Mark 12:19 — Community Reflections

MARK 12:19 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“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.”

Teacher, they said, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother — the Sadducees begin with the levirate marriage law of Deuteronomy 25:5–10 — the law designed to preserve a dead man's lineage by having his brother marry his widow. The law is real and the obligation was taken seriously in ancient Israel.

Church Fathers on Mark 12:19

A certain heretical sect of the Jews called Sadducees denied the resurrection, and said that there was neither angel nor spirit. These then coming to Jesus, craftily proposed to Him a certain tale, in order to shew that no resurrection should take place, or had taken place; and therefore there is added, 'And they asked Him, saying, Master.' And in this tale they lay down that seven men had married one woman, in order to make men draw back from belief in the resurrection.
Theophylact · 11th century

And fitly do they frame such a fable in order to prove the madness of those who assert the resurrection of the body. Such a thing however might really have happened at some time or other among them.
Bede · 8th century

But in a mystical sense: what can this woman, leaving no seed to seven brothers, and last of all dying, mean except the Jewish synagogue, deserted by the seven-fold Spirit, which filled those seven patriarchs, who did not leave to her the seed of Abraham, that is, Jesus Christ?
Pseudo-Jerome · 5th century

Read all 11 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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