Concepts of Afterlife in the Old Testament

1999-12-03

Introduction

The concept of the afterlife in the Old Testament does not seem to be a primary theme. God’s people seem to be more concerned about the times in which they lived, working and worshipping their God. The Old Testament focuses on many themes. First was the recognition that God was the all-powerful Creator of the universe, and that His chosen people were the Hebrews, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Second, He was a God that had the power to reveal Himself to the nations, both through His people Israel and through nature. He is also a forgiving God, as the prophet Hosea spoke of in detail, and a just God, as Amos emphasized. The Ten Commandments, with the 618 Levitical laws that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai required strict obedience, and being guilty of breaking the law without repentance would result in punishment. These laws also showed a great need for God’s grace, because the rigidity of the Law showed how people could not be perfect before God.

However, the afterlife was not a major theme for Israel as it was for some of the Israelites’ neighbors. The Israelites did not worship or sacrifice to the dead like they did. Coming in contact with dead bodies was forbidden because it made a person unclean (Leviticus 21:11). So-called mediums and correspondence with dead people via mediums was also forbidden under Levitical Law (Leviticus 20:27). For the most part, the concept of eternal life was nothing more than a hope that was left exclusively in God’s hands. Many Jews in Jesus’ time believed in a resurrection, such as the Pharisees, and many did not, like the Sadducees (Matthew 22:23). Death was something that was inescapable, that everyone among men and beasts alike, with the exceptions of Elijah (2 Kings 2:11) and Enoch (Genesis 5:24), faced. Death was to be accepted because of the sin of the ancestors of humankind, Adam and Eve, as God said to them after their disobedience, “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19).

King Solomon remembers this passage in Genesis as he writes when he is older, that all animals and people have the common fate of death (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20). All people, regardless if they were foolish or wise, have the common fate of death (Ecclesiastes 2:16). No person has the power to keep the spirit, nor in the day of death does anybody have any power over death (Ecclesiastes 8:8). Solomon at great lengths discusses that all the work in the world to accumulate wealth will not make any difference because everything will all be left to one who did not work for it when the person dies (Ecclesiastes 2:18).

Job and the Resurrection

Job, a man who had everything except his own life taken away from him, considers a future time when a resurrection will take place. He does not use any word such as resurrection, but he asks many questions, believing that he will see God after his death; he trusts that not only will be restored what he was lost but see a life beyond the grave. Job states that there has been nobody who has ever risen from the grave to return about his business; the dead just vanish and never see the life they left behind again (Job 7:9-10). Yet consider Job’s words of the resurrection in the end times (Job 19:25-27):

For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.

Job knew that there would be a resurrection in the end times, or the “latter day”, where He would see God in his flesh after his body had decayed.

Saul at Endor

When Saul seeks the Urim, and awaits dreams and messages by the prophets, he finds that God will not answer him on how he should handle the Philistines (1 Samuel 28:3ff). So he goes and decides to speak with the spirit of Samuel, the great prophet that both anointed and rejected him as King, to see what he should do. Previously, Saul had rightfully outlawed all mediums in the land of Israel, just as the Law declared speaking to spirits through necromancers a crime (Leviticus 19:31). So Saul decides to seek a medium at Endor, which was behind the enemy lines.

Saul goes to Endor knowing that he broke not only the Law purposely, but also broke his very own law as well. The witch was the only one to see the figure that came forth from the ground. Scripture says that she saw gods ascend from the earth before she saw the figure of Samuel (1 Samuel 28:13-14). She says that Samuel looked like an old man, covered with a mantle, just like the robe that Saul tore in his frustration in 1 Samuel 15:27. Samuel is irritated and wonders why he was brought out of the grave, and asks, “Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?” (1 Samuel 28:15). Saul’s punishment for doing such an act is not only the death of him and his sons, but also the loss of Israel to the hands of the Philistines. It is not mentioned if Samuel physically appeared, but it truly was Samuel who had spoken, since the narrator explicitly says that it was Samuel who had spoken (1 Samuel 28:15-16)

This is a unique event in all of the Bible. It shows the reader two things. First, it shows that the dead have a consciousness existence. Second, there is a penalty for speaking with the dead. Instead of Saul humbling himself before God, seeking Him in prayer, and confessing that he was relying on his own political power and human wisdom, he brought his problem to the dead Samuel. This mistake teaches people that the hope for and the seeking of the afterlife should be sought only in the sovereignty of God.

