In the college class, we’ve wondered what Old Testament saints believed about life after death. While the New Testament fleshes out the promise of resurrection fully, with Jesus as first fruits, the Old Testament has less to say.
Though the word “resurrection” is not found in the Old Testament, what IS found seems sufficient to assert that the promise of life after death was a precious hope of Old Testament people. Many Jews, such as the Pharisees, firmly believed in the resurrection (Acts 23:8).
Jesus used the Old Testament to prove the reality of the resurrection. In Matthew 22, some Sadducees came to Jesus with a hypothetical situation that, in their minds, presented a watertight argument against the resurrection: a woman who marries each of seven brothers in turn. The Sadducees mocked, “In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife of the seven will she be?”
Jesus replied that they didn’t appreciate God’s power to grant us changed bodies not subject to the same limitations. Then He said, “Regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (22:29-32).
Jesus quoted Exodus 3:6, in which God calls to Moses from the burning bush, and identifies Himself as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.” That encounter occurs hundreds of years after the deaths of those three men. And God is the God of living ones, not dead ones. Thus, Jesus draws a necessary conclusion that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still alive and well in God’s presence, though their physical bodies had long since perished and decayed. Clearly, there is life beyond the grave!
Let’s consider a few other Old Testament passages that hint at life after death.
The Resurrection in Job
Job is among the oldest Scriptures, set somewhere during the days of the patriarchs. Even Job, at such an early century, hinted at the resurrection. He used an illustration:
“For there is hope for a tree, When it is cut down, that it will sprout again… At the scent of water it will flourish And put forth sprigs like a plant… If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my struggle I will wait Until my change comes. You will call, and I will answer You; You will long for the work of Your hands (Job 14:7-15). Job’s thoughts seem to meander between questioning and confidence. He worries about his future; but, if a chopped-down tree can come back to life, why not a human being whose body is buried in the earth? God will send forth the call, at the last trumpet, and all His creation will come forth to stand before Him! See also Job 19:25
The Resurrection in the Law
One of Moses’ favorite phrases to describe the passing of the sons of Abraham is, “he was gathered to his people.” Like Genesis 25:8—“Abraham breathed his last and died in a ripe old age, an old man and satisfied with life; and he was gathered to his people” (see also Gen. 25:17, 49:29-33, Numb. 20:24-26, 27:13, 31:2, Deut. 32:5, Judges 2:10).
There’s no way this refers to being buried in some sort of common tomb, sharing space with the moldy bones of one’s descendants. In fact, Gen. 35:29 makes it clear that burial and being gathered to one’s people are two different things happening at different times. Besides, Moses never uses this phrase to describe the experience of non-Jews. Being gathered to one’s people expresses a hope of reunion with other faithful Jews beyond this life, which is the same kind of reunion we Christians long for (1 Thess. 4:13-18).
One of the best places to grasp the reality of life after death is on the earliest few pages of the Bible, in a brief description of the patriarch Enoch, who “walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (Gen. 5:22-24). Apparently, Enoch never suffered physical death (Heb. 11:5, cf. Elijah in 2 Kings 2:10-11). And yet he did not continue upon the earth, but was translated to be with God. The great testimony of his experience is that there is something great that awaits us beyond our bodies, and that we receive it after walking faithfully with God —John Guzzetta