Luke 20:28
“They asked him, “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies having a wife, and he is childless, his brother should take the wife, and raise up children for his brother.”
What does Luke 20:28 mean?
The Sadducees here are referencing an ancient Jewish law (found in Deuteronomy 25) designed to preserve a family line when a man died without children. If he had a brother, that brother was expected to marry his widow and father children who would legally belong to the deceased man. It was a way of ensuring no family line disappeared and that property stayed within the family. The Sadducees bring this up to trap Jesus with a logical puzzle: they're about to describe a woman who married seven brothers in succession (each dying childless), then ask whose wife she'll be in the resurrection. They don't believe in resurrection at all, so they're trying to make the whole concept sound ridiculous. Understanding their skepticism helps explain why they're pushing this particular scenario—they're not genuinely curious about the law, but trying to expose what they see as the absurdity of Jesus's teaching.