Luke 20:34-40

The Answer.

This answer is preceded in Matthew and Mark by a severe rebuke, whereby Jesus makes His questioners aware of the gross spiritual ignorance involved in such a question as theirs.

The answer of Jesus has also a sarcastic character. Those accumulated verbs, γαμεῖν, ἐκγαμίζεσθαι, especially with the frequentative γαμίσκεσθαι or ἐκγαμίσκεσθαι, throw a shade of contempt over that whole worldly train, above which the Sadducean mind is incapable of rising. Although from a moral point of view the αἰὼν μέλλων, the world to come, has already begun with the coming of Christ, from a physical point of view, the present world is prolonged till the resurrection of the body, which is to coincide with the restitution of all things. The resurrection from the dead is very evidently, in this place, not the resurrection of the dead in general. What is referred to is a special privilege granted only to the faithful (which shall be accounted worthy; comp. Luke 14:14, the resurrection of the just, and Php 3:11).

The first for, Luke 20:36, indicates a causal relation between the cessation of marriage, Luke 20:35, and that of death, Luke 20:36. The object of marriage is to preserve the human species, to which otherwise death would soon put an end; and this constitution must last till the number of the elect whom God will gather in is completed. While the for makes the cessation of death to be the cause of the cessation of marriage, the particle οὔτε, neither, brings out the analogy which exists between those two facts. The reading οὐδέ is less supported.

Jesus does not say (Luke 20:36) that glorified men are angels, angels and men are of two different natures, the one cannot be transformed into the other, but that they are equal with the angels, and that in two respects: no death, and no marriage. Jesus therefore ascribes a body to the angels, exempt from the difference of sex. This positive teaching about the existence and nature of angels is purposely addressed by Jesus to the Sadducees, because, according to Acts 23:8, this party denied the existence of those beings.

Jesus calls the raised ones children of God, and explains the title by that of children of the resurrection. Men on the earth are sons of one another; each of the raised ones is directly a child of God, because his body is an immediate work of divine omnipotence. It thus resembles that of the angels, whose body also proceeds directly from the power of the Creator, a fact which explains the name sons of God, by which they are designated in the O. T. The Mosaic command could not therefore form an objection to the doctrine of the resurrection rightly understood. Jesus now takes the offensive, and proves by that very Moses whom they had been opposing to Him (καί, even, before Moses), the indisputable truth of the doctrine (Luke 20:37-38). The scribes of the pharisaic party had probably often tried to discover such a proof; but it was necessary to dig deeply in the mine to extract from it this diamond.

In the phrase ἐπὶ τῆς βάτου, ἐπί denotes the place where the account of the bush is found. The choice of the word μηνύω, to give to understand, shows that Jesus distinguishes perfectly between an express declaration which does not exist, and an indication such as that which He proceeds to cite. He means simply, that if Moses had not had the idea of immortality, he would not have expressed himself as he does. When Moses put into the mouth of God the designation: God of Abraham, etc., many generations had passed since the three patriarchs lived here below; and yet God still calls Himself their God. God cannot be the God of a being who does not exist. Therefore, in Him they live. Mark the absence of the article before the words νεκρῶν and ζώντων : a God of dead, of living beings. In Plato, it is their participation in the idea which guarantees existence; in the kingdom of God, it is their relation to God Himself. The dative αὐτῷ, to Him, implies a contrast to to us, to whom the dead are as though they were not. Their existence and activity are entirely concentrated in their relation to God. All; not only the three patriarchs. The for bears on the word living. “For they live, really dead though they are to us.”

This prompt and sublime answer filled with admiration the scribes who had so often sought this decisive word in Moses without finding it; they cannot restrain themselves from testifying their joyful surprise. Aware from this time forth that every snare laid for Him will be the occasion for a glorious manifestation of His wisdom, they give up this sort of attack (Luke 20:40).