Jesus evades verbal traps–then springs one of his own. | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Matthew 22 23–45, Blog Through the Bible Project

Jesus comes across here as strong, intelligent, resourceful, with considerable presence of mind and courage. He thinks on his feet, fast and calmly.
This one man, along, can stand up to a crowd of pharisees, saducees and lawyers.
Go, Jesus, go, and give us your spirit, please.
* * *

Okay, so the Pharisees and the Herodians unsuccessfully had a go at Jesus. Now it is the turn of the Sadducees to try and trap him theologically. Would this woman be guilty of incest?

²³ That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. ²⁴ “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. ²⁵ Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. ²⁶ The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. ²⁷ Finally, the woman died. ²⁸ Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”

²⁹ Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.

They do not know the Scriptures well enough to know that Scripture teaches the reality of the resurrection, and they do not know the power of God to create a far more wonderful world than anyone can now imagine.

³⁰ At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. ³¹ But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ³² ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

The present tense in the quotation from Exodus 3:6 logically implies that when God spoke these words to Moses, God was still in covenant relationship with the patriarchs, who had been dead for centuries. If the Pentateuch implies that the patriarchs are still alive, and if the rest of the OT points to the resurrection, as it does, then the Saducees should recognize God’s power to raise the patriarchs and all God’s people to enjoy his eternal covenant in eternal life.

³³ When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.

At his cleverness. At his nimble mind. At his depth of understanding.

Matthew 22 34–37

The Greatest Commandment

³⁴ Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. ³⁵ One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Again, he brilliantly evades a trap. The two commandments he chooses are unassailable, and in a sense, they encapsulate the decalogue.

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” from Deut. 6:5, repeated twice a day by faithful Jews expresses the idea of total devotion to God, and includes the duty to obey the rest of God’s commandments.

And 7 of the 10 commandments deal with one’s relationship to one’s fellowmen, summed up in Lev. 19:18, You should love your neighbour as yourself.

Whose Son Is the Messiah?

⁴¹ While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, ⁴² “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

“The son of David,” they replied.

⁴³ He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,

   ⁴⁴ “‘The Lord said to my Lord:
   “Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
   under your feet.”’^]

⁴⁵ If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” ⁴⁶ No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

They did not dare to ask him any more questions, because they acknowledged the messianic import of the Psalm, Ps 110, and did not want Jesus to go on to prove that he was whom he had claimed to be–the long-awaited Messiah himself.

Jesus having answered all their questions–cleverly, or with the use of counter-questions, asks them a rhetorical question of his own:

Is the Messiah greater than David?

He raises the question of the Messiah. If they had asked further he may well have told them as he told the Samaritan woman, I who am talking to you, am He.

Fearing that, they did not dare to ask him any more questions.