- Theology and Identity
- Season 1
- Episode 13
- Airdate: 17 May 2024
- Please note this is a script, and not a transcript. There may be slight differences between this text and the actual broadcast.
- All Bible quotations taken from the English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016)
Audio Links:
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Life After Death in the Old Testament
Introduction
In this episode we want to look at how Hebrew notions of death and the afterlife changed and developed across the text of the Hebrew Bible.
In the earliest traditions of the OT, it very much appears that the Hebrew people believed that death was the end. Nowhere in the book of Genesis or the Law of Moses do we see any specific indications that there is life after death.
As we read through the wisdom and poetic literature, in some places there are hints that there may be life after death, but in other places the authors seem to clearly affirm that death is the end.
Its not until the era after the Babylonian exile, what is known as ‘2nd Temple Judaism, that very clear notions of resurrection, final judgment, and eternal reward or punishment start to appear in the text.
Our aim today is to better understand how belief in the afterlife developed among the people of Israel, and how this shaped their identity.
As we do this it will be important to bear in mind the methodology we’ve been using throughout this series. We are not reading the OT text through the lens of the NT, or later Christian doctrine. We not looking for signs to confirm all that we as Christians believe about life after death today.
Rather, we are trying to put ourselves in the shoes of the original Hebrew audience. We want to be mindful of what they knew, and what they didn’t know at the various stages of their theological development.
So let’s begin our study.
The first question we want to address is: Are there suggestions that is life after death in the first books of the Bible, the Torah.
To discern this, the key question is: how did God say he would reward righteousness, and how did he say that he would punish sin. Does the idea of judgement after death ever come into play? The short answer is NO.
Throughout our survey we’ve been talking about the promise that God made to Abraham, and how that is the central theme of the Hebrew Scriptures.
God said to Abraham: I will make your name great. I will multiply your offspring. In you will all the nations of the earth be blessed. I will give your descendants this land.
But nowhere in the promises made to Abraham of life after death. In the patriarchal era reward for righteousness was not understood as eternal life in heaven. The afterlife of Abraham would be lived through his children. The name of Abraham the testimony of Abraham would live forever through his family.
If we go a bit further in the text, we find that in Deut 28 Moses laid out for the people of Israel the rewards that they would receive if they kept they kept the covenant, and the curses that would come them if they didn’t.
These were some of the rewards for obedience:
And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God. 3 Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. 4 Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. 5 Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 6 Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.
7 “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. 8 The Lord will command the blessing on you in your barns and in all that you undertake. And he will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 9 The Lord will establish you as a people holy to himself, as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways. 10 And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. 11 And the Lord will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your livestock and in the fruit of your ground, within the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. 12 The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. 13 And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them, 14 and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them. [1]
And here are some of the curses:
16 Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. 17 Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. 18 Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock. 19 Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.
20 “The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me. 21 The Lord will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 22 The Lord will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought and with blight and with mildew. They shall pursue you until you perish. 23 And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. 24 The Lord will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.
25 “The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them. And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 And your dead body shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away. 27 The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, and with tumors and scabs and itch, of which you cannot be healed. 28 The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind, 29 and you shall grope at noonday, as the blind grope in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. And you shall be only oppressed and robbed continually, and there shall be no one to help you. 30 You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her. You shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat any of it. Your donkey shall be seized before your face, but shall not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies, but there shall be no one to help you. 32 Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all day long, but you shall be helpless. 33 A nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually, 34 so that you are driven mad by the sights that your eyes see. 35 The Lord will strike you on the knees and on the legs with grievous boils of which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.
36 “The Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone. 37 And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away. 38 You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locust shall consume it. 39 You shall plant vineyards and dress them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worm shall eat them. 40 You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives shall drop off. 41 You shall father sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity. 42 The cricket shall possess all your trees and the fruit of your ground. 43 The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. 44 He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail. [2]
What I want to emphasize in all these verses is that every blessing for obedience is something that occurs on earth, in the lives of the people of Israel and their children.
And every curse for disobedience is something that occurs on earth, in the lives of the people of Israel and their children.
In the Law of Moses there is no mention of any type of personal reward or punishment that occurs for individual people after they have died.
So It very much appears that, at this time, people believed that death was the end.
