In Louisiana, a woman lies buried beneath a grove of 150-year-old oak trees in the cemetery of an Episcopal Church. Only one word is carved on her tombstone: “Waiting.”

This person who died may be waiting for the resurrection of the dead, but the Sadducees who raised this question in the conversation with Jesus certainly did not believe in the resurrection. They were only trying to use a trick question about the resurrection to force Jesus into an impossible reply. In order to understand the Sadducees’ question, we have to know something about Levirate marriage in the Jewish tradition.

According to Deuteronomy 25:5-10 if a brother dies it is the responsibility of another brother to take the deceased wife’s as his own. The specific scripture reads as follows:

When brothers reside togethe…