GRAMMAR ISN'T THE ANSWER:

JESUS' ARGUMENT FOR THE RESURRECTION

I read the gospel of Matthew today after reading through the Old Testament last
month. Having the perspective of the progressive unfolding of the whole of OT revelation
fresh in my mind while reading the gospel made all the difference.

I wanted to take the time and comment on a passage in Matthew that was freshly
illuminated for me.

The Setup

And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by
God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God
of the dead, but of the living.”
Matthew 22:31-32

Above we read the second half of Jesus’ rebuttal to the Sadducees’’ ill-fated trap
concerning the resurrection.
The Sadducees, you’ll remember, did not believe in the resurrection. After answering
their query Jesus goes on to demonstrate the reality of the resurrection by appealing to the
Torah (the only portion of the OT canon which the Sadducees acknowledged).

The Conundrum

Many a casual reader and seasoned teacher alike have puzzled at Jesus’ scriptural
case. How does the truth of the resurrection follow from the statement, “I am the God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”?

“The Usual Suspect”

The most common explanation that I have heard offered concerns the usage of the
present tense in God’s statement, “I am the God of Abraham . . . ”
The argument goes that God is speaking in the present tense and long after the
patriarchs had died. The Sadducees thought death was the end, but clearly this is not the case
because God speaks of Abraham as existing long after he died.

The Problem

However I find this approach to understanding Jesus’ words to be deficient for two
main reasons:

(1) There is no tense in the original Hebrew utterance. In fact, there is actually no

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verb in the Hebrew.
God makes that quoted statement many times in the Torah, however the Markan and
Lukan parallels let us know that Jesus is referring to God's conversation with Moses from the
burning bush in Exodus 3:6.

‫אנכי אלהי אביך אלהי אברהם אלהי יצחק אלהי יעקב‬

One the one hand it is arguable that Hebrew does not express tense through
morphology, but rather it expresses aspect. Time must be inferred from the context. But
more importantly, what we have here is the ever-common verbless sentence. The omission of
the copula ("to be" verb) is a common construction in both Hebrew and Greek. (In fact, this
is the case in many languages).
It is rather hard to make an argument based on a word that is not present in a sentence
that is composed in a language that does not convey tense through form!
At this point someone may point out that Matthew's gospel is in Greek not
Hebrew. And in Matthew's statement the present tense copula is present.

"Εγω ειµι ο θεος Αβρααµ και ο θεος Ισαακ και ο θεος Ιακωβ."

However both Mark and Luke have a record of this same event (Mark 12:18-27 and
Luke 20:27-40) and neither of their accounts include ειµι.
This is a problem if what Jesus meant to emphasize was the present tense. That
would mean that both Mark and Luke left out the most important part of Jesus' reply.
Therefore it is safe to say that present tense cannot be the most salient part of Jesus'
argument.
The fact that we supply a present tense verb is English convention. As I mentioned
above, in English we must supply a verb there. It would not do to translate Mark 12:26 as
"I the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob."
That is simply not good English. Therefore we supply "am." And we cannot take
words dictated by proper English usage and force nuanced grammatical statements back into
the Greek and Hebrew texts. Neither the Greek nor Hebrew emphasizes the present tense.
And even if the present tense were actually included in the quotation, this still would not
prove what commentators who take this approach want it to prove! Because saying, “I am
the God of Abraham” no more implies the continued existence of Abraham than the statement
“I am the great-great-great-grandson of Abraham Lincoln” implies that Abraham Lincoln is
still alive. In fact it would be wrong to say, “I was the great-great-great-grandson of
Abraham Lincoln,” given that I still exist.

(2) Even if the present tense were the point of the quotation it would still only convey
existence beyond death, not resurrection.
The resurrection is a future event. It refers to the dead returning to this world in new
bodies free from corruption, decay, and death. It is one of the central events of God’s
eschatological victory when He appears and makes an end of all sin and death.
It has not happened yet and it certainly hadn’t happened yet in Jesus’ or Moses’ time.
Even if the present tense were the point of emphasis in Jesus’ quotation it would only point to
the continuing existence of the patriarchs presently. In other words: when God made the
statement to Moses.
Life beyond physical death does not equal resurrection at some future date. The

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patriarchs could simply remain disembodied spirits in heaven for all eternity. This wouldn’t
conflict with the usage of the present tense in any way.
The combination of the above two points (primarily the first) leads me away from
believing that Jesus is making His argument based on the tense of the verb in His quotation.
Grammar is not always the answer. In fact, grammar in isolation is seldom the answer to
anything.

Resurrection in the OT

So what is Jesus saying? I think the answer is found in the tension throughout the OT
between the assured future vindication of God (and the constant emphasis on God's nature)
when compared with the present trials of this world.
Many scholars argue that life beyond the grave or at least resurrection is a foreign
concept to the OT. There is no thought or mention of life after death in the Torah. Only hints
of it begin to appear in the Prophets, and the Writings are all only concerned with life on this
earth. Resurrection only appears in the inter-testamental period.

Or so the argument goes.