Now let’s move beyond the Torah and have a look at some passages from the poetic and wisdom literature. Here we find that there were many Hebrew authors who lamented the fact that at the moment of death, they would cease to exist.
Death was the end
Job 7, 14
“Remember that my life is a breath;
my eye will never again see good.
8 The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more;
while your eyes are on me, I shall be gone.
9 As the cloud fades and vanishes,
so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up;
10 he returns no more to his house,
nor does his place know him anymore. [3]
21 For now I shall lie in the earth;
you will seek me, but I shall not be.” [4]
Job 14
Man who is born of a woman
is few of days and full of trouble.
2 He comes out like a flower and withers;
he flees like a shadow and continues not. [5]
But a man dies and is laid low;
man breathes his last, and where is he?
11 As waters fail from a lake
and a river wastes away and dries up,
12 so a man lies down and rises not again;
till the heavens are no more he will not awake
or be roused out of his sleep.
13 Oh that you would hide me in Sheol,
that you would conceal me until your wrath be past,
that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
14 If a man dies, shall he live again?
All the days of my service I would wait,
till my renewal should come. [6]
Ps 88
Every day I call upon you, O Lord;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah
11 Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
12 Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?[7]
ECC 3
Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. 17 I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work. 18 I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. 19 For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. 20 All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? 22 So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him? [8]
So here we see examples in the OT text that the overarching view among the people of Israel was that death was the end.
So then, how exactly did the ideas of resurrection, final judgement, heaven and hell develop? Were these Christian ideas?
The answer is that ideas about the afterlife developed slowly over time. We can say that came into full fruition during the era of the exile and the second temple.
We note that beliefs about the afterlife weren’t established by doctrinal decree. There wasn’t a prophet or priest who all of the sudden announced: there is life after death. There is no OT text that lays out the details of this theology in a systematic way.
Rather, we see that the idea of life after death began, among certain people, as a hunch or a hope. And then, over time, it became a certainty.
Ideas have a history. Once again, they develop over time. And in the Bible, just because we see some people starting to suspect that there they may be something more after death, that doesn’t mean that everyone came to the same conclusion at the same time.
So what I want to focus on In the history of Judaic thought are two lines upon which this idea developed.
The argument for eschatological justice
The argument for eternal relationship
Eschatological justice
Its interesting to note that throughout most of the OT text we don’t really see the idea of martyrs. There were prophets and other faithful people who suffered for their faith. But when we think of a martyr, we think of persecution. An oppressive government power that pressures people to apostasise and deny their faith. And this government power punishes those who do not comply.
For most of the OT era, this type of political setting didn’t really exist.
It wasn’t’ until the era of Greek rule in Israel that the Jewish people as a whole began to experience oppression and persecution under the rule of a foreign power. The primary canonical text that emerges from this period is the book of Daniel, and this can be read in harmony with other important texts from the same period known as the books of the Maccabeees.
It was when the Greek rulers started clamping down on the practice of Judaism, and when many Jewish people started resisting – that we see for the first time the ideas of mass martyrdom and apostasy taking place.
And this then opened to the door to questions about what happens after death. Would there be a reward for those Jews who valiantly died defending their faith? Would there be a punishment for those Jews who turned away from the faith and denied their identity.
Or would the ultimate fate of the martyrs and the apostates be exactly the same? Would they both just pass into Sheol without any punishment or any rewards for their deeds in life?
So let’s look at the historical context
During the era of Greek rule, in the 2nd century BC there was really nasty ruler named Antiochus Epiphanes.
1 Macc 1:
Then the king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, and that all should give up their particular customs. . . Many even from Israel gladly adopted his religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath. And the king sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the towns of Judah; he directed them to follow customs strange to the land, to forbid burnt offerings and sacrifices and drink offerings in the sanctuary, to profane sabbaths and festivals, to defile the sanctuary and the priests, to build altars and sacred precincts and shrines for idols, to sacrifice swine and other unclean animals, and to leave their sons uncircumcised. They were to make themselves abominable by everything unclean and profane, so that they would forget the law and change all the ordinances. He added, “And whoever does not obey the command of the king shall die.” [9]
they erected a desolating sacrilege on the altar of burnt offering. They also built altars in the surrounding towns of Judah, and offered incense at the doors of the houses and in the streets. The books of the law that they found they tore to pieces and burned with fire. Anyone found possessing the book of the covenant, or anyone who adhered to the law, was condemned to death by decree of the king. They kept using violence against Israel, against those who were found month after month in the towns. On the twenty-fifth day of the month they offered sacrifice on the altar that was on top of the altar of burnt offering
So what we see here is a mass persecution of the Jewish people, with many people turning away from the faith.
