One day, some Sadducees, members of a religious denomination at the time of Jesus who taught that there was no resurrection, came to test Jesus. The Pharisees and Herodians had already been sent to go and test Jesus to try to trap him. The Jewish authorities wanted to arrest Jesus but feared the people (the crowds). Jesus’ wise response to the question of the Pharisees and Herodians caused the people to marvel at Jesus (Mark 12:13-17). On the heels of Jesus’ absolute defeat of the attempts of the Pharisees and Herodians, the Sadducees decided to come forward and try their hand at testing Jesus. They believed and taught that there was no resurrection from the dead, while Jesus taught about the resurrection. Jesus himself was going to be resurrected from the dead. So, the Sadducees came and said to Jesus,
Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife (Mark 12:19-23).
When they finished asking their question, you can only imagine them grinning, thinking that they had gotten Jesus with a problem they thought was impossible to resolve from the Law of Moses. According to Bible expositor John Gill, “The Sadducees expressly denied that the resurrection could be proved out of the law.”[i] By the “law,” Gill means the books of Moses. The Sadducees only accepted the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) as the written word of God and rejected much of the Old Testament. As a result, unlike the Pharisees, they denied bodily resurrection after death, the existence of angels, and the immortality of the soul.[ii] In essence, if Jesus was going to answer them in a way that they could accept, he had to only do it from the first five books of the Old Testament. Remember that the Old Testament has thirty-nine books. They reduced it to only five, from which Jesus had to answer. Convinced they had gotten Jesus, they waited. Then Jesus said to them,
Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘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. You are badly mistaken! (Mark 12:24-27 NIV).
Even with much of the Old Testament taken off the table, Jesus doesn’t miss a beat but answers them by quoting Exodus 3:6, an undoubtedly familiar passage to them. These people had read that passage over and over but never observed the tenses as Jesus did. Jesus used the conjugation of the verb “to be” to settle a dispute over resurrection with the Sadducees. When God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been dead for over 430 years (Exod 12:40–41). The observant Jesus (unlike all the Sadducees) noted that God spoke in the present tense, not the past tense. God could have said, “I was the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” No, he said, “I am the God of Abraham.”
Jesus showed them that because God said, “I am” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not “I was” when they were already physically dead, that difference in tense meant that they were resurrected, alive, and living. Contrary to what the Sadducees believed, the soul is immortal, and the resurrection was scriptural. Jesus used grammar from an Old Testament book by Moses to show them that the resurrection indeed happened. Grammar matters!
To understand the purpose a Bible author intended, we must read the Bible with grammar in mind. Why? Because when an author has something to say, he chooses grammar that would allow him to say it without creating ambiguity or confusion. Moses carefully chose grammar to communicate what God said. The Sadducees failed to observe the grammar and missed the meaning.
It took just one tense. The use of “am” instead of was. A person who observes God’s word as Jesus did can get things out of a small passage that those who are not observant can read whole books and still not understand. Jesus paid attention to the little details of grammar. The Sadducees read right over those words and missed what was right there, plain for them to see. When you pay attention to grammar, you will be more likely to see important things in parts of the Bible that thousands of educated people—like the Sadducees—don’t see. Jesus’ last words in response to these “experts” who ignored basic grammar were, “You are badly mistaken!” (Matt. 12:27 NIV). The NASB renders it as “greatly mistaken,” the MSG as “You’re way, way off base,” and the LB as, “You have made a serious error.” Sherlock Holmes would have told them, “You see, but do not observe.”[iii] Is our failure to pay attention to necessary grammatical details causing us not “to know the Scriptures or the power of God” and be “greatly mistaken” or “way, way off base” in our understanding of God?
Another powerful illustration of the importance of paying attention to grammar comes from the Apostle Paul. In Galatians 3:16, Paul uses grammar to prove that Christ was the descendant of Abraham through whom the promise was to come. He says that “the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, ‘And to seeds,’ as referring to many, but rather to one, ‘And to your seed,’ that is, Christ” (Galatians 3:16 NASB). In Paul’s case, the difference between singular and plural made all the difference. The fact that Paul had to cite this passage and emphasize this difference suggests that there were some in his audience who read like the Sadducees and ignored such grammatical details and so missed the revelation.
In the examples, the Lord Jesus and Paul show why paying attention to grammar is crucial to understanding God’s word. The Lord said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matt. 5:17-18 NIV). The smallest letter and the least stroke of a pen certainly include essential details such as grammar. The Scripture will be fulfilled with 100% faithfulness to every grammatical detail. It’s up to us to pay attention to grammatical details so that we can see all of God’s word.
Someone might read Jesus’ response to the Sadducees and breathe a sigh of relief, saying, “Thank God, I am not like the Sadducees. I may ignore grammar as they did, but by God’s grace, I know the power of God.” Indeed, by God’s grace, we have a glimpse of God. It is also true that we know the power of God through his word. The more we can see in God’s word, the more our faith will be built, and the more we will know the power of God. If we start paying attention to the small grammatical details like Jesus and the apostle Paul did, perhaps, we will start seeing more of God’s power in his word and become more and more transformed into that image in our walk and experience of him.
The good news is that the grammar one needs to read the Bible effectively is very basic; It’s the kind of grammar taught to nine-year-old children. Even if you hated grammar while in school, you could quickly review the grammar you need to read the Bible effectively. The eye-opening examples I just showed from the teachings of Jesus and Paul weren’t difficult. We just need to know what to look for, then pay attention, and observe when we read.
[i] John Gill, “Matthew 22 Gill’s Exposition,” Bible Hub, accessed August 13, 2020, https://Biblehub.com/commentaries/gill/matthew/22.htm.
[ii] “Sadducee,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed August 13, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sadducee.
[iii] Arthur I. Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia (Salt Lake City, UT: Gutenberg, 2019), Chapter 1, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1661/1661-h/1661-h.htm.