SUMMARY
God promises that the dead shall live and corpses shall rise.
ANALYSIS
The surprise of this text is that, most often in Old Testament thought, death was the end of everything–even of a relationship with God, since there was no praise of God in SheolIn the Hebrew Bible Sheol was the place where people, both good and bad, went when they died. While it was a place that might cause sorrow and anguish, it was not necessarily a cause for despair, for, as the psalmist said, God was even... More (the place of the dead) (see Psalms 6:5; 30:9; 89:48). God was the God of the living, but death marked the end (Isaiah 38:18-19).
Occasionally, however, God’s Old Testament people are given a glimpse of something more: the dead shall live, corpses shall rise, dry bones will be given new life (Ezekiel 37). This hope was not based in the human or in notions of human immortality, unknown to the Bible, but in the ongoing goodness of God, who simply would not let people go. Finally, people came to know that God was present even in Sheol (PsalmA psalm is a song of praise. In the Old Testament 150 psalms comprise the psalter, although some of the psalms are laments and thanksgivings. In the New Testament early Christians gathered to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. More 139:8).
In the New Testament era, the Jewish people continued to debate the possibility of resurrection (Matthew 22:23). The New Testament claim of resurrection is finally not a theological principle, but simply a witness to what God demonstrated in Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:12-14)
