Games and distractions when there is important business to attend to is an affront to thinking people. It can be very frustrating when you are trying to get something done and no one will take you seriously. All you get is jokes and goofing off. No one is taking what you want to do seriously.
This kind of distraction is often a tactic used to prevent serious forward movement. You make fun of your opponents and their ideas, or at least your representation of their ideas. You grab the attention at just the right moments so that the plans can never move forward.
Magicians use this technique to pull off their tricks. They control where you look, and at what you look. They use the power of suggestion to get you to think what they want you to think about what you saw or didn’t see. They don’t actually pull a coin out of your ear!
In an attempt to catch Jesus in a violation that would provide the excuse for His execution, the religious group call the Sadducees comes with a trick question. Their concept of heaven was simple: there is no heaven, eternal life, spiritual realm or God’s involvement in earthly life. When you die, you die, all of you. When it is over it is over. So they hope to show just how impossible their theologically opponents’ understanding of these ideas had become.
The come with a question about heaven in an attempt to make Jesus look foolish. They think heaven doesn’t exist, so their imagined non-existent place is just like earth, with the same relationships and limitations. So they think they can trip Jesus up, make Him look foolish, catch Him in a contradiction that will give them an excuse to kill Him.
They apply the Law of succession and responsibility that the Law prescribes to the extreme. Having an heir to maintain property on behalf of the family was a vital part of Jewish law. If there was no child, then the property was lost to the family. So if someone marries and then the man dies, there was a responsibility of the man’s family to provide for the dead man’s wife and provide a male child as an heir to his property.
If mathematical precision was at stake, these Sadducees had it down. They carry this succession down through seven brothers. Their point could have been proven with only two brothers. The principle would have been the same. But having two husbands in heaven is not nearly as absurd as having seven, which is what they are proposing. And remember, they don’t even believe heaven exists. Polygamy can’t be good, whether it is two spouses or seven.
Culturally the idea of marrying your brother’s widow doesn’t sit well with us westerners. But in a society where land and children are of vital importance, keeping it within the family makes a whole lot of sense. And this takes on special significance in a culture that doesn’t grant women the same rights as men to inherit property. So the wives needed a male child in order for them to be protected from life’s harshness.
One last note: Paul declares that categories like male and female are null and void when it comes to place in God’s Kingdom. All earthly categorizations don’t matter at all. We are all one in Christ. We all have identical standing. We all share the same entrance credentials: Jesus’ death and resurrection.
The Arnold Journey 