The Question of the Resurrection-Life. The Pharisees having withdrawn in confusion, the Sadducees (mentioned here only in Mk., cf. pp. 619f., 624, 637) bring forward a scholastic problem designed to show that the strict carrying out of the Levirate law (p. 109, Deuteronomy 25:5-10 *, Ruth 1:11-13 *) would produce an absurd situation in a future life, and therefore the Law does not contemplate a resurrection. Jesus answers that they have not understood the Scriptures, nor the power of God which raises men to a life of a different order from the present. The resurrection-life of the just needs not to be continued by marriage. They are like the angels a comparison which trenches on another Sadducean denial; for the Sadducees did not believe in angels (Acts 2:38). The argument from Exodus 3:6 embodies a somewhat Rabbinic interpretation of the passage, but it rests on the feeling which does not allow the faithful to admit that a good God ceases, through the death of those who have served and loved Him, to be their God, or that He abandons them to nothingness. Those who have lived for God can never be dead for Him (Loisy). It used to be supposed that Jesus argues here from a passage in the Pentateuch in order to impress the Sadducees, but the idea of the Fathers, that the Sadducees recognised the Pentateuch only as Scripture, is now abandoned (HNT).
Mark 12:18-27
18 Then come unto him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection; and they asked him, saying,
19 Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man's brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.
20 Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed.
21 And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed: and the third likewise.
22 And the seven had her, and left no seed: last of all the woman died also.
23 In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife.
24 And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God?
25 For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels which are in heaven.
26 And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?
27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living: ye therefore do greatly err.