” here, mean the books of the Old Testament. By appealing to them, Jesus showed that the doctrine of the future state was there, and that the Sadducees should have believed it as it was, and not have added the absurd doctrine to it that people must live there as they do here. The way in which the enemies of the truth often attempt to make a doctrine of the Bible ridiculous is by adding to it, and then calling it absurd. The reason why the Saviour produced a passage from the books of Moses Mat 22:32 was that they had also appealed to his writings, Mat 22:24. Other places of the Old Testament, in fact, asserted the doctrine more clearly Dan 12:2; Isa 26:19, but he wished to meet them on their own ground. None of those scriptures asserted that people would live there as they do here, and therefore their reasoning was false.

Nor the power of God - They probably denied, as many have done since, that God could gather the scattered dust of the dead and remould it into a body. On this ground they affirmed that the doctrine could not be true - opposing reason to revelation, and supposing that infinite power could not reorganize a body that it had at first organized, and raise a body from its own dust which it had at first raised from nothing.

Mat 22:30

Neither marry ... - This was a full answer to the objections of the Sadducees.

But are as the angels of God - That is, in the manner of their conversation; in regard to marriage and the mode of their existence.

Luke adds that they shall be “equal with the angels.” That is, they shall be elevated above the circumstances of mortality, and live in a manner and in a kind of conversation similar to that of the angels. It does not imply that they shall be equal in intellect, but only “in the circumstances of their existence,” as that is distinguished from the way in which mortals live. He also adds, “Neither do they die any more, but are the children of God; being the children of the resurrection,” or being accounted worthy to be raised up to life, and therefore “sons of God raised up to him.”

Mat 22:31, Mat 22:32

As touching ... - That is, in proof that the dead are raised.

The passage which he quotes is recorded in Exo 3:6, Exo 3:15, This was at the burning bush (Mark and Luke). Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead for a long time when Moses spoke this - Abraham for 329 years, Isaac for 224 years, and Jacob for 198 years - yet God spake then as being still “their God.” They must, therefore, be still somewhere living, for God is not the God of the dead; that is, it is absurd to say that God rules over those who are “extinct or annihilated,” but he is the God only of those who have an existence. Luke adds, “all live unto him.” That is, all the righteous dead, all of whom he can be properly called their God, live unto his glory. This passage does not prove directly that the dead “body” would be raised, but only by consequence. It proves that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had an existence then, or that their souls were alive. This the Sadducees denied Act 23:8, and this was the main point in dispute. If this was admitted - if there was a state of rewards and punishments - then it would easily follow that the bodies of the dead would be raised.

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

Mat_22:23-33

For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.

The joys of heaven

The Gauls, an ancient people of France, after they had once tasted of the sweet wine of the grapes that grew in Italy, inquired after that country where such pleasant liquor was, and understanding of it, they made towards that place, and never rested till they came thither where such pleasant things grew. Could we only realize something of the joys of heaven, should we not more earnestly set ourselves to find the way? This thought often sustained Christian martyrs in their sufferings.

The angelic life

We must all of us develop one way or the other; manhood here is but the corn in the ear.

I. In what respects are these saints who have passed the stream of death like unto the angels.

1. The saints of God are like unto the angels as to the qualities of their persons. Sex is obliterated not in mental characteristics, but in bodily frame. Alike in their immortality they cannot die. Like the angels in the maturity of their being, the body is raised in glory. Resemble the angels in beauty, and equal them in strength. What a blessed personality will be yours when the present age is past.

2. There will be likeness between the angels and glorified saints in the matter of character. No inbred sin. Purity and perfection.

3. The souls of the blessed are like to angels as to their occupation. Adoration; wondering study; gazing upon God; untiring service-these their occupations.

4. We shall be like the angels in heavenliness. Here we want externals; eat and drink: there no desires of an earthly kind.

5. Like the angels as to our happiness.

II. The angelic life on earth. We may be like angels here below.

1. Be it ours, as it was theirs, to declare the word of God.

2. For fighting a good fight. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.

3. In setting free those who are the prisoners of hope. The angel came to Peter in prison.

4. In ministering comfort to those who are saved. An angel said to Paul, Fear not.

5. In watching our souls. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Ignorance of Holy Scripture the source of error in religion

I. To establish the fact that ignorance of holy scripture is the source of error in religion. Holy Scripture is the truth from which error is the deviation. The Sadducees erred because they knew them not: they denied the resurrection of the dead. They substituted tradition for them: hence their error.

II. That misrepresentation of scripture leads to sinful consequences. Destroy the temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Upon this false witnesses accused Christ. See how the misinterpretation of Christs words led to sin. Education that falls short of knowing the Scriptures will end in error. (C. Cator, M. A.)

A resurrection emblem

The churchyard at Oberhofen, Switzerland was beautiful, and the simplicity of the little remembrance-posts set upon the graves very pleasant. One who had been too poor to put up an engraved brass plate, or even a painted board, had written with ink on paper the birth and death of the being whose remains were below, and this had been fastened to a board, and mounted on the top of a stick at the head of the grave, the paper being protected by a little edge and roof. Such was the simple remembrance, but Nature had added her pathos, for under the shelter by the writing a caterpillar had fastened itself, and passed into its death-like state of chrysalis, and having ultimately assumed its final state, it had winged its way from the spot, and had left the corpse-like relics behind. How old and how beautiful is this figure of the resurrection! Surely it can never appear before our eyes without touching the thoughts. (Life of Faraday.)

Creation is more inexplicable than resurrection

For it is not the same thing to rekindle an extinguished lamp, as to show fire that has never yet appeared. It is not the same thing to raise up again a house that has fallen down, and to produce one which has never had an existence. (Chrysostom.)

The intermediate state

I. The soul of man subsists after death, and hath some place of abode allotted to it at the resurrection.

II. This intermediate state is, in all probability, not a state of insensibility to the souls of the righteous; but of thought and self-consciousness, and consequently of content and of happiness, in a certain degree. (John Jortin.)

Things said not to be in heaven, which yet are in heaven

There are many things said not to be in heaven, and yet, in another sense, said to be there. There is no temple in heaven; but the Lord God and the Lamb are the temple thereof. There is no sea in heaven; but there is a glassy sea proceeding from before the throne, not a tumultuous angry sea, but a translucent one whose, kindly waves are gently flowing. There is no night in heaven, but there are stars there: for they who turn many to righteousness shall shine as stars in the kingdom of heaven; and one star differeth from another star in glory. So there is no marriage in heaven, and yet heaven is one marriage, and its happiness is represented by a marriage festival, God Himself being the universal husband, and all the redeemed being to Him as one endeared wife. So we may be very sure that if marriage, as it exists here, be not the pattern of things to come, it is the parable of things to come. We may be very sure of this, that if relationships on earth shall not be entanglements hereafter, yet that whatever we enjoy now we shall enjoy then in a transfigured way; we may be very sure that in a world where there is no death, and therefore where there needs to be no birth, there shall be those varieties of life for which birth here provides. No death, therefore no birth, therefore not the ordinary terrestrial necessity for marriage as it exists around us. But marriage is an intimate delightful companionship; and shall the joy of companionship fail for ever? Nay; has not the one Lord-if we think deeply, and purify ore thoughts from sensual relation-has not the one Lord a married nature? Can we think of Him otherwise than as having in Himself the perpetual joy of companionship, and, with a motherly heart and a fatherly heart blended in the one great heart of supreme love, giving forth to us, as the expression of Hit maternity and His fatherhood, His Son-the Lord Jesus Christ-so womanly in His tenderness, so manly in His strength. (T. T. Lynch.)

Voices from heaven

I was reading the other day that, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, the wives of fishermen whose husbands have gone out on the deep are in the habit, at eventide, of going down to the sea-shore, and singing, as female voices only can, the first stanza of a beautiful hymn. After they have sung it, they listen till they hear, borne by the wind across the desert-sea, the second stanza, sung by their gallant husbands, as they are tossed by the gale upon the waves; and both are happy. Perhaps if we could listen, we, too, might hear on this desert-world of ours some sound, some whisper, borne from afar, to remind us that there is a heaven and a home; and, when we sing the hymn upon the shores of earth, perhaps we shall hear its sweet echo breaking in music upon the sands of time, and cheering the hearts of them that are pilgrims and strangers, and look for a city that hath foundations. (J. Cumming, D. D.)

As the angels

The blessed in heaven after the resurrection shall be like the angels, not by nature; but

(1) by purity;

(2) by spiritual life, for they live by spiritual not corporeal food:

(3) by incorruption and immortality;

(4) by happiness and glory, in which, like the angels, they will continue for all eternity. (Lapide.)

