Mark 12:18-27

The Voice

Sadducees: ¹⁹ Teacher, the law of Moses tells us, “If a man’s brother dies, leaving a widow without sons, then the man should marry his sister-in-law and try to have children with her in his brother’s name.”^[a]

²⁰ Now here’s the situation: there were seven brothers. The oldest took a wife and left her a widow with no children. ²¹ So the next oldest married her, left her a widow, and again there were no children. So the next brother married her and died, and the next, and the next. ²² Finally all seven brothers had married her, but none of them had conceived children with her, and at last she died also.

²³ Tell us then, in the resurrection [when humans rise from the dead],^[b] whose wife will she be? For all seven of them married her.

Jesus: ²⁴ You can’t see the truth because you don’t know the Scriptures well and because you don’t really believe that God is powerful. ²⁵ The answer is this: when the dead rise, they won’t be married or given in marriage. They’ll be like the messengers in heaven, who are not united with one another in marriage. ²⁶ But how can you fail to see the truth of resurrection? Don’t you remember in the Book of Moses how God talked to Moses out of a burning bush and what God said to him then? “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”^[c] “I am,” God said. Not “I was.” ²⁷ So God is not the God of the dead but of the living. You are sadly mistaken.