But what no one can deny is that the authors of the OT had a spectacular faith in the
LORD. An unbelieving scholar might argue that that faith was ill-placed, but there is no
denying that it was there.
And yet that faith is present despite the fact that the authors of these OT books saw all
and experienced all the same things that the opponents of the LORD raise as complaints (both
then and today).
Take the Psalms. The constant refrain, even in most of the lament Psalms, is the trust
in the future deliverance by God. In fact not only trust, but also praise! Praise for what the
LORD will yet do.
The LORD will save. He will not leave me. He will not let it end like this.
Yet the Psalms are not hopeless idealistic. Nay, the Psalms do not sugar coat life.
Nor does the rest of the Bible. It deals with life in all its messiness. In fact, we see specific
portions of scripture specially devoted to the charges of injustice that many people bring
against God (e.g. Job, Ecclesiastes, the lament psalms, etc.). It is a shame that those same
people don’t read God’s Word.
Even though Jeremiah cries out that the wicked prosper, even though Job suffered
while righteous, even though David sang lament psalms, the unwavering hope in the LORD
remained.
But what kind of hope was it? Was it a hope in merely physical deliverance in the
here and now? Such a flat reading a scripture simply doesn’t work and that is without getting
to New Testament revelation.
Yes, salvation often does refer to physical deliverance of some sort in the OT. But the
hope for an eschatological deliverance is the result of inter-textual interpretation within the
OT, not simply from the NT reading back something that wasn’t there.
The same psalmist might say that the wicked are killing the righteous and yet still
rejoice in the fact that God is still faithful to the righteous and will one day put an end to the

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wicked. One psalm may sing of God’s justice while the next depicts the unfairness of life.
Good people die, wicked people prosper, nothing seems fair.
“But the wicked will perish” Ps 37:20. What comfort is that to the righteous if the
righteous will perish in exactly the same manner?
If salvation is only a future physical deliverance, how does that hope and how does
God’s justice work for His people who die in the present? If the psalmists only thought of
salvation in physical terms, then the hope hoped for was not a reality that would ever be
experienced (by most). Yes, God may one day put an end to the wicked and His people will
thrive, but that means absolutely nothing to His people who die now if death is the end for
them.
The logic of the psalmist requires that the deliverance be something that those who
die will also experience.
We should never forget that alongside the psalms of thanksgiving there are psalms
that reflect the perspective of Qoheleth in Ecclesiastes. After all, immediately following
psalm 48 is psalm 49.
This is intentional. It is instructive. There is something we are meant to learn from
this juxtaposition.
The very presence of such psalms along side of deliverance psalms, as well as the
presence of books like Ecclesiastes in the OT canon, clearly points to an eschatological
dimension of deliverance. This is the understanding from the OT itself. Deliverance is
something future. It is something beyond death. This life is not the end. We don’t only have
“under the sun.” God will have the final word and all of His people will experience that.
It is the character of God presented in the OT alongside the seemingly random evil of this
present world that necessitates a resurrection. The character of God necessitates an
eschatological victory which His saints participate in.
It is also the nature of God. Yahweh is a living God. Throughout even just the
Pentateuch we encounter the repeated theme of Yahweh bringing life from death. He brings
life out of fallen dead humanity in the form of His chosen people. He brings life to Sarah's
barren womb. Abraham trusts that even in the face of Isaac's death, Yahweh could keep His
promises.

Back to the Sadducees

So what does all this have to do with God’s statement of “I am the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob.”?
I think the emphasis is not on “am” as in the present tense but on “I” as in the who.
It is the faithful, covenant-keeping, loving LORD who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. The fact that Eternal One would condescend so much so that He is known as the God
of any particular person is mind-boggling. Thus it is also the covenant and God's relationship
with Abraham that is the point.
What this shows and what we can’t get around in the OT is that the LORD loved
Abraham. The LORD chose him. The LORD set His affection on him. The LORD was his
friend. So if we really believe that the LORD is Abraham’s God, can we believe that it is
over for Abraham? Do we really think that the LORD would let Abraham simply end like
that?
Jesus' argument is twofold: God's nature and the fact that He had allied Himself to
Abraham. Therefore, Matthew's inclusion of ειµι, (if for reasons beyond personal style) is

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probably not meant to invoke to the present tense, but to allude to God's covenant name: I
AM!

I AM is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!

This means Jesus' next statement "[The LORD] is not the God of the dead but of the
living" is not the conclusion of the argument! It is the second step of the argument. Which is
to say, that because the LORD is the God of Abraham and also the God of the living then
Abraham will be among the living! That is just who God is.

Jesus' argument can be summarized this way

(1) God is the God of Abraham

(2) God is a God of the living
(3) [unstated conclusion] therefore God will not leave Abraham dead

We might paraphrase His answer this way. "Have you not read that the LORD
identifies Himself as the patriarch's God? Have you not read about the special relationship
that He made with them? Have you not understood His love and compassion? He is the God
of the living, is He not? He is a life giving God, is He not? How can you possible believe
that God won't resurrect His people?"

What was Jesus saying to the Sadducees? He was condemning their lack of faith in
God (not their failure to understand a present tense verb). They claimed to believe in God,
but they did not truly understand who God was or what it meant that He entered into a
covenant with the patriarchs. The Sadducees had a dead faith, a faith that did not really
believe that God was for His people. They were content to live only for this life and think
that God just lets His people die and disappear. This was part of the reason why they fought
and struggled for all the power they could get in this life.

Jesus was saying that the LORD was Abraham’s God and therefore Abraham will live
again because of who the LORD is.
The LORD won’t let His loved ones end in nothingness. He is the God of the living.
He gives and makes life. If He is your God, then you too will end among the living.

See other commentators who have a similar take,

J. Gerald Janzen "Resurrection and Hermeneutics: On Exodus 3:6 in Mark 12:26" JSNT 23
(1985): 43-58

Craig Evans, Matthew: New Cambridge Bible Commentary, 383-384

The New Interpreter's Bible Commentary Vol 8, 422-23

R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (NICNT), 340-41

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Ben Witherington, Matthew (Smyth and Helwys), 416-17

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