The functions of mans animal nature not operative in heaven

Well, how is that? He did not say. He likened them to the angels, but did not tell us how the angels were. It was rather negative. He declared that one potential, universal part of the economy of human life, with all its incidents and concomitants, stopped at the grave. This is the part of man out of which multitudinous history, good and bad, is derived. But useful as it is, it ceases and does not go on into the other life; and it seems very natural, since man is a double being, born for this lower life, in transition and formation for a life to come, that a portion of the powers or faculties which fit him especially for this lower life, when they shall have performed their function, will, as it were, like the calyx of a flower, wither and fall back, and that into the other life we shall carry only those parts of our nature which are highest and noblest, and which have relation to the spiritual rather than to the physical. (H. W. Beecher.)

Heaven vaguely revealed yet a comfort to the human heart

I have sat on the summit of Mount Holyoke, and looked out over the Connecticut valley, and seen as entrancing views as ever comforted the heart of man, poet though he might be; and yet, if you had asked me, What is in that field? I could not have told you whether it was wheat, or rye, or grass, or corn. If you had asked me, What is that village? I could not have told you. I could just see a white glimmer among the green trees, but that was all. If you had asked me, Who are those men working yonder? or What are they doing? I could not have told you. I could see men that seemed to be about the size of ants crawling over the surface of the ground; but whether they were mowing, or hoeing, or walking, or running, I could not tell. The whole picture lay before me, magnificent, and quickened every spring of fancy, and comforted my heart; but I could not give much idea of its horticulture, or agriculture, or anything that went to make up the interior of its life. (H. W. Beecher.)

Gods power a guarantee for the care of men who have departed this life

The argument Christ uses so convincingly is really this, and it is very simple: God said, I am the God of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-not i was, but I am-meaning, that these had been dear to Him, and still were. Now, if these were Gods children, and God loved them, why should they die? All live unto Him, says Christ-as He pleases, and as long as He pleases. If he speaks of your fathers as caring for their life, why should you think them dead? They lived from Him, and they lived for Him, and therefore they live still. If they lived from Him, and no power could take their life away without His permission; if they lived for Him in such a sense that they were endeared to Him-why should the) die? Would we let any one dear to us die, if we had an absolute control over life, as God has? Leave the thought of persons, and take the baser case of money. If a man keeps his money upon his table, and has a sufficient watch over his house, why do we feel sure that the bags of money are safe? Because we know that, being in his power, he not only is not likely to throw them out of the window-he loves them too well for that-but that, having power also to keep them from the thief, his love answers for their security. If he could not keep them, it is likely enough that they would be lost, for there are other people that desire to have them. The fact of his having them would be no obstacle to their having them, if only they could lay hands on them. But if, in the ease of money, where a man has power to keep it, he certainly will, what shall we say of the soul-the soul on which God has bestowed His Fatherly care? If no one-no devouring lion-can pluck Abraham out of Gods hand, will God throw him away and say He cares for him no longer? If no one could destroy the lives of these fathers but God, was He likely to do it? (T. T. Lynch.)

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

Mat 22:23. The same day came to him the Sadducees — Concerning whose doctrines and conduct see note on Mat 3:7; which say, there is no resurrection — Nor indeed any future life at all, as the word αναστασις, here rendered resurrection, is considered by many learned men as signifying; their doctrine being, that when the body dies the soul dies with it, and that there is no state of rewards or punishments after death, and no judgment to come. “The word αναστασις,” says Dr. Campbell, “is indeed the common term by which the resurrection, properly so called, is denominated in the New Testament; yet this is neither the only nor the primitive import of it. When applied to the dead, the word denotes properly no more than a renewal of life to them, in whatever manner this happens. The Pharisees themselves did not universally mean by this term the reunion of soul and body, as is evident from the account which the Jewish historian gives of their doctrine, as well as from some passages in the gospels. To say, therefore, in English, that they deny the resurrection, is to give a very defective account of their sentiments on this topic, for they denied the existence of angels and all separate spirits; in which they went much further than [many of] the pagans, who, though they denied what Christians call the resurrection of the body, yet acknowledged a state after death wherein the souls of the deceased exist, and receive the reward or punishment of their actions.” The doctor therefore renders the clause, Who say there is no future life, which version, he observes, not only gives a juster representation of the Sadducean hypothesis, but is the only version which makes our Lord’s argument appear pertinent, and levelled against the doctrine which he wanted to refute. In the common version they are said to deny the resurrection: that is, that the soul and the body of man shall hereafter be reunited; and our Lord brings an argument from the Pentateuch to prove — What? Not that they shall be reunited, (to this it has not even the most distant relation,) but that the soul subsists after the body is dissolved. This many would have admitted, who denied the resurrection; yet so evidently did his argument strike at the root of the scheme of the Sadducees, that they were silenced by it, and, to the conviction of the hearers, confuted. Now this could not have happened, if the fundamental error of the Sadducees had been barely the denial of the resurrection of the body, and not the denial of the immortality of the soul, or of its actual subsistence after death. If possible, the words, Luk 20:38, παντες αυτω ζωσιν, all live to him: (namely, the patriarchs and all the faithful dead,) make it still more evident that our Lord considered this, namely, the proving that the soul still continued to live after a person’s natural death, was all that was incumbent on one who would confute the Sadducees. Now if this was the subversion of Sadducism, Sadducism must have consisted in denying that the soul continues to live after the body dies. Certainly our Lord’s answer here, and much of St. Paul’s reasoning, 1 Corinthians 15., proceeds on the supposition of such a denial. Thus, 2Ma 12:42-44, the author proves that Judas believed a resurrection, from his offering sacrifices for the souls of the slain, which shows that by a resurrection he meant a future state.

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

ENCOUNTER WITH THE SADDUCEES, Mat_22:23-33. (See note preceding Mat_22:14.)

23. Say that there is no resurrection — And their intention is to show from Moses, that the doctrine of the resurrection involves an inexplicable difficulty.

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

CRITICAL NOTES

Mat_22:23. The Sadducees.—The article is properly omitted in the R.V. See note on Mat_3:7. That the Pharisees had an understanding with them also seems likely from what is said both in Mat_22:15, which seems a general introduction to the series of questions, and in Mat_22:34, from which it would appear that they were somewhere out of sight waiting to hear the result of this new attack. Though the alliance seems a strange one, it is not the first time that common hostility to the Christ of God has drawn together the two great rival parties (see Mat_16:1). If we are right in supposing them to be in combination now, it is a remarkable illustration of the deep hostility of the Pharisees that they should not only combine with the Sadducees against Him, as they had done before, but that they should look with complacency on their using against Him a weapon which threatened one of their own doctrines (Gibson).

Mat_22:24. Moses said.—See Deu_25:5-10. These were called levirate marriages, from the Latin word, levir, “a brother-in-law.” His brother shall marry his wife.—The root of the obligation here imposed upon the brother of the deceased husband lies in the primitive idea of childlessness being a great calamity, and extinction of name and family one of the greatest that could happen (Speaker’s Commentary). The law on this subject is not peculiar to the Jews, but is found amongst various Oriental nations, ancient and modern (ibid.). Raise up seed unto his brother.—This indicates that the child, which might be the issue of the second marriage, would be entered in the genealogical register as the child, not of the natural father, but of the deceased brother, and would thus become his heir (Morison).

Mat_22:28. In the resurrection.—The puzzle of the Sadducees had no special relation to what may be involved in the resurrection of the body as contra-distinguished from what is involved in the immortality of the soul. Their objection was, generically, against the idea that men are to exist at all in the future. “The doctrine of the Sadducees” says Josephus, “is, that souls die with the bodies” (Antiq., XVIII. i. 4) (Morison). Whose wife shall she be?—Stress is laid on the childlessness of the woman in all the seven marriages, in order to guard against the possible answer that she would be counted in the resurrection as the wife of him to whom she had borne issue (Plumptre).

Mat_22:29. Ye do err.—This is, it may be noted, the one occasion in the Gospel history in which our Lord comes into direct collision with the Sadducees. On the whole, while strictly condemning and refuting their characteristic error, the tone in which He speaks is less stern than that in which He addresses the Pharisees. They were less characterised by hypocrisy, and this was that which called down His sternest reproof (ibid.).

Mat_22:31. Spoken unto you by God.—In Exo_3:6. The Sadducees while recognising the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures generally, seem to have attached supreme importance to the Pentateuch. Dean Alford says, “The assertion of the resurrection comes from the very source whence their difficulty had been constructed.”

Mat_22:32. The dead.—The word has here its lowest Sadducean import, denoting those who have ceased to be (Morison).

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mat_22:23-33

A sceptical snare.—After the Pharisees have been disposed of, the Sadducees appear on the scene. They also have a question to ask. It is one connected with their avowed disbelief in the doctrine of the resurrection (Act_23:8), and calculated, as they hope, to bring equal discredit both on that doctrine and on Christ. It will be well, therefore, to consider, first, the exact nature of the question propounded; and so to pass, secondly, to the exact nature of the reply it received.

