As It Is Written: Old Testament Foundations For Jesus’ Expectation Of Resurrection

By Byron Wheaton

[Byron Wheaton is pastor of discipleship at Bay Park Baptist Church, Kingston, Ontario, and adjunct professor of Old Testament at Emmanuel Bible College, Kitchener, Ontario.]

No one who reads the account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus can fail to feel the sting of the words of reproof spoken by the Savior: “How foolish you are and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” Jesus’ words suggest that his disciples should have clearly known and expected the events that transpired that first “Easter” weekend. That knowledge should have been theirs on the basis of their study of the OT, as Jesus demonstrated, for Luke goes on to observe, “Beginning with Moses and all of the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all of the Scriptures concerning himself “ (Luke 24:27).

But the sensitive reader might wonder whether the reproof was indeed deserved. Where does one find clear OT statements that the Messiah must suffer, die, and rise again? There are some texts that speak of a suffering servant, but resurrection especially is hard to discern.[1] Even the texts cited by the apostles in their post-resurrection sermons such as Ps 16:8–11; Ps 110:1; and Isa 55:3 to buttress the resurrection as an OT expectation hardly qualify as obvious statements of resurrection.[2] Only a nuanced reading of the text can yield that result.[3]

Some scholars argue that the OT is devoid of teaching about resurrection prospects.[4] Those commentators who take Jesus seriously look to individual texts as they interpret Jesus’ statement. Plummer, commenting on the phrase “beginning with Moses” writes, “Such prophecies as Gen iii.15; xxii.18; Num xxiv.17; Deut xviii.15 and such types as the scapegoat, the manna, the brazen serpent, and the sacrifices are specially meant.”[5] These texts and types certainly anticipate substitutionary atonement, but offer little support for the idea of resurrection. Marshall suggests that the verb “explain” “signifies that the speaker chose out those passages which might be regarded as messianic and then proceeded to show how they should be understood so that they could now ‘speak’ to the disciples.”[6]

Morris offers another approach. He goes beyond individual texts when, commenting on the phrase “in all the Scriptures,” he says, “We should perhaps understand this not as the selection of a number of proof texts, but rather as showing that throughout the Old Testament, a consistent divine purpose is being worked out, a purpose that in the end meant and must mean the cross.”[7] Does that mean the resurrection is a vital part of that OT testimony too? If so, how?

Perhaps we could find a clue to Jesus’ teaching about his resurrection in the early sermons of the apostles. Those sermons, especially the ones following Pentecost, are marked by the significant place they give to the resurrection as part of the kerygma. In his Pentecost sermon recorded in Acts 2, Peter affirms the resurrection as God’s work and supports it by citing Ps 16:8–11 as his OT basis. He says that David could not have been speaking about himself since he died and was buried, but, “Seeing what was ahead, [David] spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay” (Acts 2:31). Though some have felt that Peter adds to the text, Kaiser argues that

David, as the man of promise and as God’s hasid (“favored one”), was in his person, office, and function one of the distinctive historical fulfillments to that word that he received about his seed, dynasty, and throne. Therefore, he rested secure in the confident hope that even death itself would not prevent him from enjoying the face-to-face fellowship with his Lord even beyond death, because the ultimate hasid would triumph over death.[8]

Paul in his sermon at the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch also cites Ps 16:10 along with Ps 2:7 and Isa 55:3 as OT anticipation of resurrection (Acts 13:32–37). Thus, some of these particular verses that predict a future for God’s messiah are cited as evidence of resurrection. But Paul’s evidence seems to be much more substantive than these texts. To King Agrippa, Paul affirms that he was saying “nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen— that the Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:23; cf. 17:2–3). Paul seems to be suggesting that the themes of death and resurrection are pervasive in the OT Scriptures. Yet the paucity of resurrection texts makes one wonder how Paul can assert this so confidently. I want to suggest in this article that the solution to this problem is not to be found in an array of particular texts but in another direction.