The Hope of the Afterlife in the Old Testament

The evidence of the existence of an afterlife in the Old Testament was a great hope, and includes a lot about the hope of eternal life. Psalm 16:10 reads, “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.” The prophet Isaiah speaks of a promise that God proclaimed, that “He will swallow up death in victory” in Isaiah 25:8, that later the apostle Paul speaks about in 1 Corinthians 15:54. Verses often like this one show that there is a great splendor awaiting for God’s people beyond the scope of the physical grave. Isaiah goes further to say, “Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust” (Isaiah 26:19). The prophet Daniel goes a step further to say that “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). These writings of the prophets give people a new outlook of the hope of a future resurrection. God also says through the prophet Hosea, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death” (Hosea 13:14).

Resurrection and Rapture

People returning from the dead was also a phenomenon that happened three times in the Old Testament. God used the prophets Elijah and Elisha to bring dead children back to life (1 Kings 17:22, 2 Kings 4:34-5). God’ power can conquer death. If God could bring these children back to life, then likewise He could do this for anybody. Likewise when a corpse touched the body of Elisha, he “he revived, and stood up on his feet” (2 Kings 13:21).

Walking in faith allowed two men to escape death entirely. Enoch “walked with God”, and he was taken by God before the hands of death could ever rest upon him (Genesis 5:21-24). Likewise, a chariot with horses of fire captured Elijah after crossing the Jordan (2 Kings 2:11). By God’s power Elijah had done more than the many nations during those days, and because he walked in faith, he was worthy of such treatment granted of him.

Another means that afterlife was sought out was not to preserve humankind, but to continue to praise God as well. Psalm 88 is a prayer of despondency, and the author asks, can God be praised in the grave? (Psalm 88:11). This theme occurs often in the Psalms, that those “that go down into silence” can “praise not the Lord” (Psalm 115:17).

Righteousness and Life Beyond Death

Because of the reasoning of the authors of the Psalms, the revelations of the prophets Isaiah, Hosea, and Daniel, as well as the actual three resurrections by God through the prophets Elijah and Elisha, there can be sure there is more than the grave after someone dies. Righteousness is the way to find true life, as Solomon stated in Proverbs 10:2. Now though it says that “there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not” in Ecclesiastes 7:20, it also says, according to the prophet Habakkuk, the “the just shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). Abraham, the father and common ancestor of the Israelites, was righteous because he “believed in the Lord” (Genesis 15:6). By putting this all together, he will separate those who have believed in Him and lived by faith from those who have not. This is not only because He promises life to faithful people through the prophets, but also because He would not silence the tongues that have praised Him while alive. Yet at the same time, humankind still physically dies because that is the way of the world of humankind’s hereditary sin (Genesis 3:19).

The New Testament helps the Biblical reader to understand this more explicitly. Jesus speaks to the Sadducees about how there must be a resurrection because God said, even after the death of the patriarchs, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Jesus says this because “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:32). The Old Testament’s original audience should understand the reality of this situation, because the bodies of the dead are considered unclean (Leviticus 21:11). Cleanness was of major importance for the Israelites, who strove to keep the Mosaic Law. God would not associate Himself with unclean things or unclean people, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be unclean if they were still truly dead.

Conclusion

Life after death is a subtle topic within the Old Testament. Nevertheless, it is an important issue because it is discussed, and the major promise that is seen from the beginning of time (Genesis 3:15, 20). In Jesus Christ, we can find this eternal life. Zechariah preached ahead of time that God would come in the flesh and suffer and die for humankind (Zechariah 12:10). He came because of His unconditional love for us, that He would make us righteous by serving our death sentence for us on the Cross. If we trust in Him, as Abraham did, we can share in eternal life. If we believe, then we too will share in the resurrection of Jesus.