I. The question propounded.—This turned, in the first place, on three separate points connected with the question of marriage. The first of these was that well-known Mosaic enactment on this subject which pronounced the marriage tie to come to an end on the death of either party concerned; and therefore fully allowed the survivor, if so disposed, to contract marriage again. The second was the injunction, in the same quarter, which commanded any man whose married brother should have died without issue to take that brother’s widow to wife. And the third was the alleged occurrence among them of a most remarkable and highly exceptional contingency of this kind; even of a case in which it came to pass that as many as seven brothers in succession, under this rule, had the same woman to wife (Mat_22:24-27). On these three points, three inferences were, next, drawn virtually by these Sadducean inquirers. The first, that each of those seven brethren had really and truly, in his life-time, been married to that woman. The next, that each of them—in the resurrection—could therefore claim her for his. And the last was this, that, such being so, there could not possibly be a resurrection at all. That was the only way, according to them, of solving the difficulty involved (Mat_22:28). How could a doctrine, therefore, which led to so absurd a result be a doctrine of truth? At any rate, if there was another solution, let that solution be given. They had the right to ask this from such a teacher as Jesus was now professing to be.

II. The Saviour’s answer to this subtle and insidious question was of a three fold description. In the first place, it completely disposed of the difficulty advanced. There was another and better solution than that insinuated by them. In that higher and better sphere to which their inquiry referred, there was, in reality, no room for putting such a question at all. And it was simple ignorance on their part to suppose anything else (Mat_22:29-30). The question, therefore, “Whose wife shall she be?” was so far from being insoluble, that it was only unnecessary, and such as ought not be asked. In the next place, the Saviour’s answer fully vindicated the doctrine disputed. Taking the Sadducees on their own ground, referring only to those Books of Moses in which alone they professed to believe, and dealing only with one of the names of God ascribed to Him there, there was proof enough of its truth. What did God mean when He described Himself there as the God of certain men who were dead? (Mat_22:32). Did He not mean that these men were still “alive” unto Him? “Still alive,” that is to say—though, for a time it may be—in a different way from before? And therefore, further, to be alive again afterwards in the same way as before? Where would be the comfort, where the value, where the sense, of meaning anything less? Why should these men have been named at all if they had ceased to exist? The “living God,” in a word, was the God of the living, and not of the dead (end of Mat_22:32). Finally, the answer thus given fully vindicated the Teacher Himself. All who heard His answer acknowledged it by their conduct to be of a simply unanswerable description. The “multitude” were “astonished,” the “Sadducees” silenced, by such flashes of truth (Mat_22:33-34).

This old-world battle may teach us much in these new-world times. It may show us:—

1. How great was the authority in old days of the Old Testament Scriptures!—How great especially of that portion of them which by some in these days is cavilled at most. Is it not worthy of notice that the most unbelieving of men in those days believed in this portion to the full? Also that the Saviour, in answering them, appealed to this only? Also that, before then, in dealing with a still greater adversary, He had done the same thing (Mat_4:1-11)? Also yet, that, in this way, He silenced them all!

2. How great their fulness and depth!—See here how much is covered by one single expression! How much can be learned from it, as it were, “by the way,!” Little less, as a matter of fact, than the whole world of the unseen!

3. How equally great, therefore, the evidence given of the fulness and wisdom of Christ!—Ages of study and strife had never shown previously in these words of Moses what He sees in them at a glance. No “contradiction of sinners,” also, can help seeing it when once it is shown! Is it possible, in the way of teaching, to surpass this double Success?

HOMILIES ON THE VERSES

Mat_22:25-28. Christ and the Sadducees.—

1. The conceiving of spiritual things in a fleshly manner is the ground of mistaking the truth and setting up of errors and heresies, as appeareth in these Sadducees; they apprehend the doctrine of eternal life to be this, that the course of this temporary life shall be renewed and made perpetual.

2. No man seemeth wiser in his own eyes than the blindest heretics do; they conceive that Christ Himself cannot answer their objections against the truth; and this emboldeneth these Sadducees to dispute.—David Dickson.

Mat_22:29-30. The Sadducees confuted.—

1. If the Scriptures be not understood and believed, it cannot miss but errors will arise, for nothing else but this light can prevent or remove errors. They erred, “not knowing the Scriptures.”

2. It is necessary for quieting of our minds in the truth of God’s word that we look only to the promise of God, and to His ability to perform all He hath promised.

3. After the resurrection we shall be set free from the infirmities whereunto now we are subject; and shall neither need meat nor drink nor marriage, but shall be upholden immediately of God, without means, as angels are, and shall be employed only in the immediate service of God.—Ibid.

Christ’s reply to the Sadducees.—I. He charges them with error.—Concerning:

1. The fact of the resurrection.

2. The nature of the future state.

II. He corrects their mistake.—Implying:

1. The existence of a high order of intelligences.

2. Social elevation of humanity in the future state.

III. He convicts them out of their own Scriptures.—Showing:

1. That the highest property an intelligent being can possess is God, and this property is possessed by the good.

2. Its possession implies conscious existence.

3. The Scripture teaches that this highest property is possessed by departed men.—D. Thomas, D.D.

Mat_22:29. Sources of unbelief.—

I. Want of Scriptural knowledge.

II. Want of spiritual experience—J. P. Lange, D.D.

Mat_22:30. The beautiful idea of the future life.—

I. Elevated above temporal transitoriness.

II. Like the angels of God.

III. A life in heaven.—J. P. Lange, D.D.

Life in heaven.—Will there, we ask, be no continuance there of the holiest of the ties of earth? Will the husband and the wife, who have loved each other until death parted them be no more to each other than any others who are counted worthy to obtain that life? Will there be no individual recognition, no continuance of the love founded upon the memories of the past? The answer to all such questionings is found in dwelling on the “power of God.” The old relations may subsist under new conditions. Things that are incompatible here may there be found to co-exist. 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 Swedenborg’s dream of the marriage state perpetuated under its earthly conditions, is so obvious as hardly to call for notice.—E. H. Plumptre, D.D.

Mat_22:31-32. Interpreting Scripture.—

1. No sufficient silencing of error can be till the contrary truth be made clear by Scripture.

2. Whatsoever is said in the Scripture should be taken as spoken unto us, and that by God.

3. Whatsoever the Scripture doth import, by good consequence is to be accounted for God’s speech. “Concerning the resurrection, have ye not read?” saith He; for the Scripture doth not stand in letters or syllables, but in the sense of the words, and in the truly inferred consequences from thence.

4. Whosoever are within the covenant of grace, whose God the Lord is by covenant, are sure to live in heaven with God after this life, and to have their bodies raised at last unto immortal life; because God is the Saviour and Redeemer not of the soul of His elect only, but also of the body. Therefore there must be a resurrection of the body, for “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”—David Dickson.

Mat_22:32. God and Immortality.—Our Lord’s answer suggests the best way of assuring ourselves of this glorious hope. Let God be real to us, and life and immortality will be real too. If we would escape the doubts of old Sadducee and new Agnostic, we must be much with God, and strengthen more and more the ties which bind us to Him.—J. M. Gibson, D.D.

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.

C. The Attack of the Sadducees, and the Victory of the Lord. Mat_22:23-33

(Mar_12:18-27; Luk_20:27-40.)

23The same day came to him the20 Sadducees, which [who] say that there is no resur- rection, and asked him, 24Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. 25Now there were with us seven brethren [brothers]: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue,21 left his wife unto his brother: 26Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh [unto the seven, ἕως τῶν ἑπτά. 27And last of all the woman died also. 28Therefore in the resurrection, whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her. 29Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err [Ye err, go astray, πλανᾶσθε], not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. 30For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God22 in heaven. 31But as touching [concerning] the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which wasspoken unto you by God, saying, 32I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Exo_3:6)? God is not the God23 of the dead, hut of the living 33And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at this doctrine

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Mat_22:23. Sadducees.—See Exeg. Notes on Mat_3:7, p. 71, and Winer’s article upon them.

Who say (teach).—The οἱ before λέγοντες must not be given up, though wanting in B., D., and other codices. See de Wette,

There is no resurrection.—It may be asked, how far and in what sense we are to regard the question of the Sadducees as a temptation; for, doubtless, their question also, like that of the Pharisees, was framed with a view to entangle our Lord in some matter of accusation; and therefore we may assume that their malice was the counterpart of the malice of the Pharisees. It was the last consequence of Pharisaism—which no Pharisee, however, would openly express)—that no tribute was to be given to Caesar, but that his government was to be overturned. Now, this was the position to which they wished Jesus to commit Himself. And so also the Sadducees—though they did not come forward with an outspoken denial of the resurrection—hoped that they would make the Lord appear nothing but a Sadducee, and thereby effectually rob Him of all His influence and authority with the people. Should they not thus get the better of Him before the multitude, it was probable that Jesus would give some interpretation of the passage and of the doctrine which would bring Him into collision with Moses and the law. But they scarcely expected such a solution as Jesus gave; it never entered their thoughts that He would make so clear and definite a distinction between this life and the next. They hoped that they should constrain Him publicly to tow their secret doctrine, even as the Pharisees had hoped that they might make Him declare Himself a consummate Pharisee.

