Matthew 22:28 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Ver. 23-28. Mark thus repeats the same history, Mark 12:18-22. So doth Luke, Luke 20:27-33. Concerning the Sadducees we have before spoken; they were a sect amongst the Jews much differing from the Pharisees, as may be seen, Acts 23:8. Amongst other erroneous tenets, they denied the resurrection, as may be seen in that text, as well as this; and (which indeed was their fundamental error) they denied spirits, and consequently the immortality of the soul in its separate estate. Their design seemeth not so much to have been to have drawn out a discourse from our Saviour which might have touched his life, (which was the Pharisees design), as to have exposed him, by bringing him to an absurdity. To this purpose they put a case to our Saviour upon the law, Deuteronomy 25:5, where God had ordained, for the preservation of the inheritances of the several tribes and families distinct, That if brethren dwelt together, and one of them died leaving no issue; the wife of the dead should not marry unto a stranger; her husband's brother should go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, &c. Now they either knew of, or else supposed, a ease of seven brethren, successively marrying the same woman; they desire to know whose wife of the seven this woman should be in the resurrection. Instead of discovering their acuteness, and putting our Saviour upon a difficulty, they did but betray their own ignorance as to the state of the resurrection.