The question of the Sadducees: V. 27. Then came to Him certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked Him, V. 28. saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man's brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. V. 29. There were therefore seven brethren; and the first took a wife, and died without children. V. 30, And the second took her to wife, and he died childless. V. 31. And the third took her; and in like manner the seven also; and they left no children, and died. V. 32. Last of all the woman died also. V. 33. Therefore in the resurrection, whose wife of them is she? For seven had her to wife.
Compare Matt. 22, 23-33; Mark 12, 18-27. The chief priests and scribes having ignominiously failed in their attack, the Sadducees hoped to have better luck with a catch question which they had devised upon the basis of a story, real or invented for the occasion. The chief characteristic of the Sadducees is given by the evangelist, namely, that they denied the resurrection. They also denied the existence of angels and refused to accept any books of the Old Testament as having full authority but the five books of Moses.
Their question, while striking at the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead which Jesus preached, had its direct concern with the institution of the so-called levirate marriage, Deut. 25, 5-10. The rule made by Moses required that a man marry the widow of his brother in case there was no male issue and the brothers had been residing on the same family estate.
Now the case which the Sadducees presented concerned seven brothers who, in accordance with this rule, had married the same woman in succession, all of them dying without issue. And last of all the woman died also. The question of the Sadducees, which they thought very clever, was regarding the husband's rights in this case, after the resurrection had taken place. The successive marriages had purposely been so graphically described, in order that the great difficulty of the situation and its ridiculousness might appear at once.
Now if there be such a thing as a resurrection, which, they sneeringly implied, could not be, how will this difficulty be solved? Is it not flatly insurmountable? With similar arguments, that lack, however, the cleverness of this story, the opponents of the Scriptural resurrection try to ridicule the hope of the Christians, and there is an interesting lesson in the manner in which Christ. handles the situation.