Mat_22:24. Master, Moses said.—Deu_25:5. They freely quoted the Mosaic law concerning the Levirate marriage. It was ordained, for the preservation of families, that if a man died without male issue, his brother should marry the widow, and that the first born son should be held in the registers to be the son of the dead brother. (Michaelis: Mosaischen Recht, 2. p. 98.) On this passage they construct a startling example, which in all probability was purely fictitious and boldly and unscrupulously carried out: their argument taking it for granted that, if there were ever a resurrection, the marriage must needs be renewed in another world. Thus, their design was to show, out of the law itself, that the doctrine of a resurrection was something untenable, and a gross absurdity.

Mat_22:26. Unto the seven.—That is, unto the seventh.

Mat_22:29. Not knowing the Scriptures, etc.—There is here a twofold source of knowledge: Holy Scripture, and spiritual experience; or, as the theologian would say, a formal and a material principle. Out of the ignorance of the one source24 or the other spring the Sadducee and the Rationalist tendencies to error. It is very observable that our Lord does not confront them with the rebuke, that they did not hold tradition sacred. Pharisaism which stuck to the traditions was no cure for Sadducism. The latter could never be set free from its negations, without learning more profoundly to study and apply its own positive principles, Scripture and the spiritual life. In what sense, then, was it that they did not understand Scripture ? In so far as they failed to discern in it its own living substance, its peculiar meaning in reference to the doctrine of immortality. But they understood not the power of God, inasmuch as they put no trust in the power of God over death, in His power to raise the dead; and therefore had no ability to conceive of or anticipate the glorification of the present body into a higher state, into a life in which present sexual relations should no longer subsist.

Mat_22:30. In the resurrection.—Fritzsche: In the resurrection life. Meyer, on the other hand: In the rising. It does not, however, point merely to the moment of the commencement of the new life; but to the state in which that issues, as in ἐν τῇ παλιγγενεσία, Mat_19:28.—Nor given in marriage.—This has reference to the custom of the Jews, that the female members of the family were given in marriage by their father. The resurrection is a higher state of things, in which death is extinguished in the glorification of life, and all things pertaining to marriage and the sexes done away (Luk_20:36; 1Co_15:44).

As the angels in heaven.—That is, the angels who are in heaven. Meyer: The risen are not yet in heaven. But compare 2Co_5:1; 1Th_4:17. With the first resurrection begins the transition of earthly nature into the heavenly; and with the general resurrection earth and heaven will have become one in a glorified heavenly domain. “We find among the Rabbins similar notions of the future relations of the body and of the sexes (see Wetstein); but also such a low sensual view as this: mulier illa, quæ duobus nupsit in hoc mundo, priori restituitur in mundo futuro. Sohar.” Meyer.

Mat_22:31. But concerning the resurrection of the dead.—Jesus demonstrates the resurrection by the passage, Exo_3:6. They drew their argument from the Thorah, from the books of Moses; and He finds His proof in the same.25 De Wette: “From this the erroneous conclusion was deduced, even by the Fathers. (Tertull de Præsc, cap. 45; Hieron, ad loc), and by later divines, that the Sadducees accepted only the five books of Moses as canonical (an error which Olshausen seems to retain). Comp, Winer, art Sadducüer.” So also Meyer; but both of them have rather too confidently adopted Winer’s views.26 The remark of Josephus (Contra Apion. i. 8), that the whole of the twenty two books were esteemed divine by the Jews without exception, has no particular weight; for he is speaking only of the Jews generally, and in mass; and it is well known that the Sadducees did not dare to make a public dogma of their rejection of the post-Mosaic Scriptures, and of the doctrine of the resurrection. It is plain that the assertion of Josephus cannot be strictly applied to all parties, in view of the relation of the Essenes to the law of sacrifices, and other matters in the Old Testament. (See the Pseudo Clementines.) The passage, quoted by Winer, from Josephus (Antiq. xiii. 10, 6), declares that the Sadducees taught: δεῖν ἡγεῖσθαι νόμιμα ψὰ γεγραμμένα, that the holy writings must be honored. But these Scriptures were previously defined to be the law of Moses (so Josephus himself says, Mat_18:1; Mat_18:4). At the same time they rejected the tradition of the fathers. Thus they definitely acknowledged only the Mosaic Scriptures, and definitely rejected only tradition. Their position, meanwhile, toward the remainder of the Scripture, was officially an ambiguous one. That bad antithesis between Mosaic and non Mosaic Scriptures, which Josephus adduces, was attributed to them also by the Talmud: Negarunt legem ore traditam, nee fidem habuerunt nisi ei, quod in lege (the Thorah) Scriptum erat. They certainly did not express any positive rejection of the non Mosaic Scriptures, because they durst not; but their bad antithesis plainly enough disclosed that they did not acknowledge them, but would be disposed to class them with the traditions, which they did reject. The ancient testimonies, among which that of Origen is prominent, will maintain their force, therefore, in spite of Winer’s view.27

Mat_22:32. I am [not: I was] the God of Abraham.—This argumentation has been treated by Hase, Strauss, and others, as a specimen of rabbinical dialectics or exegesis. (Comp. contra Ebrard, Kritik, etc., p. 606.) But a kind of dialectics which dealt in a merely deceptive demonstration we cannot ascribe to the Lord. The nerve of the argumentation lies in this, that God appears in the passage quoted as a personal God, who bears a personal covenant-relation to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The thought here expressed is this: God it the living, the God of the living (major premiss); He then calls Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (minor); consequently, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not simply dead, but they must continue to live as those to whom God is a God. The idea of personality is the root of all arguments for the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. “The similar argument in Menasseh, f. Isr. de Resurr. i. 10, 6, appears to have been derived from this passage. Comp. Schöttgen, p. 180.” Meyer.

[It is certain that this argument of our Saviour could not have been discovered by any amount of Rabbinical learning and acumen; and yet being once presented to our mind, it strikes us, not as an arbitrary imposition (like most of the Rabbinical, and many of the patristic allegorical interpretations), but as a real exposition of the true meaning of the passage quoted; throwing a flood of light over it, and filling us with wonder at the hidden depths and comforts of the Scriptures. But strictly taken, the argument of Christ avails only for those who stand in personal covenant relations with the God of Abraham, and are thus partakers of the Divine life which can never be destroyed, and implies an admonition to the Sadducees to enter into this relation. The immortality and resurrection of the wicked, which is as terrible a doctrine as the resurrection of the just is comfortable, is not denied here, but must be based on other passages of the Scripture.—P. S.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The Temptation.—See above. The Sadducees hoped that either the Lord would publicly sanction their petty and frivolous denial of the doctrine of the resurrection, or contradict the law of Moses. To this we may add the following consideration:—If the Sadducees already knew of the prophecy of Jesus, that He would rise from the dead (and probably Judas had revealed this to them, see chap, Mat_27:63), then their temptation would have a special significance: it would be a hint that His hope of the resurrection was delusive enthusiasm, that He might well pause, and, before the determination of the highest authorities should take effect in His death, retreat from His pretensions and His whole work. Caiaphas and many of the Sanhedrin were Sadducees. Probably, therefore, there was here a concealed threatening of death, and a temptation to renounce and retract.

2. “They professed to be those who knew,—the illuminated in Israel. But their knowledge was delusion; and a delusion which rested on a twofold ignorance.”

3. The Lord speaks, according to Luke, of an attaining unto the resurrection. This is the more precise representation of the resurrection of the glorified, which, however, presupposes the basis of the general resurrection, of which Matthew speaks.

4. He incidentally showed the Sadducees, who opposed the doctrine of angels (Act_23:8), how little He thought of their rejection of it; for He designedly referred to the angels in heaven as persons, whose personal existence in heaven we may confidently assume.

5. The Sadducees had changed the positive law of God into an abstract law of ethics; turn being in a double sense like the Stoics; in their one-sided morality, and in their denial of the personal fundamental elements and relations of life.28 The consequence of their system was heathen pantheism. Thus, the question here was not merely the evidence for the resurrection, and that as taken from the law of Moses; a demonstration was to be given which should exhibit the very roots of the doctrine of the resurrection, that is, the doctrine of a personal God, and of His personal bond with human persons, as the foundation of their eternal personal life. And in this case also Christ proved Himself the supreme Teacher, by the quotation which He adduced in proof. The astonished people felt the power of His argument.

6. The doctrine of Paul, 1 Corinthians 15 (comp. Mat_6:13), is in obvious harmony with this resurrection-doctrine of the Lord, which exhibits the second life as a state of imperishableness, sublimely elevated above death, and birth, and procreation, and thus above all the state of becoming.

