TEXT [Commentary]

13. The Sadducees’ question concerning marriage in the resurrection (22:23-33; cf. Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-40)

23 That same day Jesus was approached by some Sadducees—religious leaders who say there is no resurrection from the dead. They posed this question: 24 “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies without children, his brother should marry the widow and have a child who will carry on the brother’s name.’[*] 25 Well, suppose there were seven brothers. The oldest one married and then died without children, so his brother married the widow. 26 But the second brother also died, and the third brother married her. This continued with all seven of them. 27 Last of all, the woman also died. 28 So tell us, whose wife will she be in the resurrection? For all seven were married to her.”

29 Jesus replied, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God. 30 For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In this respect they will be like the angels in heaven.

31 “But now, as to whether there will be a resurrection of the dead—haven’t you ever read about this in the Scriptures? Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, God said,[*] 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’[*] So he is the God of the living, not the dead.”

33 When the crowds heard him, they were astounded at his teaching.

NOTES

22:23-24 Jesus had been telling parables, so the Sadducees approached him later that same day with a sort of parable of their own (cf. Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-40).

who say there is no resurrection from the dead. A major feature of the Sadducees’ beliefs was the denial of an afterlife (Acts 23:8; Josephus Antiquities 18.12-17; War 2.162-166). This seems to have been due to their rejection of the Pharisees’ oral tradition and their prioritization of the Torah, which does not explicitly address the afterlife.

Teacher. Like others who were not Jesus’ disciples, they addressed Jesus as “teacher” (cf. 8:19; 9:11; 12:38; 17:24; 19:16; 22:16, 36). They came to Jesus with a hypothetical case based on Deut 25:5-10, the law of levirate marriage in which a brother was responsible to have a child with his childless, deceased brother’s widow so that the deceased brother would have an heir (cf. Gen 38:6-11; Ruth 4:1-10; m. Yevamot). But as the extreme circumstances of the story develop in the following verses, it is clear that the story was meant to ridicule the idea of life after death. The Pharisees and Jesus both agreed that there is life after death, so this is a rare case of agreement between them. (Their shared belief could be based on Dan 12:2; Job 19:25-27; Isa 26:19.) But in asking the question, the Sadducees were not sincerely inquiring about religious truth. Rather, they too were looking to trap Jesus and discredit his teaching.

22:25-28 suppose there were seven brothers. Having set up the topic from Deut 25:5, the Sadducees posed the highly unlikely scenario in which a woman was successively married to seven brothers, each of whom died childless (cf. Tob 3:7-8). Finally, the woman herself died, and the question was raised as to which of the brothers she would be married to in the resurrection. (For the “resurrection” as the beginning of the afterlife, see Luke 14:14; John 5:29; 11:24-25; Acts 23:6; 24:15, 21; 1 Cor 15:12-24; Heb 11:35; Rev 20:5-6).

22:29 you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God. As usual, Jesus did not directly answer the Sadducees’ question. Instead, he told them that their ignorance of Scripture and of God’s power had caused them to err. This was a strong rebuke.

22:30 when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Jesus first responded to their anti-resurrection argument from Deut 25:5. He affirmed that people do not exist as married couples in the afterlife.

In this respect, they will be like the angels. The Sadducees’ error assumed that the afterlife would be just like the present life. Their extrapolation from the present to the future is mistaken (Hagner 1995:641). They did not take into account the power of God to transform human existence. Since the Sadducees did not believe in angels (Acts 23:8), Blomberg (1992:333) may be correct that Jesus’ reference to angels in 22:30 was meant to irritate the Sadducees, but see Davies and Allison (1997:227) for a contrary view.

22:31-32 I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Second, Jesus proved the resurrection from the Scriptures, specifically from the Torah favored by the Sadducees. He cited Exod 3:6, where God speaks from the burning bush to identify himself as the God of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus reasoned that God’s loyalty to his covenant with the patriarchs did not end at their death because death was not their end. Hundreds of years after the patriarchs, during the time of Moses, God told Moses that he “is” still their God (cf. 4 Macc 7:19; 16:25). This description of God’s ongoing covenantal relationship with the patriarchs implies their eventual resurrection. God’s claim to be the God of the patriarchs during their “intermediate state” between death and resurrection is tantamount to (and guarantees) his relationship with them in their final resurrected state (cf. 1 Enoch 20:8; 22:1-14; 60:8; 62:15; 2 Macc 7:9; 36; 4 Ezra 7; Josephus War 3.374).

22:33 they were astounded at his teaching. The Sadducees had not a word to say by way of rejoinder to this argument (22:34), and the watching crowd was amazed (cf. 7:28; 13:54).

COMMENTARY [Text]

This encounter with the Sadducees is similar to the previous episode with the Pharisees. In both instances, Jesus was asked a difficult question by people who wanted to trap or discredit him, but his answer discredited them and resulted in amazement. In this case, however, the question revolved not around a hot political issue, taxation, but around the interpretation of Scripture. The Sadducees asked Jesus to deal with the notion of an afterlife in view of the command for levirate marriage in Deuteronomy 25:5. They apparently believed that Torah-based levirate marriage could not be squared with the Pharisees’ notion of an afterlife. Perhaps they wanted to get Jesus to come over to their side against the Pharisees (Hagner 1995:640). Whatever their agenda, Jesus told them that their denial of the resurrection was an error caused by ignorance. Their view of resurrection and the afterlife was evidently one of mere reanimation to life as before. They were ignorant of the power of God to transform people at their resurrection so that they are no longer sexually active beings (cf. 1 Cor 15:35-40). Sexuality is part of the goodness of the initial creation but life in the “regeneration” (19:28) or “resurrection” (22:30) will transcend this aspect of the original creation. This transformation renders the Sadducees’ citation of the levirate law irrelevant. The Sadducees were also ignorant of the Scriptures, specifically Exodus 3:6. Jesus argued from this verse that God’s covenantal loyalty to the patriarchs implies their eventual resurrection, along with that of all God’s people. In sum, “Jesus treats his opponents’ cunning objection as the product of culpable ignorance and bad theology” (Davies and Allison 1997:226).

Those with a modernist, rationalistic mind-set also deny the power of God to miraculously resurrect and transform humanity, albeit for very different reasons. The fact of the resurrection of Jesus, predicted several times by Jesus and narrated afterward by Matthew, confronts this skepticism. Those with a postmodern, relativistic mindset also have a way of denying the power of the resurrection. They do not necessarily deny that the resurrection happened but deny its universal significance as taught in the New Testament (Craig in Wilkins and Moreland 1995:141-176). For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus guarantees the resurrection of the followers of Jesus. Belief in the future resurrection, with the judgment and reward that follow it, is therefore a strong motivation for faithful discipleship in the present (5:3-12; 8:11; 13:40-43; 16:27; 19:28; John 5:28-29; Acts 17:30-31; 1 Cor 15:51-58; Heb 11:35).