In an article entitled, “The Place of the Old Testament in the Formation of New Testament Theology,” Lindars observes,

That Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies is a basic presupposition of [Paul’s] thought. This observation in its turn draws attention to the extent to which the Old Testament has been used without direct quotation. Besides literary allusions there are also major themes such as creation, exodus, Israel, covenant, righteousness, life, et cetera, to name just a few at random. The conclusion easily follows that the Old Testament is the greatest single influence in the formation of New Testament theology.[9]

Lindars’s suggestion that biblical themes are informative for NT theology is key to answering the question of how the disciples should have been aware of the resurrection. The argument of this study is that it is the presence of the theme of resurrection as a vital part of redemption in the OT that should have informed the disciples. There are a number of OT narratives that are critical to redemptive history which present this theme.

The story of the sacrifice of Isaac is an obvious account where the resurrection motif is present as the NT itself attests. The account comes at the climax of Abraham’s life, when, after finally receiving the promised son, Abraham is called to sacrifice him. Abraham dutifully goes to the place that God shows him, builds an altar there, binds his son, and lays him upon it. In raising the knife to slay his son, Abraham exhibits his commitment to obedience to God’s command. Isaac is as good as dead. At that moment, God stays the hand of his servant and delivers Isaac, providing a substitute ram in his place. The writer to the Hebrews, commenting on this event, says, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking he did receive Isaac back from the dead” (Heb 11:19).[10] Hughes suggests that this confidence of Abraham in God raising Isaac is evident in the OT text in Abraham’s comment to the servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you” (Gen 22:5). Hughes continues, “So dramatic was the sequence of events that it was as though Isaac really had died and been raised up to life again.”[11] Brueggemann remarks, “Faith is nothing other than trust in the power of the resurrection against every deathly circumstance. Abraham knows beyond understanding that God will find a way to bring life even in this scenario of death.”[12] Through this death-resurrection ordeal the covenant with Abraham is confirmed. God unconditionally commits himself to ensure the multiplication of the seed and the blessing of the nations (Gen 22:17–18). The anguish of the death experience gives way to the glory of being progenitor of a great nation which will be a blessing to the nations. Exegetes of the church throughout the ages have understood this passage as a foreshadowing of the death and resurrection of Abraham’s greater offspring, Jesus the Christ.[13]

This text provides us with several clues for reading other narratives of the OT for their allusion to the resurrection. First, the “victim” is under some sort of sentence of death. Second, the process of execution is in progress. Third, there is no human possibility of rescue; the end is imminent. Fourth, the dying process is miraculously overcome so that the victim is restored to life. Fifth, the “resurrection” issues in a new future for the victim and those associated with him. These characteristics of the resurrection theme mark a number of other narratives that are also key to the redemptive drama.

The story of Noah is another parade example. God sentenced the world to death because of the wickedness of humanity: “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them” (Gen 6:7). Noah is informed of the coming cataclysm and is instructed to build the ark. He, his family, representative pairs of all the creatures, and anyone else he can persuade to join him (2 Pet 2:5) are to enter the ark. Once it is completed, the animals loaded, and Noah and his family are on board, the door is closed and the judgment falls with devastating effect. Waters cover the earth so that the primeval state of the pre-creation situation is returned.[14] “Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped out from the earth”(Gen 7:23). It is significant that Noah does not escape the ordeal. He experiences the full brunt of the storm, but experiences it within the safety of the ark made to withstand the tyranny of the chaos forces unleashed upon the world. His deliverance must be seen to be supernatural.[15] When the ark is beached on Ararat and the waters subside, Noah enters into a pristine, newly re-formed world to originate a new humanity.[16] God’s covenant of life is re-established with him as a second Adam, representing his offspring as well as the world for which he is responsible.

Each of the characteristics of the resurrection theme mentioned above is present in the story—the sentence of death is delivered, the process of destruction gets under way, there is no human solution that can lead to deliverance, there is a miraculous intervention, and the regained life issues in a new order of things. It is striking that Peter in his discussion of the redemptive work of Christ in his death and resurrection draws analogy with the Noah narrative. Peter links the flood waters to the waters of baptism, which at least in part, image the notion of “death and resurrection” (1 Pet 3:18b–22; Rom 6:3–4). Calvin speaks of the ark as a sepulcher from which Noah emerges into a new life.[17] The theme of death and resurrection figures prominently in the narrative with a new order of life being the outcome.

