⭐WEB · Matthew 22:24
What does Matthew 22:24 mean?
"saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up offspring for his brother.’"
— Matthew 22:24 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
They said to him, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
When they heard it, they marveled, and left him, and went away.
On that day Sadducees (those who say that there is no resurrection) came to him. They asked him,
saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up offspring for his brother.’
Now there were with us seven brothers. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother.
In the same way, the second also, and the third, to the seventh.
After them all, the woman died.
Explanation
Matthew 22:24 records the opening statement of a question posed to Jesus by the Sadducees, a Jewish religious party. In plain language, they are reminding Jesus of a law from the Torah: if a man dies without children, his brother is obligated to marry the widow so that the family line can continue through offspring credited to the deceased brother's name. This sets up a hypothetical scenario they are about to present, involving seven brothers who successively marry the same woman as each one dies childless.
The context here is crucial. The Sadducees were a group who accepted only the five books of Moses as authoritative Scripture and, notably, denied the resurrection of the dead. The law they cite is known as levirate marriage, found in Deuteronomy 25:5-6. It was designed in ancient Israelite society to preserve a family's inheritance, name, and property within the tribe, and to provide for widows who would otherwise have no social or economic security. The Sadducees are not asking this question out of genuine curiosity about the law's application; they are setting a trap. In the verses that follow, they describe seven brothers who each marry the same woman in succession, all dying childless, and then ask whose wife she will be at the resurrection. Their goal is to make the doctrine of resurrection look absurd and unworkable, since they didn't believe in it in the first place.
Theologically, this passage matters because it shows Jesus being tested with a legal and logical puzzle meant to discredit a core hope of biblical faith—the resurrection of the dead. Though verse 24 itself is simply the setup,
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