Mark 12:18-25 - One wife for seven brothers

12:18-23

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, contrary to the belief of the Pharisees. The Sadducees perhaps were hoping to prove their superiority to the Pharisees, thinking that they could trap Jesus where the more orthodox Jewish leaders had failed to do so. They were basing their supposed killer question on Deut 25:5-10, where it spoke about a brother-in-law looking after his brothers widowed wife. The objective was to ensure that families were looked after, also the Sadducees did actually hold to the Pentateuch. They had a habit of trying to catch out the Pharisees with supposedly clever questions that would “disprove” the possibility of resurrection. So here they concoct a scenario where a whole series of brothers die. The punchline is then to ask whose wife the woman will be at the resurrection, having had several husbands.

12:24,25

Jesus’ answer is not to give some legalistic answer to the direct question, but to look at the underlying presuppositions. This can often be a good way to highlight flaws in an argument. There can be underlying assumptions, often implicit rather than explicit, in an argument. If these assumptions are wrong, then the whole argument falls apart. “You are in error because you neither know the Scriptures nor the power of God”. If a person does not know the Bible nor the power of God then their wisdom will be extremely limited. A particular wrong assumption was that people will marry after the resurrection, Jesus states quite plainly that this will not be the case. We should watch our own assumptions about heaven and hell, because it is all too easy for beliefs or arguments to be based on ignorance, rather than knowledge. One example is debates about the nature of hell, but I have ranted on about that not too long ago, so will spare you by not repeating that rant!