Luke 20 · John Wesley
10A long time - It was a long time from the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan to the birth of Christ. Mt 21:33; Mr 12:1.
17He will destroy these husbandmen - Probably he pointed to the scribes, chief priests, and elders: who allowed, he will miserably destroy those wicked men, Mt 21:41; but could not bear that this should be applied to themselves. They might also mean, God forbid that we should be guilty of such a crime as your parable seems to charge us with, namely, rejecting and killing the heir. Our Saviour answers, But yet will ye do it, as is prophesied of you.
18He looked on them - To sharpen their attention. Psa 118:22.
21Just men - Men of a tender conscience. To take hold of his discourse - If he answered as they hoped he would. Mt 22:16; Mr 12:12.
22Thou speakest - In private, and teachest - In public.
25Show me a penny - A Roman penny, which was the money that was usually paid on that occasion.
27They could not take hold of his words before the people - As they did afterward before the sanhedrim, in the absence of the people, Lu 22:67, &c.
35The children of this world - The inhabitants of earth, marry and are given in marriage - As being all subject to the law of mortality; so that the species is in need of being continually repaired.
36But they who obtain that world - Which they enter into, before the resurrection of the dead.
37They are the children of God - In a more eminent sense when they rise again.
38That the dead are raised, even Moses, as well as the other prophets showed, when he calleth - That is, when he recites the words which God spoke of himself, I am the God of Abraham, c. It cannot properly be said, that God is the God of any who are totally perished. Exod 3:6.
39He is not a God of the dead, or, there is no God of the dead - That is, tho term God implies such a relation, as cannot possibly subsist between him and the dead; who in the Sadducees' sense are extinguished spirits; who could neither worship him, nor receive good from him. So that all live to him - All who have him for their God, live to and enjoy him. This sentence is not an argument for what went before; but the proposition which was to be proved. And the consequence is apparently just. For as all the faithful are the children of Abraham, and the Divine promise of being a God to him and his seed is entailed upon them, it implies their continued existence and happiness in a future state as much as Abraham's. And as the body is an essential part of man, it implies both his resurrection and theirs; and so overthrows the entire scheme of the Sadducean doctrine.
41They durst not ask him any question - The Sadducees durst not. One of the scribes did, presently after.