Question about the Resurrection

Study notes

The Sadducees' riddle assumes that resurrection would simply perpetuate the marital and legal arrangements of the present world, exposing what they see as an absurdity in the doctrine. Jesus counters by distinguishing the conditions of this age from those of the age to come, where death no longer obtains and therefore marriage has no place. He then appeals to the wording of the divine self-identification in Exodus to show that the patriarchs remain alive to God, thereby establishing resurrection not as a restoration of earthly succession but as participation in the undying life that God already sustains. The exchange ends with scribal approval and the cessation of further challenges, underscoring that the answer has dismantled the proposed dilemma on its own scriptural terms.

What is Question about the Resurrection about?

Some of the Sadducees come forward while Jesus teaches in the temple and put a question to him about resurrection. They open by recalling the rule Moses gave for a childless widow and then construct a case in which seven brothers marry the same woman in succession, each dying without offspring. Their question is precise: if the dead are raised, which of the seven will have her as wife?

The scene belongs to the string of public challenges that fill Luke 20. Immediately before this exchange, questioners sent by the chief priests and scribes had tried to force Jesus into a statement about Roman taxes. That attempt ended with the questioners themselves silenced. The Sadducees now test him on a different front, one that arises from their own denial that any resurrection exists. Their riddle is meant to display the logical collapse that follows once resurrection is granted.

What follows matters for the immediate flow of the chapter because Jesus answers by distinguishing the present age from the age to come and by drawing an inference from the wording of the Exodus narrative. The exchange therefore closes the series of interrogations directed at Jesus and leaves his opponents unwilling to press him further with questions.

Where does this passage sit in Luke?

This exchange sits directly after the tax question in 20:20-26, where envoys from the chief priests and scribes had been left without reply. The Sadducees now step forward with their own test, shifting the ground from Roman authority to an internal dispute over resurrection that they themselves reject. Their riddle draws on the levirate rule stated in 20:28, yet the sequence of seven childless deaths and the woman’s own death in 20:29-32 is constructed to expose what they regard as an absurdity once resurrection is granted.

The unit therefore continues the pattern of public challenges that occupy the whole of Luke 20. Each attempt ends with the questioners exposed rather than Jesus. Here the exposure takes a distinctive turn: Jesus answers from the very portion of Moses that the Sadducees accept, citing the thorn-bush declaration in 20:37 and drawing the conclusion in 20:38 that God is not of the dead but of the living." The scribes who have been listening respond in 20:39 by affirming that he has spoken well, a reaction that marks the first explicit approval from any scribal voice in the chapter.

That approval immediately produces the further result recorded in 20:40: the opponents cease questioning him altogether. The silence clears the way for Jesus to reverse the direction of inquiry in the next pericope, where he himself poses the question about David’s son. Within the temple setting the passage thus functions as the final and most decisive silencing of the series, moving the narrative from defensive replies to an offensive question that the text says no one any longer dares to meet.

How is the passage structured?

The unit opens with the Sadducees approaching and stating their premise in a single sentence that identifies both their denial of resurrection and the Mosaic regulation they intend to weaponize. Their speech then unfolds as a tightly sequenced narrative: the first brother marries and dies childless, the second repeats the pattern, and the third follows identically until all seven have died without offspring and the woman herself dies. The repetition of the same outcome for each brother creates a deliberate accumulation that narrows the logical trap before the question is finally posed in verse 33.

Jesus’ reply shifts the ground without directly granting the premise. He first draws a single contrast between two orders of existence, then immediately elaborates the second order by adding two further negations: those worthy of that age neither marry nor die. The effect is to render the Sadducees’ chain of successive marriages irrelevant once the conditions of resurrection are granted. Only after this redefinition does Jesus turn to their own scriptural authority, citing the divine self-identification spoken at the thorn bush. The quotation itself is brief, yet the inference drawn from it reverses the direction of the argument: the text implies present relationship rather than past memory.

The scribes’ single approving sentence and the final notice that questioning ceases mark the close. The exchange therefore moves from an extended hypothetical constructed to expose contradiction, through a reordering of categories, to a counter-text that undercuts the original denial, ending in the opponents’ silence rather than further debate.

