Mark 12:19 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

Ver. 19-27. The true question about the resurrection was: Whether the bodies of the dead shall rise or not? Not whether they shall arise with the same qualities, affections, powers, &c. They are sown natural, but they shall rise spiritual, bodies, without affections and qualities disposing them to actions only necessary for the supporting the natural life, such as hunger and thirst, &c.; or for the upholding the world, that while one generation passeth it might be supplied by another, such as an appetite to marriage, &c.: what needs this when all generations shall be determined in the everlasting world? So as in truth these learned men showed themselves dunces, wholly ignorant of what they came to argue upon. They should first have proved that there would be any need of wives, or any such thing as marriage, after the world should have an end. In the mean time our Saviour proveth the resurrection out of the writings of Moses, owned by themselves for holy writ. Without a resurrection Abraham would not be Abraham, nor Isaac Isaac, nor Jacob Jacob. See the notes on this part of the history: See Poole on "Matthew 22:24", and following verses to Matthew 22:32.

Mark 12:19

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.