There
came to him Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection. They asked him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote to us, ‘If a man’s brother dies, and leaves a wife behind him, and leaves no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up offspring for his brother.’ There were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and dying left no offspring. The second took her, and died, leaving no children behind him. The third likewise; and the seven took her and left no children. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be of them? For the seven had her as a wife.”
Mark 12:18-23
Mark 12 [17.] Jesus answered them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
They marveled greatly at him.
Mark 12 [18.] There came to him Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection. They asked him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote to us, ‘If a man’s brother dies, and leaves a wife behind him, and leaves no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up offspring for his brother.’ There were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and dying left no offspring. The second took her, and died, leaving no children behind him. The third likewise; and the seven took her and left no children. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be of them? For the seven had her as a wife.”
Mark 12 [24.] Jesus answered them, “Isn’t this because you are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God? For when they will rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. But about the dead, that they are raised; haven’t you read in the book of Moses, about the Bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘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. You are therefore badly mistaken.”
Meaning:
The Pharisees and Herodians had failed to trap Jesus with their question about taxes; his answer, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” left them marveling (Mark 12:17). Now a different group steps forward. This is the only time the Sadducees appear in Mark’s Gospel, and they come with a question designed not to learn from Jesus but to make his teaching, and the hope of resurrection itself, look ridiculous.
- “There came to him Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection”
The Sadducees were a small but powerful party drawn mainly from the wealthy priestly families who controlled the temple and cooperated with Rome. They held to the written Law of Moses and rejected the traditions of the Pharisees. Luke explains their position: “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess all of these” (Acts 23:8).
For the Sadducees, this life was all there was. Jesus, on the other hand, had told his disciples that he would be killed “and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31). So this was no side issue. It touched the heart of what Jesus was about to do.
- “Teacher, Moses wrote to us”
The Sadducees appealed to Moses because they accepted his books as the final authority. They summarised the law of levirate marriage from Deuteronomy: when a married man died without a son, his brother was to marry the widow, and “the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed in the name of his brother who is dead, that his name not be blotted out of Israel” (Deuteronomy 25:5-6). The law protected the widow and kept the family’s name and land in Israel.
A similar duty lies behind the story of Ruth, who said to Boaz, “for you are a near kinsman” (Ruth 3:9); from their marriage came King David (Matthew 1:5-6).
- “There were seven brothers”
Seven brothers in turn married the same woman, and each died childless. The number seven made the case as extreme as possible. It may have been a stock puzzle the Sadducees used to mock the Pharisees, who believed in the resurrection.
If the dead are raised, they argued, the woman would have seven husbands at once, which the Law could never allow; so Moses himself cannot have believed in a resurrection.
- “In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be of them?”
The question assumed that life after the resurrection would simply continue life as we know it, with the same marriages and laws.
Yet the Scriptures they claimed to honour already pointed beyond death. Daniel had written, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). Jesus would answer that their error came from “not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God” (Mark 12:24). In the resurrection people “neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25), and God himself had shown at the burning bush that he is the God of the living (Mark 12:26-27).
The Significance of Mark 12:18-23
- Mockery is not inquiry
Honest questions about the life to come are welcome, but questions meant only to ridicule close the heart to the answer.
- The next life is not a copy of this one
God’s future is not merely this life extended. It is a new creation in which “Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more” (Revelation 21:4).
- The resurrection is central
Christian hope rests on the resurrection: “But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruits of those who are asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20).
Cross-References:
Deuteronomy 25:5: "If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies, and has no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married outside to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife" The law the Sadducees quoted.
Acts 23:8: "For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess all of these." What the Sadducees believed.
Daniel 12:2: "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." The Old Testament hope of resurrection.
Conclusion: The Sadducees, the priestly party who denied the resurrection, came to Jesus with a puzzle based on the Law of Moses about a man’s duty to marry his brother’s childless widow. They imagined seven brothers marrying the same woman and asked whose wife she would be in the resurrection, hoping to make belief in life after death look absurd. Their question assumed that the life to come would be just like this one, and it ignored both the Scriptures and the power of God, as Jesus was about to show.
PIB Scriptures are derived from the World English Bible