But there were many Jews who stood firm in the faith.
1 Macc 1
But many in Israel stood firm and were resolved in their hearts not to eat unclean food. They chose to die rather than to be defiled by food or to profane the holy covenant; and they did die. Very great wrath came upon Israel. [10]
We read an example of this martyrdom in 2 Mac 7: the story of a Jewish mother who watched her 7 sons die.
It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and thongs, to partake of unlawful swine’s flesh. One of them, acting as their spokesman, said, “What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.”
The king fell into a rage, and gave orders to have pans and caldrons heated. These were heated immediately, and he commanded that the tongue of their spokesman be cut out and that they scalp him and cut off his hands and feet, while the rest of the brothers and the mother looked on. When he was utterly helpless, the king ordered them to take him to the fire, still breathing, and to fry him in a pan. The smoke from the pan spread widely, but the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, “The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song that bore witness against the people to their faces, when he said, ‘And he will have compassion on his servants.’ ”[11]
A comment on the mother:
The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Although she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord. She encouraged each of them in the language of their ancestors. Filled with a noble spirit, she reinforced her woman’s reasoning with a man’s courage, and said to them, “I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of humankind and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws.”[12]
So this mother refused to accept the idea that this would be the final end for her sons.
Where did she get the idea that they would be resurrected. She didn’t quote any Scriptures to support this belief. She simply trusted, that in his righteousness, YHWH would vindicate the death of her sons.
So what we see happening here is that persecution martyrdom and apostasy are pushing the people of Israel to seriously think about what happens after death.
In their concept of God’s justice, they simply cannot accept that the Jews who turned away from their faith, and they Jew who painfully died defending their beliefs and practices would ultimately meet the same fate. There had to be life death, there had to be judgement. There had to be justice.
NT Wrignt
Israel’s god will reverse the actions of the wicked pagans, and raise the martyrs, and the teachers who kept Israel on course, to a glorious life. Simultaneously, he will raise their persecutors to a new existence: instead of remaining in the decent obscurity of Sheol or ‘the dust’, they will face perpetual public obloquy.”
Wright, N. T.. Resurrection Son of God V3: Christian Origins and the Question of God . Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.
So that is the first line upon which the idea of life after death developed – the argument for eschatological justice.
But this isn’t the only thread to follow in the OT on how beliefs about the about the afterlife were progressing. Another concept in formation was the argument for eternal relationship.
One of the great declarations of Hebrew spirituality that we find particularly evident in the Psalms is the idea that the steadfast love of YHWH never dies.
Ki tov Adonai, le olaam chasdu
For the Lord is good, and his steadfast love endures forever.
For many Judeans, this was a declaration of faith in God’s commitment to his promises. He loved the nation of Israel, and his love and his faithfulness to his people would never come to an end. The amazing love of God would follow the people of Israel from generation to generation into eternity.
But for some people among the faithful of Israel. This still wasn’t enough. King David is an example. He praised and blessed God for the faithfulness that had been promised to his offspring. But for David, the love of YHWH wasn’t just about his faithfulness to the people of Israel across the generations, The love of YHWH was also about his deep personal relationship with individuals.
The burning question in David’s life was this: If the love of YWHW is endures forever, than why must the moment come when I am separated from that love? How is that God’s love can go on into eternity, and I won’t be there to experience it?
David reached the conclusion that if the deep, intimate love of YHWH for HIM endures forever, then it has to be the case he will rise again after he dies so that he can continue enjoying that amazing love.
It is particularly in Ps 17 that we see David wrestling with these ideas
Psalm 17
Paraphrase the first 14 verses, focus on vs 15.
In the first section of this Psalm David is lamenting the injustices of this life and staking his claim on the righteousness of God.
Vs 1-2 ; God, you who see justice vindicate my cause
3 – 5: You know me. You’ve tested me. You know that I am committed to living righteously
6-7 – I know that I can count on you. You are the refuge and savior of those who flee from the wicked to find protection in you.