7. We must be on our guard against the common unhistorical parallel drawn between the Sadducees and systems of Epicurean, selfish, sensual, and immoral tendency. They are to be regarded, however, as worldly-minded secularists in a more refined sense, who had fallen into a heathen view and estimation of this world.

[8. The Bible, viewing man in his completeness and integrity as a being consisting of body, soul and spirit, teaches the doctrine of immortality of the soul in inseparable connection with the resurrection of the body, and not in the abstract, unreal and shadowy form of naturalistic and rationalistic theology which would maintain the first and deny the second. Nast: “That the Scriptures attach more importance to the resurrection of the body, than to the mere self-conscious existence of the soul in its disembodied state, arises from the fact that the disembodied state of the soul is considered in the Scriptures as something imperfect, abnormal, so much so that even the souls of the just look forward with intense desire to their reunion with their bodies (Rom_8:11; Rom_8:23). Without the body man has not his whole full life.”—P. S.]

[9. Lavater, Stier and Alford justly regard the Lord’s answer, Mat_22:32 (comp. πάντες γὰρ αὐτῷ ζῶσιν in Luk_20:38), as implying a conclusive argument against the doctrine of psychopanychia, or of the sleep of the soul in the intermediate state between death and the resurrection. The first theological treatise of Calvin was directed against this error, then entertained by the Anabaptists.—P. S.]

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The Sadducees and Pharisees—the unbelievers and the legalists—leagued against Christ in the temple.—The Sadducees’ attack, a perfect type of the style of infidelity: 1. Supposing themselves free, they further tradition; 2. seemingly unprejudiced, they are inwardly bitter; 3. prating about the spirit, they are entangled in sensual notions; 4. pretending to be inquirers, they are only fabling misleaders, doubly ignorant; 5. proud and confident, with nothing but stupidity in art and weapons.—Ignorance the main source of unbelief: 1. Want of scriptural knowledge, or of honest perseverance in seeking it; 2. want of spiritual experience, or at least of sincerity in purpose.—Ignorance in spiritual things the guilt of life.—Christ the great witness of the resurrection.—The roots of that doctrine in the Old Testament.—The bond of believers with the living God a pledge of their resurrection.—The beautiful idea of the future life: 1. Elevated above temporal transitoriness; 2. like the angels of God; 3. a life in heaven.—God not the God of the dead, but of tin living.—The life of believers as secure as the life of God, according to the testimony of Christ.—God the eternal pledge of the resurrection.—Our bond with God abolishes death as well as sin.—The absolute and indissoluble connection between the doctrine of immortality and the doctrine of the resurrection: 1. The former requires the latter; 2. the latter presupposes the former.—Have ye not read what is written? Or: There is a reproving and correcting word for every form of unbelief in the Scripture.—Christ the conqueror of unbelief.—Christ the glorifier of this world and the next: 1. He illustrates to us this world by the next, and the next world by this; 2. He brings to perfection this world and the next.—In the controversy between faith and unbelief, the people usually side with faith.

Starke:—When Christ is to be persecuted in His people, those combine together who are not agreed in anything else.—Canstein: Satan never ceases to lay snares for Christ and His Church.—Hedinger: The mockers are many who deny the resurrection.—Zeisius: The ground of all errors and contentions among converted people is their ignorance of Holy Scripture: not so much of its letter, as of the living and blessed apprehension of the mind of the Spirit,—Canstein: God’s word is not merely what is written there in express letters, but also all that may be deduced therefrom by sound reasoning.—Quesnel: God knows how to bring good out of evil, light out of darkness, and the glory of truth out of false doctrine and maliciousness.

Heubner:—Quoting from Lavater: “The Sadducees and Pharisees are the two great parties in misleading the human race; they change their position in succeeding ages, one of them ordinarily being pre-eminent. These spirits are always to be contended against, even now: sometimes superstition united with hypocrisy; now unbelief united with the semblance of wisdom and illumination. Against both Christ protests continually; and against both the Church teacher must protest. The former appeal to authority, antiquity, tradition, the sanctity of the letter; the latter, to reason, doubt, freedom.”—The same (Lavater as quoted by Heubner): “The angel who appeared in the burning bush in the name of God, is a pledge of that which ye deny: he was a symbol that God can preserve what nature seems to destroy.”—Christ shows how we must read the Scripture, and use the key for the true knowledge of God.

Footnotes:

[20] Mat_22:28.—[The article is wanting In Greek and should be omitted in the trsl.—P. S.]

[21] Mat_22:25.—[Literally: and the first, hating married, died (or: married and died), and having no teed, left his wife to his brother, γαμήσας ἐτελεύτησε καὶ μὴ ἕχων σπέρμα, ἀφῆκε, κ.τ.λ.—P. S.]

[22] Mat_22:17.—Τοῦ Θεοῦ is omitted in B., D., etc., according to Meyer on account of Mar_12:36 [ὡς ἅγγελοι ἐν αοῖς ὐρανοῖς].

[23] Mat_22:32.—The second Θεός [before νεκρῶν is stricken out by Lachmann on the authority of B., L., and other ancient MSS. But here, too. Meyer defends it, and explains the omission from the desire of copyists to conform to Mark and Lake. [Omitted in Cod. Sinait]

[24][The Edinb. trsl. omits the igorance of (aus dem Eichtwissen der eineti Quelie, etc.), and thus makes the errors of Sadducism and Rationalism actually spring from the Holy Scriptures and spiritual experience!—P. S.]

[25][The passage occurs in connection with the appearance of Jehovah to Moses in the burning bush, which wits itself striking symbol of the power of God to preserve what in the course of nature must perish. Alford: “Our Lord does not cite the strong testimonies of the Prophets, as Isa_26:19; Eze_37:1-14; Dan_12:2 but says, as in Luke (Luk_20:37), ‘even Motes has shewn,’ etc., leaving those other witnesses to be supplied. The books of Moses were the great and ultimate appeal for all doctrine: and thus the assertion of the Resurrection comes from the very source whence their difficulty had been constructed.” Thus the burden of the law, ‘I am the Lord thy God,’ contains the seed of immortality and the promise of the resurrection. The law Is the bard shell which contains and protects the precious kernel of the gospel.—P. S.]

[26][So has Alford in loc.: “The Sadducees acknowledged the prophets also, and rejected tradition only (see this abundantly proved by Winer, Realworterbuch, saddueder).”— P. S.]

[27][In German: Anffassung, which the Edinb. trsl. falsely jenders incorrect statements; thus doing injustice to the late Dr. Winer, who is one of the most conscientious, accurate, and reliable writers in all quotations and statements of facts- P. S.]

[28][It seems to me that the Pharisees rather correspond to the Stoics, the Sadducees to the Sceptics and Epicureans, the Essenes to the Platonists; the first representing the error of orthodoxism and legalism, the second that of rationalism and worldly indifferentism, the third that of mysticism. No doubt many of the Greek and Roman Sceptics and Epicureans, as well as the Sadducees, maintained a respectable show of outward morality and decency.—P. S.]

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.

22:23-33 The resurrection was an important issue of Jesus’ day, but the question was raised only to trap Jesus.

22:23 The Sadducees (see 3:7) described a situation involving levirate marriage (see Gen 38:6-11; Deut 25:5-6), which they considered proof that resurrection from the dead is not possible.

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

Mat 22:23. Σαδδουκαῖοι, Sadducees) Towards the close of His earthly career all rise together against Jesus. The Sadducees are seldom mentioned by the Evangelists; on that day not even the Sadducees remained quiescent.—ἀνάστασιν, resurrection) It is clear that this article of faith was well known at that time, from the Evangelist not having added the words, “of the dead.” And the adversaries of this article contravene it in various degrees, some by denying[962] altogether the immortality of the soul, others, its being joined again to its former body. And there may also have been a variety of error among the Sadducees themselves.

[962] The Wisdom of the world, like the barren figtree, fruitless and most beggarly, is in fact for the most part occupied in negations.—V. g.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mat_22:23. Comp. Mar_12:18 ff.; Luk_20:27 ff.; Matthew condenses.

Οὶ λέγοντες μὴ εἶναι ἀνάστ.] who assert, etc., serving to account for the question which follows. On the necessity of the article, inasmuch as the Sadducees do not say to Jesus that there is no resurrection, but because their regular confiteor is here quoted, comp. Kühner ad Xen. ii. 7. 13; Mar_12:18 : οἵτινες λέγουσι.

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.

Mat 22:23-33 . The Sadducaic puzzle (Mar 12:18-27 , Luk 20:27-38 ).

Mat 22:23 . προσῆλθον , approached, but with different intent, aiming at amusement rather than deadly mischief. Jesus was of no party, and the butt of all the parties. λέγοντες , with οἱ , introduces the creed of the Sadducees; without it, what they said to Jesus. They came and said: We do not believe in the resurrection, and we will prove to you its absurdity. This is probably Mt.’s meaning. He would not think it necessary to explain the tenets of the Sadducees to Jewish readers.

