Now there were seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and dying left no seed.
The verse belongs to the question put to Jesus about the resurrection, in which seven brothers are presented as successively taking the same woman as wife. The case is framed as an application of Moses' direction that a surviving brother should take his dead brother's wife and raise up offspring to him. The purpose was to entangle Jesus in His words, unsettle the minds of hearers, and pour ridicule upon that provision of Moses' law so as to bring all the Mosaic institutions into contempt.
By setting forth the seven brothers and the one wife the objectors intended to make bodily resurrection look absurd. The men who brought the case denied any resurrection and denied future rewards and punishments, exalting instead their own skeptical, atheistical sophistries and speculative ideas. Their reasoning rested on a false foundation, springing from ignorance of the true teachings of the Word of God and of the power of God. It mistakenly took for granted that risen existence would carry on the same earthly propensities and relationships, with marriage and ordinary life continuing exactly as before death.
The verse belongs to the question put to Jesus about the resurrection, in which seven brothers are presented as successively taking the same woman as wife. The case is framed as an application of Moses' direction that a surviving brother should take his dead brother's wife and raise up offspring to him. The purpose was to entangle Jesus in His words, unsettle the minds of hearers, and pour ridicule upon that provision of Moses' law so as to bring all the Mosaic institutions into contempt.
By setting forth the seven brothers and the one wife the objectors intended to make bodily resurrection look absurd. The men who brought the case denied any resurrection and denied future rewards and punishments, exalting instead their own skeptical, atheistical sophistries and speculative ideas. Their reasoning rested on a false foundation, springing from ignorance of the true teachings of the Word of God and of the power of God. It mistakenly took for granted that risen existence would carry on the same earthly propensities and relationships, with marriage and ordinary life continuing exactly as before death.