8- - Keep me as the apply of your eye. Hide me in the shadow of your wings.
9 – 14 Wicked men surround me. They have no pity, They speak arrogantly. They’re eager to pounce. These are men who experience abundance in this world. Their bellies are of treasure, They have many children, and they pass on their wealth from generation to generation.
But then in vs 15, David really lays out why he is different from these wicked men.
They have their reward on earth, but this is what he says (my translation)
But as for me, in righteousness I will look upon your face. When I awake, I shall be satisfied, for I shall see you as you really are.
What’s going on here is that David has come to the realisation that things will never be that great in this life. We will always have problems. We will always have enemies. And the fact that we’re striving to live holy lives is not a guarantee that life will be easy.
We will look at the lives of the wicked, and we’ll realise that often times for them, everything is going great.
David’s hope for deliverance is not based on the idea that someday the wicked will be punished.
His hope for deliverance is not based on the idea that someday he will be rewarded on this earth for his faithfulness.
David’s hope for deliverance is that someday, after he dies, he will rise again. And his reward will not be mansions of gold or crowns. His reward will be to see the face of his God. To see YHWH for who he really is. And this is all David could ever want or hope. This is the moment when his soul will satisfied: when he knows that he will live in love relationship with YHWH forever.
So what we see here is that is the argument for eternal relationship that leads David to the conclusion that there must be life after death.
Because he lives in love relationship with God, he can’t imagine that relationship ever coming to an end. And because he longs so deeply to see the face of his God, to know YHWH for who he really he is, he can’t imagine that a loving God would ever deny to him the fulfilment of this desire.
So in conclusion, lets reflect for a moment on what this means for us today.
We’ve been tracing the story of how the Hebrews slowly came to the understanding that there is life after death. There is judgement, and there will be eternal punishment for the wicked, and eternal reward for the righteous.
On the one hand, we’ve seen that this conclusion was based on their trust in the character of YHWH. In times of persecution, when some Jews were apostisiting and others were dying the death of martyrs, they realised that the righteous character of YWHW required justice. There had to be life after death in order to maintain the assertion that YHWH deals fairly with humanity.
But we’ve also seen that there was an element of relationship at work here. The love of God is eternal, and because he seeks out intimate love relationships with individuals, it just doesn’t make sense that someday this personal love relationship should die. He has put in us the longing to see him as he his, and we have to believe that the day will come when this really happens.
So what does this tell us about theology and identity?
First let me clarify that I am not suggesting that notions of love and emotion should be the basis of creating new doctrines or altering the historically understood, authoritative teachings of the Scripture? Many seem to be taking that road, but I won’t go there.
What I am saying is that there are different ways that we arrive at an understanding of the truth. The teachings of the Bible don’t just come to us a list of formulaic doctrines. The Bible isn’t just do this, do this, don’t do this, don’t do that.
What we’ve learned through our exploration of the OT is that what we must pursue relationship with YHWH. When we do, he reveals himself to us We might ask: why didn’t YHWH just tell the people: hey there’s life after death? In my view, the answer is that he wasn’t just going to give them the answers to everything. They had to relationally pursue him.
The lesson for me is that Truth is not attained through the intellectual process alone. Truth isn’t perceived only by means of a cognitive reasoning and rationality. Some dimensions of the truth can only be discerned through the process of deep and intimate love relationship.
So I believe that the summary of Hebrew notions of Theology and Identity is this:
Find out who you are and find out who God is by pursuing love relationship. Don’t look at faith just as an assent to a group of doctrines and ideas. Look at faith as a call to live in intimate communion with a God who is just, who is righteous, who is beautiful, who is overwhelming, who wants to reveal himself to humanity, and who wants all people to experience life in him and with him forever.
And with that we are bringing this episode to a close.
This is the final instalment of season 1, where we have been exploring the themes of Theology and identity in the Hebrew Scriptures.
[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Dt 28:2–14.
[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Dt 28:16–44.
[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Job 7:7–10.
[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Job 7:21.
[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Job 14:1–2.
[6] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Job 14:10–14.
[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ps 88:9–12.
[8] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ec 3:16–22.
[9] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), 1 Mac 1:41–53.
[10] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), 1 Mac 1:54–64.
[11] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), 2 Mac 7:1–6.
[12] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), 2 Mac 7:20–23.