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

Christ voucheth the resurrection of the flesh against the Sadducees.

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

Verse 23. The same day] Malice is ever active; let it be defeated ever so often, it returns to the charge. Jesus and his Gospel give no quarter to vice; the vicious will give no quarter to him or it.

The Sadducees] For an account of these see on Mt 16:1.

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

(23-28) The Sadducees.—(See Note on Mat_3:7.) These, we must remember, consisted largely of the upper class of the priesthood (Act_5:17). The form of their attack implies that they looked on our Lord as teaching the doctrine of the resurrection. They rested their denial on the ground that they found no mention of it in the Law, which they recognised as the only rule of faith. The case which they put, as far as the principle involved was concerned, need not have gone beyond any case of re-marriage without issue, but the questioners pushed it to its extreme, as what seemed to them a reductio ad absurdum. Stress is laid on the childlessness of the woman in all the seven marriages in order to guard against the possible answer that she would be counted in the resurrection as the wife of him to whom she had borne issue.

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

Now there were with us seven brethren,.... That is, there was in the city, town or neighbourhood, where these Sadducees dwelt, probably at Jerusalem, a family, in which were seven sons, all brethren by the father's side; for brethren by the mother's side were not counted brethren, nor obliged by this law (a); whether this was a reigned case which is here and in the following verses put, or whether it was real fact, which is possible, it matters not: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: the eldest of these seven brethren married a wife, and after some time died, having no children, son or daughter, by his wife; and therefore, according to the above law, leaves her to his next brother to marry her, and raise up seed unto him; which, according to the Jewish canons (b), could not be done before ninety days, or three months after the decease of his brother; for so long they were to wait and see, whether she was with child by his brother or not; for if she was, it was not necessary, yea, it was unlawful for him to marry her.

(a) Maimon. Hilch. Yebum, c. 1. sect. 7. (b) T. Bab. Erubin, fol. 47. 1. Maimon. ib. c. 1. sect. 19.

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

23 The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him,

Ver. 23. The same day came to him the Sadducees] Vulpium capita possunt esse aversa, quorum tamen caudae in face eadem coeunt. Heretics may differ as much from one another, as they all do from the truth. Both Pharisees and Sadducees can conspire against Christ, though they cannot consent among themselves. These Sadducees were a brutish sect and sort of Jews, that held many monstrous opinions. Some of them are set down, Act 23:8. Various others more gross may be read of in Josephus, who also tells us that they were but few of them, yet of the chief among the people. (Ant. 18, 2; B. J. 2, 7.) And no wonder, for even at this day atheists and epicures are rife; and among the great ones especially, who either think or could wish at least, there would be no resurrection, &c.

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.

Mark thus repeats the same history, Mar 12:18-22. So doth Luke, Luk 20:27-33. Concerning the Sadducees we have before spoken; they were a sect amongst the Jews much differing from the Pharisees, as may be seen, Act 23:8. Amongst other erroneous tenets, they denied the resurrection, as may be seen in that text, as well as this; and (which indeed was their fundamental error) they denied spirits, and consequently the immortality of the soul in its separate estate. Their design seemeth not so much to have been to have drawn out a discourse from our Saviour which might have touched his life, (which was the Pharisees’ design), as to have exposed him, by bringing him to an absurdity. To this purpose they put a case to our Saviour upon the law, Deu 25:5, where God had ordained, for the preservation of the inheritances of the several tribes and families distinct, That if brethren dwelt together, and one of them died leaving no issue; the wife of the dead should not marry unto a stranger; her husband’s brother should go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, &c. Now they either knew of, or else supposed, a ease of seven brethren, successively marrying the same woman; they desire to know whose wife of the seven this woman should be in the resurrection. Instead of discovering their acuteness, and putting our Saviour upon a difficulty, they did but betray their own ignorance as to the state of the resurrection.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 23-33. Third attack: The Sadducees and the resurrection. (Mar_12:18-27 Luk_20:27-40)

The same day; on that day. This is still the Tuesday in the Holy Week. The Sadducees. There is no definite article here in the original. Which say; oi legontev . Many good manuscripts and some modern editors (Laehmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort) read legontev , "saying." The received reading historically describes the Sadducees" opinions; the other makes them come boldly stating their sentiments. Where authorities are pretty evenly balanced, we must decide the wording of a passage by other than literary considerations; and there can be no doubt that the reading which denotes the characteristic of the sect is more appropriate than that which represents them offensively parading their views as a preparation for the coming question. We have had notice of the Saddueees before. (Mat_3:7 Mat_16:1) The popular account of their religious belief is given in Act_23:8, "The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit." They were rationalists and sceptics, who denied many old-established truths, and scorned many prevalent observances. They acknowledged most of the Old Testament, though, curiously enough, they, like our modern neologians, stumbled at the supernatural upon which the Scriptures were built. Tradition and traditional interpretations found no favour with them. The future life of the soul they utterly repudiated, and the resurrection of the body, when it was brought before them, met with contemptuous ridicule. The claims and doctrine of Christ were, in their eyes, puerile and unworthy of philosophic consideration. At the same time, they recognized that the people were with him for the moment, and that it was expedient that his teaching, so utterly opposed to their own opinions, should be discredited and repressed. So they came forward asking an imaginary question, which, as they thought, would reduce to an absurdity the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the flesh. Doubtless they were members of the Sanhedrin, and it was at the instigation of this body that they proposed the presumed case of conscience.

Vers. 23-33. The Sadducees.

I THEIR CASE OF CASUISTRY.

1. Their doctrine. They held that there was no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit. (Act_23:8) Some of them now came to Christ, asserting their unbelief. They had not hitherto, like the Pharisees, taken a decided stand against our Lord. The chief priests, indeed, who were Sadducees, had been provoked into hostility by our Lord"s action in the temple; but we do not read of Sadducees, as such, joining in the opposition against the Lord before this time, except in the one case mentioned by St. Matthew. (Mat_16:1) They were few in number, but rich and powerful through their possession of the chief places in the Church. Their rank, their sceptical tendencies, seem to have led them to regard our Lord up to the present time rather with indifference than with active hostility. They had not hitherto taken much interest in his teaching and miracles. But he had become a power in the land, the most conspicuous Figure in Palestine; they could not go on ignoring him as they had done. Sadduceeism and Pharisaism represent tendencies diametrically opposed to one another, yet sometimes united in opposition to the truth. Philosophic indifference on the one side, superstition and hypocrisy on the other, are the two opposite poles of opinion. Both stand aloof from that simple, loving, earnest faith which marks the real follower of Christ; sometimes they unite against it.

2. Their question. They proposed a difficulty, a possible complication arising out of the institution of levirate marriage. A woman, they suppose, had married in succession seven brothers: whose wife should she be in the resurrection? Some of the rabbis had already decided the question a woman who had been married more than once would, they thought, be the wife of the first husband in the world to come. So said the rabbis. but what was the opinion of the great Teacher from Nazareth?

II THE LORD"S REPLY.

1. To their question. "Ye do err," he said. They were wandering this way and that, far from the truth; and the cause of that error was:

(1) Their ignorance of the Scriptures. We observe that the Lord did not attribute the error of the Sadducees to their rejection of an oral Mosaic tradition, which was one of the fundamental differences between them and the Pharisees. They received the Pentateuch as of Divine authority; it seems certain also that they regarded the other Scriptures of the Old Testament as sacred books, though this has been denied by Origen, Epiphanius, Jerome, and others after them. But they held the Pentateuch to be of paramount importance, far more sacred than other books of Holy Scripture; and they could not find there the doctrine of a resurrection. The Lord accuses them of ignorance; they knew the letter of Scripture, though probably not so well as their rivals the Pharisees; but they did not compare Scripture with Scripture; they had no spiritual insight; they did not penetrate into its inner meaning. Ignorance of the Scriptures is a fruitful cause of error. We all need to be diligent students of God"s Holy Word; but we need more than study; we need constant earnest prayer for the Holy Spirit"s guidance: "Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy Law.

(2) Ignoranee of the power of God. They had not felt the power of God in their own hearts, lifting them up to himself. This absence of spiritual experience had led them to disbelieve that marvellous exercise of Divine power which is involved in the doctrine of the resurrection. The Pharisees accepted the doctrine, but they held it in a gross and carnal form. This the Sadducees rejected; but they would not believe that, though flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, yet this earthly body, sown a natural body, shall by the power of God be raised a spiritual body, that this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, as the Pharisees taught. The resurrection life is wholly different from this earthly life of ours. The resurrection body has not the animal nature of this natural body. Love will continue, purified and deepened; husband and wife, once joined together by God, cannot be put asunder. But the bond of love will be elevated, refined, spiritualized. For they which are accounted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead can die no more. Marriage, in its earthly aspect, is no longer necessary. The redeemed are as the angels of God in heaven; "equal to the angels" (Lam 20:36) equal to them in purity and holiness and love; equal to them in joy and blessedness; equal to them in all spiritual endowments, in beauty and glory and strength; capable of serving God as the blessed angels serve him, of loving God as the blessed angels love him, of contemplating with adoring gaze his infinite perfections, his wisdom, love, power, holiness, as the blessed angels see him now; needing rest no longer, but ever flesh and glad and unwearied in the ineffable fruition of the beatific vision; where "they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.

