Matthew 22:23-28

(23-28) The Sadducees. — (See Note on Matthew 3:7.) These, we must remember, consisted largely of the upper class of the priesthood (Acts 5:17). The form of their attack implies that they looked on our Lord as teaching the doctrine of the resurrection. They rested their denial on the ground that they found no mention of it in the Law, which they recognised as the only rule of faith. The case which they put, as far as the principle involved was concerned, need not have gone beyond any case of re-marriage without issue, but the questioners pushed it to its extreme, as what seemed to them a reductio ad absurdum. Stress is laid on the childlessness of the woman in all the seven marriages in order to guard against the possible answer that she would be counted in the resurrection as the wife of him to whom she had borne issue.