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(Mar_12:18-27; Luk_20:27-40.)
Who say (teach).—The ïἱ before ëÝãïíôåò 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 source 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 ἐí ôῇ ðáëéããåíåóßá , 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. 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. 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: äåῖí ἡãåῖóèáé íüìéìá øὰ ãåãñáììÝíá , 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.
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.]
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. 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. ðÜíôåò ãὰñ áὐôῷ æῶóéí 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.]
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:
Mat_22:28.—[The article is wanting In Greek and should be omitted in the trsl.—P. S.]
Mat_22:25.—[Literally: and the first, hating married, died (or: married and died), and having no teed, left his wife to his brother, ãáìÞóáò ἐôåëåýôçóå êáὶ ìὴ ἕ÷ùí óðÝñìá , ἀöῆêå , ê . ô . ë .—P. S.]
Mat_22:17.— Ôïῦ Èåïῦ is omitted in B., D., etc., according to Meyer on account of Mar_12:36 [ ὡò ἅããåëïé ἐí áïῖò ὐñáíïῖò ].
Mat_22:32.—The second Èåüò [before íåêñῶí 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]
[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.]
[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.]
[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.]
[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.]
[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.]