2. To their doctrine. The Lord turns to the fundamental error of the Sadducees. These men had come to him (according to the reading of several ancient manuscripts) asserting that error, saying that there is no resurrection. The Lord refers them to the books of Moses. "Have ye not read?" he said, in the form of words which he used so often. We mark how he insists upon the duty of searching the Scriptures, how he urges it again and again. He quotes the Book of Exodus. There are more distinct assertions of the great truth of the resurrection in other books of the Old Testament, but the Sadducees regarded the Pentateuch as of supreme authority, and it seems that their rejection of the doctrine was mainly based on the supposed silence of Moses. Therefore the Lord refers them to the Law, which they set above the other Scriptures. He insists upon the revelation made to Moses when the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." The Lord draws out the deep meaning of the sacred words. That relation to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob implies their continued existence. For "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." He is the Eternal, the I AM, the Self-existent One, absolute and unconditioned in his everlasting, infinite Being. He is the Life; he giveth life; he breathed into man"s nostrils the breath of life. That gift of life, the gift which he gave to that man whom he created in his own image, alter his own likeness, is not a mere temporary gift, not the gift of a few short years, to be spent, perhaps, in trouble and sorrow. Such a view of God"s great gift of life is disparaging to the Almighty, the all-loving Giver. Surely more than this is contained in the relation in which he stands to his people; more than this is implied in the simple words in which that relation is expressed: "their God." Indeed, he himself tells us so in his Holy Word: "God is not ashamed to he called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city." He is the God of Abraham. Then Abraham is not dead. Abraham confessed that he was a pilgrim and stranger upon earth; he desired a better country, that is, a heavenly one; he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God. "Abraham is dead, and the prophets," the Jews said to our Lord. But his life is hidden with God; "all live unto him." God knows, sees, comprehends, in his Divine omniscience, the separate life of each individual soul, that from the time of the creation until now has passed into the assemblage of the countless millions in the spirit world. They do not sleep idly; they live. He knows them every one. The thought is to us overwhelming in its vastness, in the infinite complexity of the problems which it suggests. But with God all things are possible. The Sadducees greatly erred, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. Let us ask him to teach us by the grace of his Holy Spirit the deep meaning of his Holy Word; and let us believe in his almighty power, and walk before him in reverence and godly fear.

LESSONS.

1. Guard against the cold indifference of the Sadducees; pray for faith and love and zeal.

2. Search the Scriptures; pray for grace to understand them.

3. Think much of the blessed resurrection. Oh that we may attain unto the resurrection of the just!

Vers. 23-33. The resurrection of the dead.

When Jesus had disposed of the Pharisees and Herodians, the Sadducees approached him. They were the physicists the materialists of their time, who did not believe in angels or spirits, and accounted as a thing incredible the resurrection of the dead. They urged an ease which they deemed conclusive against the latter, which is recorded here (vers. 23-28). We are chiefly concerned with our Lord"s reply (vers. 29-32). Hence we learn

I THAT THE HUMAN SPIRIT HAS ITS TRUE LIFE IN UNION WITH GOD.

1. Covenant relationship is expressed in the term God of.

(1) Thus when Jehovah proclaims himself to be "the God of Abraham," the meaning is that he stands in covenant relationship to that patriarch. (see Gen_17:7, Gen_17:8) So of Isaac and of Jacob; but he never speaks of himself as the God of Lot, of Ishmael, or of Esau.

(2) By the Sinai covenant with the Hebrew nation he became the "God of Israel". (see Deu_29:10-13)

(3) Now, in the gospel covenant, he is "the God" of every true believer. (cf. Jer_31:31-34 Heb_8:10)

2. The covenant relationship implies purification from sin.

(1) The Hebrew word for "covenant" expresses the idea of purification. The plan of God"s goodness and mercy is sometimes called his purification; the term is also applied to the sacrifices offered to God, and Christ himself is called the Covenant, or Purification Sacrifice, of his people.

(2) The phrase, "make a covenant," is literally, "cut off a purifier," or purification sacrifice, in allusion to the death of the sacrifices. So Messiah was to be "cut off out of the land of the living" (Isa_53:8)

(3) The sacrificial blood sprinkled is called the sprinkling of the blood of the covenant the effect of which was ceremonial purification. (see Heb_9:19, Heb_9:20) This of course typified the purifying efficacy of the blood of Christ. (see Heb_9:13-15)

(4) The Shechinah passing with Abraham along the avenue between the divided pieces of the sacrifices, when God entered into covenant with that patriarch, set forth the consent of the sinner to be treated as the sacrifices were treated should he violate the Law of God, and the engagement of God to light up with his favour and friendship the way of obedience through the blood of Christ. (cf. Gen_15:10, 17 Exo_19:18 Jer_34:18-20)

3. The life of the covenant is more than existence.

(1) The God of the pure is "the God of the living" (ver. 32). Luke adds, "For all live unto him", (Luk_20:38) viz. all standing in true covenant relationship to him. The unbelieving Jews existed, but they did not "live" in Christ"s sense, when he said, "Ye will not come unto me, that ye might have life". (see Joh_5:39, Joh_5:40)

(2) All destitute of this covenant life of purity are dead in trespasses and sins," obnoxious to be treated as the sacrifices had been. (cf. Eph_2:12 Jer_34:18, Jer_34:19) Those who despise the everlasting covenant are liable to the "much sorer punishment" of being cut up by the flames of hell.

II THAT THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT SURVIVES THE DEATH OF THE BODY.

1. God"s covenant remains with his disembodied saints.

(1) Abraham was dead when God said to Isaac, "I am the God of Abraham thy father". (see Gen_26:24) Isaac also was dead when God said to Jacob, "I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac". (Gen_28:13) Jacob also was sleeping when God appeared to Moses, and said, "I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob". (Exo_3:6) This is the fact recognized in the argument of our Lord.

(2) But if God was, hundreds of years after the natural death of the patriarchs, still in covenant relation with them, they must retain a conscious existence in the disembodied state. "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto him". (see Luk_20:38) This living unto God is a condition of the happiest consciousness. (cf. Joh_3:36 Joh_6:48-53 Joh 11:26)

2. The existence of the sinner is an abiding death.

(1) "God is not the God of the dead," viz. "in trespasses and sins," whether in this world or in the disembodied state. The antithesis of a life which is distinct from existence is obviously a death not involving the extinction of existence. If spiritual life survives the dissolution of the body, so may the spiritual death survive the dissolution of the body.

(2) "God is not the God of the dead." This gives no more encouragement to the universalist than it does to the annihilationist. God is nowhere in his covenant pledged to the disembodied sinner. What a terrible thing to the spiritually dead is his indestructibility!

III THAT GOD IS PLEDGED TO RAISE FROM THE DEAD THE BODIES OF HIS SAINTS.

1. He is pledged to raise the Hebrew patriarchs.

(1) The argument of the text is intended to prove more than the conscious and happy existence of the spirit of the believer after death. This undoubtedly it does conclude, as we have seen; but it means more.

(2) It is an argument also to prove the resurrection of the body (see ver. 31). And the reasoning to that conclusion was to the Sadducees unanswerable. (see Luk_20:40)

(3) Its force lies in the matter of the covenant. It promised the patriarchs personal inheritance in Canaan, (see Gen_17:7, Gen_17:8) which, in this mortal life, they never enjoyed. (see Act_7:5) But God still abides by his covenant, as is evident from his words to Moses at the bush. How, then, can the promise be fulfilled, unless they be raised from the dead for the purpose?

(4) In this sense the patriarchs themselves interpreted the promise. They know they should die without inheriting. (see Gen_15:13-16) How could they understand the land to be personally inherited by them as "an everlasting possession," unless in the great future? That future inheritance their faith firmly seized. (see Heb_11:9-19)

2. The promise extends to all believers.

(1) The natural seed of Abraham as such are not the children of the promise. Else it behoved the Arabs, Midianites, and Idumaeans to have inherited. Only a portion of the seed of Jacob inherited the land in any sense. No one ever yet inherited the land according to the terms of the promise as "an everlasting possession.

(2) The true Seed of Abraham is Christ. (see Gal_3:16) He is the Depository of the promises. Yet even he never inherited the land of promise in person. But the "Scriptures cannot be broken." The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead was a necessity; for he must inherit it forever.

(3) Believers in Christ, whether lineally descended from Abraham or not, are the seed of Abraham, and children of the promise. In a secondary sense the term, "seed of Abraham," is to be taken collectively. (cf. Gal_3:26-29) Believers therefore must be raised from the dead that they may inherit.

