Mark 12:23 — Community Reflections

MARK 12:23 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“In the resurrection therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife.”

At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her? — the punchline question exposes the Sadducees' assumption: they are imagining resurrection as the resumption of current-life arrangements. The impossibility they see (she cannot be wife to seven simultaneously) is based on the assumption that marriage persists through the resurrection unchanged. Jesus' answer will challenge the assumption, not the resurrection.

Church Fathers on Mark 12:23

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

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

Publish a reflection on this verse

No reflections on this verse yet. Be the first to write one!