Mark 12:18–27

Some Sadducees Try to Trick Jesus

¹⁸Then some Sadducees came to Jesus and asked him a question. (Sadducees believed that people would not rise from the dead.) ¹⁹They said, “Teacher, Moses wrote that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, then that man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. ²⁰Once there were seven brothers. The first brother married and died, leaving no children. ²¹So the second brother married the widow, but he also died and had no children. The same thing happened with the third brother. ²²All seven brothers married her and died, and none of the brothers had any children. Finally the woman died too. ²³Since all seven brothers had married her, when people rise from the dead, whose wife will she be?”

²⁴Jesus answered, “Why don’t you understand? Don’t you know what the Scriptures say, and don’t you know about the power of God? ²⁵When people rise from the dead, they will not marry, nor will they be given to someone to marry. They will be like the angels in heaven. ²⁶Surely you have read what God said about people rising from the dead. In the book in which Moses wrote about the burning bush, ⁿ it says that God told Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ ^{n 27}God is the God of the living, not the dead. You Sadducees are wrong!”