Resurrection in the OT, Part 3

Deuteronomy 32:39 and 1 Samuel 2:6

(avg. read time: 6–11 mins.)

Now we can begin our more detailed textual survey of resurrection texts in the OT. In this first entry I will be looking at Deut 32:39 and 1 Sam 2:6. I treat these texts together because they have quite similar expressions using resurrection imagery, including in the order of imagery they use. They are also both texts from songs placed in prose literature, and they both come from a time well before the exile or the Maccabean era (times which are commonly identified as flashpoints in the development of Jewish resurrection belief). Neither text expresses belief in an eschatological resurrection per se, but it is fascinating that they both make gnomic statements about God, summary statements that contribute to identifying God as the God who raises the dead.

Deuteronomy 32:39

Our first text, Deut 32:39, is the main Torah text invoked in resurrection discussions. Because of its place in the Torah, as well as other factors I note below, it is one of the most pervasively used resurrection references of the OT, both for explicit quotations and the use of the language for general statements on resurrection. It is one of the textual bases for the Second Benediction of the Amidah, the central prayer of Jewish liturgy, which seems to have emerged even before the time of Jesus. It is also interpreted as a resurrection text in Tg. Neof. Deut 32:39; b. Sanh. 91b; b. Ta‘an 7a; b. Pesaḥ. 68a; b. Ketub. 8b; Sipre Deut. 329.3b; Midr. Tannaim Deut 32:39; Yalq. Deut 32:39.

It also has such poignance for at least three reasons. One, this statement of resurrection is directly connected with one of the most direct affirmations of monotheism. Scholars of Israelite religion and early Judaism often describe early theology as not properly monotheistic, but as monolatrous. The distinction made between these ideas is that the former affirms that only one deity exists while the latter affirms that other deities exist, but only one is worthy of worship. While I understand this distinction, I think it is better to understand the latter as a kind of functional monotheism that makes sense in a context that would not make such fine theoretical distinctions as scholars of religion are inclined to make today. If only one God is properly God, then the question of whether other beings exist that correspond to other deities is less relevant than the question of whether or not those beings should be considered gods, which this idea clearly answers in the negative. The significance of the affirmation that YHWH is God and there is no other god apart from him, that there is indeed none who can deliver out of his hands, is that this text is a statement of ultimate sovereignty over life and death. None are able to gainsay his verdict one way or the other. His word is final; his declaration is inexorable.

Two, by this declaration of ultimate sovereignty, a tension is maintained between the fact of death and the promise of life. Jon Levenson observes well how the parallelism here between killing and wounding on the one hand and between making alive and healing on the other hand inspires certain questions that are important for more developed resurrection belief: “if life is somehow equivalent to healing, and death to wounding, then why cannot the sole and unchallengeable Deity who heals lesser wounds also heal the graver malady that is death? To put it differently, if the semantic range of ‘death’ in biblical Hebrew includes both disease and biological cessation, is there any reason – again, strictly within the cultural universe of pre-exilic Israel – to think that God could heal disease but could not reverse death?”¹ As the same God has ultimate power over both death and life, there is surely a basis for believing that God is able to raise the dead. Such a line could not have resonated in this song’s use in worship if there was an established tendency to draw a line of implausibility around the notion that God could raise the dead.

Three, the order of the verbs is significant and such a notable order has had its effect on many subsequent Jewish, Christian, and Muslim (including qur’anic) statements of resurrection belief. That statement that God brings to life could, if placed before the verb for “killing,” simply refer to the act of creation or giving life. But in its placement after the verb for “killing,” which in its hiphil and in this parallel structure can be more literally and woodenly understood as “make dead,” the verb חיה—this time in the piel, which can have the same sense as the hiphil—has the sense of reviving after death, just as “healing” makes more sense if it is part of the same sequence as “wounding.”

What is interesting about the key verbal statements is that, with the exception of “wound,” they are imperfects, which are often rendered as futures in English to convey the imperfective aspect of the action. But there are, of course, other uses of this verb form. The one that fits best in this context is describing customary action or, more specifically, proverbial or habitual customary action.² This use of the imperfect fits the idea that we are dealing with identifying action and thus gnomic statements here, rather than properly future-tense statements. This is reflected in the Greek translation by the use of gnomic futures. Interestingly, the translation of חיה is a more fully loaded phrasing of combing a future tense verb with an infinitive: “I will make to live.” This same future + infinitive construction also appears in the Vulgate (the targumim use participial constructions, which further highlight such action as characteristic/identifying).

This statement appears near the end of one of the most extensive portrayals of YHWH as Divine Warrior, which shows again the association of this portrayal with the emergence of resurrection belief. This description, along with this particular statement’s connection to the singular sovereignty of God, operates in a context of reminding Israel that God created them and rebuking the unfaithful among them for pursuing other false gods. Also tied to this concern is the larger context beginning in Deut 28 outlining the consequences of faithfulness and unfaithfulness, with the latter eventually leading to exile, followed by God’s inexorable faithful love manifesting in restoring the people once again. This exemplifies the connection I noted in part 1 between exile and death on the one hand (beginning back in Gen 3) and return/restoration and resurrection on the other hand. Only YHWH can execute such judgment and only YHWH can restore again. Since only the one God is Creator, Judge, and Savior all at once, it makes sense to say this same God is both executioner and resurrector. This gnomic statement may most directly apply to the paradigm of judgment and renewal, exile and return/restoration, but it derives its force from the belief that only God can raise the dead. After all, because he alone is Creator, Judge, and Savior, he can make a way where there is no way. They had seen this before in small ways, such as with Abraham and Sarah conceiving Isaac so late in life (hence the association of this fertility with God’s power to raise the dead in texts like Rom 4:16–17), and in great ways, such as with the exodus out of Egypt, where Israel had seemed doomed to slavery.