What is the historical background?

The Sadducees constituted an aristocratic priestly party centered in Jerusalem whose influence derived from control of the temple and its revenues. Their doctrinal stance limited authoritative teaching to the five books of Moses and therefore excluded any developed doctrine of resurrection, a position that set them apart from the Pharisees and most other Jews of the period. The question they pose rests on the levirate custom recorded in Deuteronomy 25, by which a surviving brother was obligated to marry his deceased brother’s widow when the first marriage had produced no heir. The purpose of that union was to preserve the deceased man’s name and inheritance within Israel rather than to create a new household. Because the Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch, their riddle is framed entirely within the legal and narrative world of Moses, culminating in an appeal to the scene at the burning bush where God identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In first-century Jewish thought, angels were commonly understood as immortal beings who neither marry nor reproduce; Jesus’ comparison of the resurrected to angels therefore draws on an existing category rather than introducing an entirely new one. The scribes who voice approval at the close of the exchange belonged to a different circle, most likely trained in the broader scriptural tradition that included the Prophets and Writings, and their reaction signals that the answer has satisfied criteria they themselves recognized as valid.

What does this passage teach about God?

Jesus locates marriage squarely inside the conditions of the present age, where death still operates and succession through offspring remains necessary. Those counted worthy of the coming age stand outside that necessity. They neither marry nor are given in marriage because they can no longer die; their existence is already marked by the life that resurrection confers. The text therefore presents resurrection not as the restoration of earthly arrangements but as entry into a different order of being, one in which the limitations that govern this age have been left behind.

The same distinction governs the claim that these persons are like angels and are called sons of God. Angelic existence, in the passage, functions as an image of undying life rather than a statement about marital status. Sonship here is defined by participation in the resurrection itself; it is not an inherited status but one granted to those whom God deems worthy. The language therefore ties human identity in the age to come directly to God’s decisive act of raising the dead.

Jesus anchors this hope in the wording of the divine self-identification given to Moses. By quoting the declaration at the thorn bush, he treats the present tense of the covenant formula as evidence that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob remain alive to God. The argument does not rest on a general doctrine of immortality but on the specific character of God’s relation to the patriarchs: the one who names himself their God continues to hold them in life. The closing assertion that all live to him extends the same logic beyond the three named figures, indicating that God’s covenant faithfulness sustains the dead until the resurrection occurs.

The exchange therefore presents resurrection as both future and already secured by the living God. Human beings do not achieve this life by their own powers; they receive it as those considered worthy, and they remain related to God across the boundary of death. The passage thus grounds hope for the dead in the constancy of the divine name rather than in any property inherent in human nature.

What are the interpretive difficulties?

The Sadducees frame their question as a straightforward application of the levirate rule recorded in Moses, yet the scenario of seven successive childless marriages functions less as a genuine legal inquiry than as a device to expose what they regard as an incoherent consequence of resurrection belief. Jesus does not reject the rule itself; instead he relocates marriage to the conditions of this age alone, leaving open whether the Sadducees would have accepted any distinction between ages even if it had been offered earlier in the exchange.

A separate tension appears in the appeal to the thorn bush. By quoting the divine self-identification as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Jesus treats the present tense of the verb as evidence that these men remain alive to God. The argument therefore rests on the continuing relationship rather than on any explicit statement about future resurrection bodies. The passage does not indicate whether the Sadducees found this reading of Exodus persuasive on its own terms or whether they simply recognized that their constructed dilemma had been set aside.

The notice that some scribes then affirm Jesus' answer raises a further question about alignment among the groups present. The text records only their brief commendation and the subsequent cessation of public challenges; it supplies no indication whether the scribes now accept resurrection teaching or merely grant that the Sadducees' particular trap has been dismantled. Likewise, the claim that those worthy of the coming age can no longer die is stated without elaboration on the precise relation between resurrection and angelic likeness, leaving readers to observe that the unit settles the immediate riddle while remaining silent on several broader mechanics of the life to come.

Notes accompany the Anselm Project Bible, an AI translation from the original languages. Tap any verse above for the committee's word-level decisions.