(4) Then the expression, "all the land of Canaan," purports the whole earth to its utmost limit. (cf. Psa_2:8 Psa_72:8 Rom_4:13-18 Heb_11:13) The covenant also extends into the heavens. J.A.M.

Denial of resurrection as a sign of mental mood.

"The Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection." It does not appear how their question helped the entanglement scheme. Possibly the design was to secure a statement that could be declared to oppose Moses" Law. This would discredit him with the people; and it might be made the ground of a formal condemnation by the Sanhedrin, which the temple officials would have to execute, and so Christ would be got rid of. The point before us now is, that these Sadducees are described to us in one sentence. One thing suffices to reveal them to us. One opinion told the class of opinions they held. You may know the men by this, "they say that there is no resurrection." And when you know that is their opinion, you see at once the hypocrisy of the question they came asking Christ.

I THESE SADDUCEES WERE CRITICAL. They wanted a reason for everything. They received nothing they could not understand. They failed in receptivity. About everything they asked questions. Whatever was presented to view, they persisted in getting to look at it on the other side. Explain that the critical temperament and faculty are Divine gifts and endowments, but they are perilous because they so easily become masterful and absorbing, destructive of some of the finer and gentler qualities and faculties. Criticism, like fire, is a good servant, but a bad master.

II THESE SADDUCEES WERE UNSPIRITUAL. We should call them "materialists." They were not sensitive to anything that did not appeal to the five senses. They were deficient in imagination. They were, in their way, scientific. Angels they could not do with, for they had no substance. Resurrection they could not do with, for it was a dream, and had, and could have, no verification. There have always been such men. We may be sorry for them; for the unseen is the real, the Divine is the abiding, the spiritual is the true; and he only lives indeed who can respond to the environment of the spiritual, the Divine, the eternal.

III THESE SADDUCEES WERE CONCEITED. Not in the common and familiar ways of conceit. They were intellectually conceited, and that is the most hopeless kind of conceit, and, indeed, the most offensive kind. The "superior" man, who is always wiser than everybody, and smiles supercilious smiles, is the most aggravating of mortals. R.T.

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

Mark xii, 18.

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

The Question of the Sadducees.

v. 23. The same day came to Him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked Him,

v. 24. saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.

v. 25. Now there were with us seven brethren; and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother;

v. 26. likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh.

v. 27. And last of all the woman died also.

v. 28. Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife shall she be of the seven? For they all had her.

The Herodians and the disciples of the Pharisees had been silenced. But this fact seemed like a challenge to the Sadducees who prided themselves upon their cleverness. It was not merely in a spirit of mischief that these men came, but with the intention of making Christ appear ridiculous. For they themselves, as Matthew remarks, did not believe in the resurrection, and incidentally accepted only the five books of Moses as authentic words of God. Both of which was well known to Jesus, and He here made use of His knowledge to their utter discomfiture. They relate a story which has all the ear-marks of having been invented for the occasion, and cite Moses, Gen 38:8; Deu 25:5-6, in support of their question. It was the so-called Levirate marriage to which they had reference, according to which it was ordered, for the preservation of families, that if a man died without male children, his brother should marry the widow, and that the first-born son should be held in the registers to be the son of the dead brother. The Sadducees purposely tell the story in such a way as to bring out the foolishness of the ensuing situation after the resurrection, in their opinion: Whose wife will she be? All of the brothers have equal rights.

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, next the Sadducees encounter him. This sect denied the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body, and as an objection against both, they propound a question to our Saviour, of a woman that had seven brethren successively to her husbands; they demand, Whose wife of the seven this woman shall be at the resurrection? As if they had said, "If there be a resurrection of bodies, surely their will be a resurrection of relations too, and the other world 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 and equal claim to her?

Now our Saviour for resolving of this question, 1. Shews the different state of men in this world, and in the other world. The children of this world, says Christ, marry, and are given in marriage, but in the resurrection they do neither. As if our Lord had said, "After men have lived a time in this world, they die, and therefore marriage is necessary to maintain a succession of mankind; but in the other world, men 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."

2. Our Saviour having got clear of the Sadducees objection, by taking away the ground and foundation of it, he produceth an argument for a proof of the soul’s immortality, and body’s resurrection. Thus, "Those to whom Almighty God pronounced himself a God are 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, federally alive unto God; their covenant relation lives still, otherwise God could not be their God; for he is not God of the dead but of the living. If one relation fails, the other necessarily fails with it; if God be their God, then certainly they are in being, for God is not the God of the dead; that is, of those that are utterly perished.

Therefore it must needs be, that although their bodies be naturally dead, yet do their souls still live, and their bodies shall also live again at the resurrection of the just.

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

Note, 2. The certainty of another life after this, in which men shall be eternally happy or intolerable miserable, according as they behave themselves here; though some men live like beasts, 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 unto 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, and in their manner of living; they shall no more stand in need of meat or drink, than the angels do; but shall live the same heavenly, immortal, and incorruptible life, that the angels live.

Note, 4. That all those that 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, the soul must live, and the body must rise: for good men must be rewarded, and wicked men punished: God will most certainly, some time or other, plentifully reward the righteous, and punish the evil-doers; but this being not always done in this life, the justice of God requires it to 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.

23. The same day came the Sadducees. See note on Matt. 3:7. They were materialists. Who say there is no resurrection. They denied the immortality of the soul. See Acts 23:8.

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.

Connecting Statement:

The Sadducees try to trap Jesus by asking him a difficult question about marriage and the resurrection of the dead.

Teacher, Moses said, 'If a man dies

The religious leaders were asking Jesus about what Moses had written in the scriptures. If your language does not allow quotes within quotes, this could be stated as an indirect quote. AT: "Teacher, Moses said that if a man dies" (See: Quotes Within Quotes and Direct and Indirect Quotations)

his brother ... his wife ... his brother

Here "his" refers to the dead man.

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.

23–33. THE SADDUCEES TEMPT JESUS. THE CONDITION OF THE FUTURE LIFE

Mar 12:18-27; Luk 20:27-39

23. λέγοντες for οἱ λέγοντες, on the best authority—אBD (C is defective here), and many other uncials.

23. Σαδδουκαῖοι. See note ch. Mat 3:7. This is the only direct contact of the Sadducees with Jesus.

λέγοντες. ‘Then came Sadducees saying,’ i.e. with their argument that, &c. For the omission of article before λέγοντες see Crit. Notes supra; its absence before Σαδδουκαῖοι implies that they did not come as a class. Cp. οἱ Φαρισαῖοι, Mat 22:15.

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.

23-33.] Reply to the Sadducees respecting the resurrection. Mar 12:18-27. Luk 20:27-40. From Act 23:8, the Sadducees denied resurrection, angel, and spirit; consequently the immortality of the soul, as well as the resurrection of the body. This should be borne in mind, as our Lord’s answer is directed against both errors. It is a mistake into which many Commentators (including Wordsw. on the authority of Jerome) have fallen, to suppose that the Sadducees recognized only the Pentateuch: they acknowledged the prophets also, and rejected tradition only (see this abundantly proved by Winer, Realwörterbuch, Sadducäer).

23. λέγ.] In Luke, οἱ ἀντιλέγ. = οἵτινες λέγουσιν Mark. Here, the art. being absent, we must understand that they came, saying that there was no resurrection: i.e. either, in pursuance of their well-known denial of that doctrine,—or, which is more probable, actually saying, maintaining it against our Lord: viz., in shape and manner following.

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

23-33. From Mar 12:18-27.

(M)

23. On that day there came to Him Sadducees, saying that there is no resurrection, and they asked Him.] Mk. has: “And there come Sadducees to Him, who say that there is no resurrection; and they were asking Him.” For ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ, see 13:1; προσῆλθον, see on 4:3. Mt. avoids Mk.’s hist. pres. ἔρχονται, as often.—ἐπηρώτησαν] Mt. avoids Mk.’s imperf., as often.

(M)

23-33. Lk. agrees with Mt. against Mk. in the following:

προσῆλθον, Mat_23 = προσελθόντες, Lk 27; ἔρχονται, Mk 18.

ἐπηρώτησαν, Mat_23, Lk 27; ἐπηρώτων, Mk 18.

ὕστερον, Mat_27, Lk 32; ἔσχατον, Mk 22.

εἶπεν, Mt 29, Lk 34; ἔφη, Mk 24.

Both Mat_28 and Lk 33 insert οὖν, and both omit ἔλαβεν αὐτήν, καὶ ἀπέθανεν μὴ καταλιπὼν σπέρμα from Mk 21.

23. λέγοντες] So א B. D al S1 S2 (“and they say”). The meaning seems to be that certain Sadducees came and denied that there was a resurrection. אc E F al have οἱ λέγοντες; but with this reading we should expect also οἱ Σαδδουκαῖοι.

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