Thoughts on Death and Resurrection in the Old Testament

C.S. Lewis, in his book “Reflections on the Psalms,” suggests that by the time of Jesus, Jewish theology had evolved to include life after death as we understand it today, as well as the concept of resurrection. Lewis wrote that previous generations of Christian theologians seem to have thought that the authors of the Psalms understood theology from a Christian perspective as we do today; that they wanted eternal joy and feared damnation. Lewis, however, does not think they had even the same concept of death as Christians.

Though he cites many portions of the Psalms to make his case, Lewis’ idea can be challenged. The idea of an afterlife and resurrection is present long before the time of Jesus’ earthly life and even before the composition of the Psalms. In fact, the belief in life after death is a central component of the entire Bible.

In the book of Daniel, the prophet writes:

“Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2).

This passage clearly indicates that the dead will be raised from the grave, and it suggests that there will be different fates for the righteous and the wicked.

Similarly, in the book of Job, it is written:

“I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God” (Job 19:25-26).

Job expresses his confidence that he will see God even after his body has been destroyed. Additionally, some theologians, such as Franz Delitzsch, believe that Job is the oldest book in the Bible. If this is true, it makes Job’s confession all the more significant.

In his book, Isaiah writes:

“Your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy” (Isaiah 26:19).

This passage refers to the resurrection of the dead, and it is clear that the author believes in a physical resurrection.

Lewis’s thesis is further undermined by the fact that the Sadducees, whom Lewis identifies as a remnant of the older way of thinking, were a small and marginalized group in Jewish society. The Pharisees, who were the dominant group, believed in both an afterlife and a bodily resurrection. As Kretzmann notes, “The Pharisees accepted the resurrection of the dead as a fundamental tenet of the faith, and they based it on the Scriptures.” Similarly, Keil & Delitzsch declare in their commentary, “The belief in a resurrection is so firmly established in the Old Testament, that even the Sadducees could not entirely escape its influence.” The idea of the resurrection was not something that developed late in the history of Israel. It is a concept that was present in Jewish theology from an early period; from the time of Job who expected to see his redeemer after death; to Abraham who expected God to return his son Isaac to him from the dead because of God's promise (Genesis 22:1-19); and the prophets who, like Elijah, even raised the dead by the power of God.

There was certainly development in the theological understanding of God’s people. As God came to them and revealed more of His word to them by His prophets, the blurry picture they had of the one who would crush the serpent’s head and restore all things came into sharper focus over time. Rather than a development of their theology, however, one could think of this as a gradual revelation. The development was not a natural evolution through stages of philosophical complexity as Lewis seems to suggest. It was a gradual expansion of their collective understanding, meticulously directed by the Almighty and Omnipotent God who created all things. He prepared them for the day when He would Himself enter His creation to redeem it from sin, death, and the devil. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews explains, those who came before us believed, but they did not get to see the fulfillment of God's promise to send a savior. 

We, however, now fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. He is the fulfillment of all these things. He is the resurrection and the life. Because He lives, we too shall live, having been baptized into His death and His resurrection. This is the faith we have in common with all those who came before us. And we will all rise together on the Last Day.  Even though our bodies have been destroyed, in our flesh we shall see Jesus. 

Works Cited

Delitzsch, Franz. A New Commentary on Genesis, Vol. I. Translated by Sophia Taylor, T&T Clark, 1888.

Keil, Carl Friedrich, and Franz Delitzsch. Commentary on the Old Testament. Hendrickson Publishers, 2006.

Kretzmann, Paul E. Popular Commentary of the Bible. Kretzmann Project, 1921.

Lewis, C.S. Reflections on the Psalms. Mariner Books, 1958.

Could This Be the Christ?

Now some of them from Jerusalem said, “Is this not He whom they seek to kill? But look! He speaks boldly, and they say nothing to Him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is truly the Christ? However, we know where this Man is from; but when the Christ comes, no one knows where He is from.” Then Jesus cried out, as He taught in the temple, saying, “You both know Me, and you know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know. But I know Him, for I am from Him, and He sent Me.” Therefore they sought to take Him; but no one laid a hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come. And many of the people believed in Him, and said, “When the Christ comes, will He do more signs than these which this Man has done?” (John 7:25-31).

C. S. Lewis wrote the following about Jesus in his wonderful book, Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.[1]

This was really the question the people of Jerusalem, the pilgrims, and the Jewish religious leaders were debating as they watched Jesus teaching in the temple: Who is Jesus? They see Him teaching in the temple courts, not like a proper rabbi should, but claiming some kind of divine authority, almost as if He were the author of the Scriptures; they see Him going around and performing miracles; He heals the sick, the blind, the deaf and mute, the demon-possessed, acting almost as though He had some kind of divine authority to command nature. Even the wind and waves obey Him![2] He ignores the traditions of the elders, the oral teachings, guarded and protected by the Pharisees, the hedge of protection which could keep men from transgressing the Law. He calls them the vain teachings of men; He condemns the Jewish religious establishment by saying that the hearts of the Pharisees were far from God.[3] He will soon say much worse. He acts as though He had the authority to define faith and tell people how to worship. Probably the most shocking thing was that Jesus goes around telling people that He is the Christ,[4] using messianic titles like “son of man”,[5] saying that He is the fulfillment of Scripture,[6] that He would die as the sacrifice for the sins of mankind,[7] and that He would rise again.[8] It is almost like Jesus is not just claiming to have divine authority, but that He is God Himself, in the flesh.

