Mark 12:23

In the resurrection, therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? For the seven had her to wife.

The Herodians and the Pharisees had been obliged to retreat with little glory. Now come the Sadducees, the deniers of the resurrection of the dead. They hope to have much better success. In fact, their confident manner is tinged with facetiousness, as though they were perpetrating a huge joke upon the Galilean Rabbi. They had no idea that the joke would be turned upon them so quickly and easily. They preface their remarks with the announcement that Moses had given them a certain precept. They were referring to the so-called levirate marriage, "the ancient custom of marriage between a man and the widow of his brother, required by the Mosaic law when there was no male issue. " Deuteronomy 25:5. Whether their story was taken from facts or fancy is immaterial. They recite it with much circumstantial detail, to make it all the more ridiculous by the long explanation. Seven brothers, one after another, had this woman for their wife. Surely the situation at the time of resurrection, in case all the seven should claim her for wife, would be disagreeable, to say the least. Arguments of this kind are being used by unbelievers even to the present day; their great wisdom will not permit them to believe in such an unreasonable fact as the resurrection of the dead.