In this passage this declaration is also a reminder that, even as the dead can contribute nothing to their restoration to life, so too Israel’s revival can only come from the gracious will of God. While other texts (such as Deut 30:1–3) may exhort the importance of repentance, here the stress is placed squarely on God’s decision as a reminder that only God can raise the dead. There is also no sense here that God helps those who help themselves, because the dead can do nothing to help themselves. Just as God created humans—and had made Israel as a special creation—and they could do nothing to create themselves, so too only God can raise the dead.

This text does not yet place us in the conceptual ballpark of the eschatological resurrection. The statement points to characteristic/identifying action, not yet to something that has a specific moment of occurrence in the future. That is, there is not a specific moment outlined that will be supremely revelatory of this fact of God’s character. But there is a foundation in place here that would be built upon in Ezek 37 and later eschatologically focused texts that would move from the association of resurrection with return/restoration towards a literal resurrection. Nor is there a clear sense of eschatological finality given to the restoring action to which the resurrection language most directly refers, although one could argue that this is implicit in Deut 30. The full eschatological picture is not yet in focus.

1 Samuel 2:6

Our second text of 1 Sam 2:6 is closely parallel to Deut 32:39, even to the point of being part of a song. In part because of its similarity with the Deuteronomy text and in part because it is not a text from the Torah, it is not as pervasively influential as the former. Nevertheless, it is interpreted as a resurrection text in Tg. Jon. 1 Sam 2:6 and it remains an important source for resurrection language in rabbinic texts such as m. Sanh. 10.3; m. Sotah 9.15; t. Sanh. 13.3; t. Ber. 6.6; b. Sanh. 92a–b; b. Roš. 16b–17a.

I have already commented on this text in my Sheol analysis as one of the major examples of describing an experience of living Sheol. As I noted there, v. 6 is part of a sequence of stanzas in vv. 4–8 that describe God’s delivering action in terms of reversal and exaltation. In v. 6 the reference to Sheol is part of a parallelism in which God is said to kill and to make alive, to bring down to Sheol and to bring up. The order of actions reflects what I have noted in Deut 32:39, but in the context of Hannah’s life, this order is exemplified by her passage from infertility and ridicule to being the mother of a prophet (and a future leader of Israel to boot), along with five other children (2:21). This passage thus also illustrates a contrast between the state in Sheol and the continuation of one’s family.

The first couplet of v. 6 uses the same vocabulary as one of the couplets of Deut 32:39, even to the point of a hiphil followed by a piel of חיה, although now they are in participial form, which is also fitting for expressing a characteristic/identifying action. However, the second couplet moves in a different direction from Deuteronomy. Whereas the Deuteronomy text moved from the greater to the lesser (as the second couplet described wounding and healing), this text restates the original couplet in another way, using verbs of motion and the terminology of Sheol with its overtones of disfavor. And while the Deuteronomy text portrayed a sequence of wounding following by healing through a mix of vocabulary and a perfect followed by an imperfect, this text uses a participle followed by a narrative/sequential imperfect (which is often translated like a perfect in that it is usually translated as a past or present depending on the context).

Also notable in this text is the second verb used for the resurrecting action. We have already encountered the first one in multiple cases to this point, including in Deut 32:39. But now the contrast to the hiphil (in this case, causative) sense of bringing one down to Sheol demands a hiphil of עלה, to bring up or raise up. We will see this verb again in Ezek 37, where it is the reversal of the action of burial. While it has a similar connotation here, given the association (but not identification, as I argue) of Sheol with the grave, it also has an additional significance in this context that describes God’s delivering action in terms of exaltation. The action is a reversal, but it is not only that, as it is not simply a restoration to the status quo. It is, rather, the initiation of a transformed situation. This is not to say that resurrection per se is yet portrayed in terms of transformation, but only that there is a way open here for associating resurrection with a situation that is more broadly transformed.

In Hannah’s case, she associated her infertility with Sheol, but God brought about great things for both her and her people when he heard her prayers and made her able to conceive. Nor was it simply a situation in which she conceived and gave birth to one child and so her request was met. She gave birth to that child, that child oversaw the transition of rule from the model of judges to kings and he anointed the first two kings of Israel, among other things. She herself would also go on to have five more children. Hence, in both ways, her perceived raising from the realm of death in disfavor involved not merely a reversal of circumstances, but an exaltation for both her and her nation. Her deliverance from her aggrieved condition thus resembles and foreshadows resurrection in its expression of the life-giving power of God.

1. Levenson, Resurrection, 172.

2. Bill T. Arnold and John H. Choi, A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 71.