(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.
Related Commentaries of Matthew 22:23
Matthew 22:23-28
23 The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him,
24 Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.
25 Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother:
26 Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh.c
27 And last of all the woman died also.
28 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.