Well, C. S. Lewis would be satisfied that the Jews at least made a choice about who Jesus was. They did not try to come down somewhere in the diplomatic middle. They looked at Him and saw the Devil of Hell. They would soon spit at Him, and kill Him as a demon. The people see a good man, a political revolutionary perhaps, a prophet even, but God in human flesh? That just can’t be. That’s blasphemy. Besides, Jesus comes from Nazareth. His parents are Mary and Joseph. The people know His origin, or so they choose to believe despite Jesus’ miraculous testimony to the contrary. He couldn’t be the Messiah because,

the supposition had gained ground that no one would know whence He [Messiah] would come. This idea was due to a misunderstanding of some Old Testament passages referring to the eternity of the Messiah and to sections of apocryphal literature which was circulating among the Jews in those days.[9]

Yet, Jesus is in the temple courts teaching, and the Jews aren’t stopping Him. The people, mockingly, wonder aloud if the Pharisees have changed their minds about who Jesus is. This is how Jesus forces everyone, including us, to deal with His question: Who do you say that I am?[10]

Jesus says, “You both know Me, and you know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know. But I know Him, for I am from Him, and He sent Me.”[11] Jesus asserts here, as He would later in an even more overt way, that He is divine. He tells the Pharisees that, not only is He sent by YHWH to do YHWH’s work, they are not even believers in YHWH and, in fact, they do not even know YHWH.[12] Later, Jesus will tell the Jews that they are not children of Abraham, and the promises of YHWH, but rather children of the devil, and Jesus will then call Himself YHWH.[13]

Considering all this, if we judge Jesus according to the standards of man, Jesus can only be either a lunatic or the Devil of Hell. But, if we judge Him according to God’s standard, according to what God has said about Himself and His Christ in Holy Scripture, we must fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. These words of Scripture have been given to us by God for that very purpose: for us to use as the only standard to judge all teachings about God. It is through God’s Word that the Holy Spirit creates faith in us.[14] All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.[15] So, we gather together around Word and Sacrament as the Body of Christ. We hear the words Christ has given us, and we eat the body and drink the blood of Him, the Word made flesh, as He bids us, all for the strengthening of our faith and the forgiveness of ours sins.[16]

Just as Jesus explains to the Jews, “The doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent me.”[17] We, accordingly, follow Jesus’ example and confess[18] (that is, we say with Jesus) His doctrine. We confess that we are, by nature, sinful and unclean.[19] We confess that Christ died for our sins, to pay the penalty we deserved for them, that He was buried, and that He rose again from the dead for our justification.[20] He sits at the right hand of God, in the glory of God the Father. We believe that He shall come to be our judge. The doctrine is not our own, but comes from Jesus, the Christ, the one by whom we are sent. We believe, teach, and confess that which we are given, because the One who gave it is true.[21]

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[1] Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. Read by Geoffrey Howard. Blackstone Audio Incorporated: Audible, 2006.

[2] Matthew 8:24-27

[3] Matthew 15:1-9

[4] John 4:25-26

[5] Daniel 7:9-14; John 8:28

[6] Luke 4:16-22

[7] Mark 10:45

[8] Matthew 20:18-19; Mark 9:31; 10:33-34; Luke 18:32-34; 24:6-8;

[9] Kretzmann, Paul E. Popular Commentary of the Bible: New Testament, Vol. I. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1921

[10] Matthew 16:14-16

[11] John 7:28-29

[12] YHWH: Yahweh, whose name was revealed to Moses as four Hebrew consonants (YHWH) called the tetragrammaton. Whenever the word Lord is found printed in such a way in the Old Testament, in a mainstream translation of a modern English language Bible, it is translating the tetragrammaton and can be read as, “Yahweh.”

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Yahweh.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., September 24, 2018, www.britannica.com/topic/Yahweh.

[13] John 8:37-59

[14] Romans 10:17

[15] 2 Timothy 3:16-17

[16] Luke 22:19-20; Matthew 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; 1 Corinthians 11:23-25

[17] John 7:16

[18] Confess: From the assimilated form of com “together” and fateri “to admit,” akin to fari “speak”; “To speak, or admit, together.”

"Confess." Online Etymology Dictionary. Accessed May 16, 2019. https://www.etymonline.com/word/confess?ref=etymonline_crossreference.

[19] Psalm 51:5; Ephesians 2:1-10

[20] 1 Corinthians 15:1-8; Romans 4:25

[21] John 7:28; Romans 3:4