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?”
Again, he brilliantly evades a trap. The two commandments he chooses are unassailable, and in a sense, they encapsulate the decalogue.
Whose Son Is the Messiah?
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.”’e]”>]
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:
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.
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