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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.