Another important account in the Genesis material shows this pattern. In the toledot of Jacob, Jacob sends his son Joseph to inquire about the welfare of his brothers as they are tending the sheep. When the brothers see him coming, their hatred for him spills over into a counsel of death. “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him” (Gen 37:19). Reuben’s intervention delays the process so that Joseph is only thrown into the cistern, but the subsequent sale to the Midianite slave traders achieves the same outcome as far as the brothers are concerned. The brothers reckon him as dead from then on, feeling sure that he would not long endure the oppression of bondage. That is what they report to their father (37:32–33) and subsequently to Joseph as well (42:13; 44:20). The story itself contributes to this idea by tracing Joseph’s descent—note the use of the word “down”—first from a position of honor in Jacob’s family to the pit at Dothan, from the promised land down to Egypt, from prominence in Potiphar’s house to the prison.[18] But divine intervention reverses this death process. The story repeatedly affirms, “The Lord was with Joseph” (39:2, 21). This watchful care by the Lord leads to Joseph’s preservation in Potiphar’s house, in the prison, and eventually to his standing before Pharaoh. Out of Joseph’s resurrection life comes salvation for the elect family and a future of prominence and hope.

Similar connections are made in the story of the exodus. An edict of death hangs over the nation of Israel. Pharaoh first commands the Israelite midwives to destroy all the baby boys. When that fails, he orders, “Every boy that is born, you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live” (Exod 1:22). This systematic genocide has in view the ultimate destruction of the nation. That the process is under way is demonstrated in that even Moses’ parents cast him into the waters of the Nile, albeit in an ark! His name attests to his being delivered/resurrected from the waters (Exod 2:10).

Then to a people under the sentence of death, who are in fact already being subjected to systematic killing, God comes to miraculously deliver them. The sequence of plagues demonstrates his power over Egypt’s gods and rulers, as well as serving as weapons for the war that he wages against Egypt.[19] Some of the plagues affect Israel while others do not. God’s final plague against Egypt involves Israel too. They can escape the death angel’s wrath only through death—the death of a substitute.

Later, at the Red Sea, the Israelites are trapped between mountains, sea, and an advancing Egyptian military machine. Under God’s direction, Moses commands Israel to proceed through the sea. Miraculously, the waters pile up on either side, permitting the Israelites to cross. The same judgment waters that later spell doom for the Egyptians are all around the Israelites. But, like Noah, the Israelites emerge out of them because of the miraculous intervention of God into prospects of a new world of freedom and life in God’s presence. Again, resurrection motifs are prominent.[20]

The book of Ruth is situated historically at a critical moment in Israel’s existence. The period of the Judges is one in which Israel’s prospects for the future have grown increasingly dim. By the end of the book, the tribe of Benjamin is almost extinct. The other eleven tribes are on a course that could well end in the same fashion. The narrative of Ruth mirrors Israel’s own lot. Elimelech and his family are faced with famine in their hometown of Bethlehem. Famines were part of the covenantal curse package for breaching the covenant and were a judgment that threatened Israel’s existence (Deut 28:20–24). Elimelech, rather than being disciplined by the famine, decides to escape it by going to Moab to take up residence. “Misfortune” overtakes him there anyway and he dies. Some time later, his two sons die as well. The first chapter ends on a note of doom for this family, as the pall of death and consequent extinction hangs over them. There is no future for them, as Naomi insists. “ ‘Don’t call me Naomi,’ she told them. ‘Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full but the Lord has brought me back empty”’ (Ruth 1:20–21).

By the final chapter in the book, however, things have changed. The covenant faithfulness of Ruth and the entrance of the kinsman-redeemer, Boaz, are God’s miraculous provision to reverse the situation and give a future of life to this family. Of Ruth’s child it is specifically said, “Naomi has a son,” and he is described as the one who will “renew” her life.[21] The formerly doomed family now has a future that will entail the blessing of new beginnings for the nation of Israel in the royal seed of David. Out of death and hopelessness, life has sprung up.

