The Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection. (Read from the Bible: Matt.
22:23-33.)
Ridicule has often been used to good advantage against an enemy when
other weapons have proved useless. The Pharisees had propounded a question that
seemed a most puzzling dilemma. The Sadducees were known as the aristocratic
party. In their religious beliefs they differed from the rest of the Jews.
Among other things, they did not believe in the resurrection. Thus, in their
discussion, they attempted to make light of it.
The Sadducees made use of the law prescribed in Deut. 25:5- 10, which
held that the surviving brother should marry the older brother’s widow and rear
up children. The first child was to be known as a child of the dead brother.
With this law as a basis, “‘If a man dies without children his brother shall
marry his widow and raise up a family for him. Now there were seven brothers
among us. The first of them married and died, and as he had no children he left
his wife to his brother, so did the second, and the third, and the rest of the
seven. After them all the woman died. At the resurrection which one’s wife will
she be? For they all married her.’’ (Goodspeed text)
It was an impossible situation, but Jesus did not treat it lightly.
Rather, he put their intended meaning to one side and lifted it as a problem of
moral worth, which demanded faith and sincere earnestness to solve. He boldly
informed these proud Sadducees that they erred for ‘‘not knowing the
scriptures, nor the power of God,’ for he informed them that after the
resurrection there will be no marriage as there is in this life. Their faith in
the power of God was greatly lacking when they denied the possibility of
immortality. Then with exact logic based upon scriptures that they accepted, he
said: ‘“Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am
the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the
God of the dead, but of the living.’” This passage from Exodus 3:6, which Jesus
referred to, was written many hundred years after the time of Isaac and Jacob.
If the writer of it had not believed in a life after physical death, it would
have read: “I was the God of Abraham,” etc. From scriptures accepted by the
Sadducees, the Master pointed out to them the errors of their learning and
belief.
A question that had in it the seeds of ridicule, turned out to be one
of rebuke to those who proposed it. “And when the multitude heard this, they
were astonished as his doctrine.” (Obert C. Taner, The New Testament Speaks [Salt
Lake City: The Deseret News Press, 1946], 442-43)
