Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife and died leaving no issue.
επτα αδελφοι ησαν και ο πρωτος ελαβεν γυναικα και αποθνησκων ουκ αφηκεν σπερμα
6 Church Fathers comment on this verse
In their dishonesty, these individuals create a fabricated narrative to undermine the veracity of the Resurrection. They speak of an event that never occurred and is impossible. The story of seven husbands having the same wife, taken one after another, is a contrived tale aimed at ridiculing the reality of the Resurrection even further.
After the Pharisees were rendered speechless by His response, the Sadducees, who were also part of the Sanhedrin and pleased by the Pharisees' discomfiture, quickly posed a question to Him regarding the doctrine of resurrection, which they had dismissed due to what they deemed absurd implications. As He had done in His rebukes towards the Pharisees, He addressed the Sadducees by uprooting the erroneous belief they had propagated. They cited the case of a woman who, according to human law, had married seven brothers. The Lord demonstrated to the Sadducees that their misunderstanding was rooted in their (1) failure to comprehend the Scriptures and (2) lack of insight into God’s sovereign power.
Had they grasped the true meaning of even those texts they accepted—not merely their literal interpretation but their deeper significance—they would have recognized the vital link between the faith presented within them and the belief in the eternal, personal nature of humanity. Furthermore, if they had acknowledged God’s omnipotence, they would not assume that the afterlife mirrors the present existence in all its aspects, but rather accept that God can bestow upon human existence a transformed, glorified essence. He elucidates that life beyond this world must resonate with the existence of higher spiritual beings. In support of this assertion, He refers to the frequent declarations in the books of Moses, stating the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. How could God forge such an intimate connection with notable individuals, conferring upon them such profound significance as to be referred to as their God, if these individuals were mere fleeting existences and not intended for eternity?
The alignment of the Sadducees with the Pharisees in this instance is not clearly indicated in the Gospel narratives. It is quite possible that, having witnessed Jesus Christ’s rebuttal of the Pharisees, the Sadducees took pleasure in His triumph and sought to join Him in mocking the Pharisees' belief in the resurrection of the dead. The prevailing notion among them suggested that, with the arrival of the Messiah, all Israelites would be resurrected to inhabit the promised land. At the very least, Jesus’ response was satisfying to the scribes (Luke 39), while it also emboldened the Pharisees in their conflict against the Sadducees (Matthew 34).
The Sadducees contended that the law concerning levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5-6), which allows a woman to marry multiple husbands during her lifetime, makes the Pharisees' concept of resurrection life questionable. They argued it was necessary either to dismiss this law as irrational or to forgo the belief in the resurrection. However, since the law is divinely instituted, they concluded it must support the absence of resurrection. Their objection stemmed from the Pharisees' overly materialistic view of life after resurrection. In response, Jesus declared that both the Sadducees and Pharisees “do not know the Scriptures” and corrected their misunderstanding by stating that once resurrected, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven” (Matthew 30). The Sadducees' argument hinged on the belief that a decayed human body could not rise again. The Lord responded by emphasizing their ignorance of “the power of God” and cited the Scriptures (Exodus 3:6) to illustrate that life exists beyond death, affirming the reality of the resurrection of the dead.
The Sadducees were engaged in a continuous contention with the Pharisees over the resurrection of the soul, attempting to demonstrate that the writings of Moses not only lacked any reference to the immortality of the soul but that there were also commandments imposed upon the Jewish people that directly contradicted the belief in the resurrection of the dead. One such commandment, known as the law of levirate marriage, required that if a man died childless, his widow was to be married by his brother to ensure the deceased's lineage continued. Citing this Mosaic law, they posed the scenario: “There were seven brothers; the first married and died without children. The second married her, but similarly died childless, and the third did likewise.
This continued with all seven brothers, each of whom left no descendants, and eventually, the woman herself passed away. In the event of a resurrection, whose wife will she be? After all, she had seven husbands! It cannot be that she belongs to all of them or to none; such a notion would be unreasonable. A great and divinely inspired lawgiver like Moses would not have permitted such absurdity in his statutes. Therefore, based on Moses' teaching, it follows that there is no resurrection.
The primary followers of Christ until then had been the Pharisees. In contrast, the Sadducees, representative of the affluent and religious elite, had remained mostly uninvolved in the events surrounding Christ, treating Him with the disdain typical of their views toward the uneducated from Galilee. However, as the teachings of the Galilean Rabbi gained attention throughout Jerusalem, and the remarkable responses He provided began to impress even the Pharisees, the Sadducees chose to engage with Him. They aimed to assess His understanding of the law and Jewish doctrine. To accomplish this, they crafted a highly intricate inquiry centered around a matter in which they openly displayed skepticism – that of the afterlife and resurrection.
They referred to a hypothetical scenario from rabbinic interpretation regarding a woman who had married seven brothers sequentially, each dying without leaving descendants. They wanted to ascertain which of the brothers she would belong to in the resurrection. Though fictional, this scenario was plausible according to the law, which mandated that a brother marry his deceased sibling’s widow to preserve the lineage and reputation, with the firstborn from this union regarded as the deceased's son. Disbelieving in the afterlife and resurrection, and assuming Jesus would align with the Pharisees' views on the resurrection, they anticipated delight in posing these perplexing questions, hoping to discredit Him and the concept of resurrection itself. While some rabbis held more noble views regarding life after death, most subscribed to rather crude ideas. They believed resurrection would involve people not only regaining their former bodies but also their previous desires and inclinations; resurrected individuals would eat, drink, and marry, even appearing in the same garments and possessing the same physical attributes and imperfections, so that they could be recognized as the individuals they once were. The Sadducees' question echoed a viewpoint already present among the rabbis, who suggested that “a woman who has been married to two husbands in this world will be given to the first in the world to come.” Armed with these grossly materialistic beliefs and denying the reality of resurrection entirely (a teaching they thought was absent from the Mosaic Torah, which they acknowledged), they approached the Savior with their query.
Mark's narrative regarding how the Lord confounded the Sadducees over the topic of the resurrection closely mirrors Matthew's account. In this context, Mark reflects a similar approach to Matthew's depiction of the event. The phrase ‘By these things ye are led astray’ serves as a more potent expression compared to that found in the Gospel of Matthew, emphasizing the superficiality and ignorance present in the Sadducees' comprehension of profound, divinely inspired teachings. Are you truly misled by this triviality and foolishness in what you perceive as profound reasoning? The implications are clear.
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 13 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS