Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Matthew 22:32

"I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not [the God] of the dead, but of the living." — Matthew 22:32 (ASV)

Jesus now turns from the power of God to the word of Scripture (cf. v.29). He may have drawn the passage to which he appeals (Exodus 3:6) from the Pentateuch, because the Sadducees prized the Pentateuch more highly than the rest of Scripture. “Have you not read?” (v.31) is a rebuke .

If God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob even while he was addressing Moses hundreds of years after the first three patriarchs died, then they must be alive to him. God is the eternal God of the covenant, a fact especially stressed wherever reference is made to the patriarchs (e.g., Genesis 24:12, 27, 48; 26:24; 28:13). He always loves and blesses his people; therefore it is inconceivable that his blessings cease when his people die (cf. Pss 16:10–11; 17:15; 49:14–15; 73:23–26).

At first glance Ex 3:6 is sufficient to prove immortality but not resurrection.

But the Sadducees denied the existence of spirits as thoroughly as they denied the existence of angels (Acts 23:8). Their concern was not to choose between immortality and resurrection but between death as finality and life beyond death, whatever its mode. Jesus’ point is that God will raise the dead as the one who always keeps his promise to be their God.