Jesus Christ · On the Last Things
The Resurrection and the Sadducees
The Sadducees — the priestly aristocracy who denied resurrection, angels, and spirits alike — arrive with their favorite trick question: seven brothers, one widow, whose wife in the resurrection? It is engineered to make the doctrine sound absurd. Jesus’s answer does three things in five verses: diagnoses the error at its double root, corrects what resurrection life is actually like, and then proves the resurrection itself from a single verb tense — in the only books His challengers accepted as Scripture.
The Trap
— Matthew 22:23-28 — seven brothers, one widow, one smirkThe question is built on a real law — levirate marriage, Deuteronomy 25:5, a brother raising up seed for a brother who died childless — inflated to seven husbands to make the resurrection collapse under its own arithmetic. It was almost certainly a stock puzzle the Sadducees used on Pharisees, and Clarke’s note preserves the rabbinic answer it was designed to embarrass (the first husband gets her back). The askers, of course, believed in no resurrection at all; the question is a weapon, not an inquiry.
That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and questioned Him. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses declared that if a man dies without having children, his brother is to marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died without having children. So he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brothers, down to the seventh. And last of all, the woman died. In the resurrection, then, whose wife will she be of the seven? For all of them were married to her.”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:
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869), on Matt 22:23
Seven brethren - It is very likely that the Sadducees increased the number, merely to make the question the more difficult.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Matt 22:25
Whose wife shall she be of the seven? - The rabbins have said, That if a woman have two husbands in this world, she shall have the first only restored to her in the world to come. Sohar. Genes. fol. 24. The question put by these bad men is well suited to the mouth of a libertine.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Matt 22:28
The Double Diagnosis
— Matthew 22:29 — the two ignorances behind every such errorBefore answering the puzzle, Jesus names its source — twice over. The Sadducees do not know the Scriptures (which assert the resurrection), and they do not know the power of God (which can accomplish it in ways their imagination has not budgeted for). Wesley’s one-line question beneath his note has outlived every century since: how many errors flow from the same source?
Jesus answered, “You are mistaken because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. In the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like the angels in heaven.Ye err, not knowing the Scriptures - Which plainly assert a resurrection. Nor the power of God - Which is well able to effect it. How many errors flow from the same source?
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on Matt 22:29
(Verse 29.) But Jesus, answering, said to them: You err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. Therefore, they err because they do not know the Scriptures, and because they are ignorant of the Scriptures, they consequently do not know the power of God, that is, Christ, who is the power of God and the wisdom of God (I Cor. 1).
Jerome· Commentary on Matthew (420), on Matt 22:29
As the Angels
— Matthew 22:30 — what the correction says, and what it does notThe puzzle dissolves because its premise is wrong: resurrection life is not this life resumed. Marriage belongs to the age where generations must be raised; in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the angels — like them in this respect, deathless and beyond the need of succession. Two misreadings are worth closing off plainly: the verse does not say the raised become angels, and it does not say they love less — only that the arrangement built for a dying world is not carried into a deathless one.
(Verse 30) For in the resurrection neither do they marry, nor are they given in marriage; but they are as the angels of God in heaven. The Latin custom does not correspond to the Greek idiom. For to marry is properly said of women, and to take wives of men; but let us simply understand the statement, that to marry is written of men, and to be given in marriage of women.
Jerome· Commentary on Matthew (420), on Matt 22:30
The Tense Argument
— Matthew 22:31-32 — the resurrection proved from a verbGod says to Moses — centuries after the patriarchs died —
“I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”Exodus 3:6present tense: I AM, not I was — spoken from the burning bush, in the Torah the Sadducees themselves held as Scripture
Jesus states the axiom the covenant name carries:
“God is not the God of the dead, but of the living”Matthew 22:32to be someone's God is a living relationship — benefit from God to man, duty from man to God (Wesley) — not a memorial inscription
Therefore:
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are not dead but living — and a living covenant with whole persons awaits the body's risingcf. Luke 20:38Luke's account adds His closing line: “for all live unto him”
I am the God of Abraham - Let it be observed, that Abraham was dead upwards of 300 years before these words were spoken to Moses: yet still God calls himself the God of Abraham, etc. Now Christ properly observes that God is not the God of the dead, (that word being equal, in the sense of the Sadducees, to an eternal annihilation), but of the living; it therefore follows that, if he be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, these are not dead, but alive; alive with God, though they had ceased, for some hundreds of years, to exist among mortals.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Matt 22:32
(Vers. 31 seqq.) But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken by God, saying to you: I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And when the crowds heard this, they were amazed at his teaching. To prove the truth of the resurrection, he could have used many other more obvious examples, among which is: The dead will be raised up, and those who are in the graves will rise again (Isaiah 26:19).
Jerome· Commentary on Matthew (420), on Matt 22:31-33
Then He said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.the verse the whole argument stands on.
Even Moses demonstrates that the dead are raised, in the passage about the burning bush. For he calls the Lord ‘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 to Him all are alive.”Luke's account, with the closing line: 'for all live unto him.'
Why argue from the Torah?the courtesy inside the confrontation
Jerome noticed what Jesus did notquote: Isaiah 26:19 (“thy dead men shall live”) or Daniel 12:2 would have been far more obvious resurrection texts. But the Sadducees privileged the five books of Moses, so Jesus met them entirely inside the canon they conceded — and won the point there. It is the same tailoring of citation to hearer that marks all His Scripture use, and it is why the crowd was astonished: the Torah itself, read closely enough, had been teaching resurrection all along.
The Crowd Was Astonished
— Matthew 22:33 — the challenge that fadedMatthew notes the audience’s reaction, and Mark adds Jesus’s own last word to the Sadducees: “ye therefore do greatly err.” It was the last question that party ever asked Him.
But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God said to you: ‘I am 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.” When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at His teaching.And see how the assault of the Jews against Christ becomes more faint. Their first challenge was in a threatening tone, By what authority doest thou these things, to oppose which firmness of spirit was needed. Their second was with guile, to meet which was needed wisdom. This last was with ignorant presumption which is easier to cope with than the others. For he that thinks he knows somewhat, when he knows nothing, is an easy conquest for one who has understanding.
Pseudo-Chrysostom· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (c. 500), on Matt 22:33
Where It Points
— from an argument to an eventWithin the week, the One who argued for the resurrection from a verb tense would be dead — and three days later, the doctrine would stop being an argument. The New Testament’s resurrection hope stands finally not on Exodus 3:6’s grammar but on an empty tomb, of which Paul says Christ is become “the firstfruits of them that slept.”
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.the argument, become an event.
Closing
A trick question met with a tense; a denial met with the burning bush. God does not say “I was” the God of Abraham — and on that present tense Jesus hangs the certainty that the dead in covenant with God are not gone, and will not stay buried.