GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 12:24
Brought Up Short
There is an aphorism that says “to be brought up short,” probably originating with horsemen who would pull up quickly on a horse’s reins to bring the animal to an abrupt stop, catching it off guard. By extension, the phrase came to mean being forced to confront a difficult truth or situation, prompting a momentary pause for reflection. Hence the phrase “I was brought up short by the question.”
Mark recorded the conversation between the erudite Sadducees, who brought to Jesus a hypothetical question about seven brothers who successively married the same childless woman in order to demonstrate what they considered the absurdity of his teaching about the resurrection. According to Mark, the Sadducees asked Jesus whose wife the woman would be in the resurrection. “Jesus said to them, ‘Are you not led astray because of this: You do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God?’” (Mark 12:24) In agreement with Mark, neither Matthew nor Luke reports that the Sadducees asked him any further questions. In fact, Luke said that some of the teachers of the law congratulated him on his answer (Luke 20:39)—that is, they were “brought up short.”
The “Sadducee-problem,” according to Jesus, was that the Sadducees “knew” the Scriptures, but they did not truly “know” the Scriptures, and so they were brought up short. I hope to avoid being “brought up short” by the “Sadducee-problem”—knowing, but not knowing.
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