The prophets also developed this theme. The classic prophetic text is Ezek 37 and the account of the “dry bones.” Ezekiel is given a vision of what appears to be a mass grave where there are “a great many bones” (Ezek 37:2). The graphic picture underscores the hopelessness of Israel’s plight. This “graveyard” is truly a place of death. But the strange question posed to the prophet is, “Can these bones live?” Under the direction of the Spirit of the Lord, Ezekiel prophesies to the bones and they come together. Flesh reappears on them and breath is given them again so that they become a “vast army.” The interposition of the word of God, the same word that brought creation into being, is that which brings about life.[22] The vision is then interpreted in terms of the restoration of the nation of Israel. The nation which has been scattered throughout the world is re-gathered and restored as God’s people. The interpretation includes the phrase, “I will open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live” (Ezek 37:12–13). Resurrection is clearly in view in this reversal of Israel’s life as they are brought from a state of non-existence to being a people again. Ollenberger rightly rejects the dismissal of this resurrection as simply metaphorical when he says, “Israel’s restoration to life, its passage from death to life, depended entirely on the improbable, utterly surprising action of God— ‘resurrection’ seems the best word for it—fittingly compared with God’s initial act of creation.”[23] This new start involves also a new order of things into which Israel is brought (Ezek 36, 39).

In the collection of the Twelve, also known as the Minor Prophets, we have the account of the prophetic activity of Jonah. Jonah’s story is remarkable for the presence of the theme of resurrection. God calls Jonah to the task of bearing a message of judgment to the people of Ninevah. Jonah reacts to the calling by fleeing in the opposite direction to Tarshish aboard the next available vessel, having determined that nothing but death was good enough for the vicious and cruel Assyrian tyrants. God, however, has other plans and arrests Jonah on his flight. A great storm threatens the whole vessel, and Jonah explicitly tells the captain and his crew that the only way to stop their impending demise is to throw him overboard. Jonah has chosen death over service. Though unwilling, the crew does as he requests and Jonah is thrown overboard. Humanly speaking, death is inevitable. But God supernaturally intervenes. A great fish, prepared by God, swallows Jonah, and there in the depths of the sea Jonah encounters God. The poem in the midst of the account is Jonah’s recollection of that experience. The language used in the poem is full of death and resurrection imagery. Jonah portrays himself as in “the depths of the grave” (sheol ), and as having been “hurled […] into the deep” ( Jonah 2:2, 3). Jonah’s description of the waters above him, the seaweed around him, and the earth barring him in forever is graphic language for death (2:5–6b). As Baldwin says, “Jonah reckoned that he had entered Sheol, the land of the dead, envisaged as a fortress from which there is no escape.”[24] But Jonah does rise. He confesses, “You brought my life up from the pit, O Lord my God” ( Jonah 2:6c). This act of divine intervention when there was no human possibility of escaping death can only be understood as resurrection. “Jonah recognized the hallmark of the Lord’s work in saving him from death.”[25] Following this miraculous deliverance, Jonah is re-commissioned. His proclamation of impending judgment has the wonderful result of a massive conversion and the beginning of a new start for the people of Ninevah. The death-resurrection process leads to new beginnings for a whole community of people. While it is true that Jonah himself is not particularly delighted by the outcome, the outcome must be linked to the death and resurrection of the prophet.

Jesus’ use of this account testifies to the link. The religious leaders ask Jesus for a sign to authenticate his ministry, and he refuses to give one “except the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matt 12:39). Carson points out that this seems likely to be a reference to the fact that “Jonah himself […] served as a ‘sign’ to the Ninevites for he appeared to them as one who had been delivered from certain death.”[26] It was this marvelous deliverance that authenticated his word. Similarly, Jesus implies that his own “preaching will be attested by a deliverance like Jonah’s, only still greater.”[27] Thus Carson argues that “the first point of comparison between Jonah and Jesus is that they were both delivered from death—a deliverance that attested the trustworthiness of their preaching.”[28] It seems likely that Jesus, in using Jonah, is viewing the prophet’s experience as a death-resurrection event, much like what he himself will experience.

These stories and texts demonstrate the pervasiveness of the theme of resurrection in the OT. The salvation of God seems to arise out of the hopelessness of the worst of human extremity when human endeavor cannot avail. Into these death situations God enters and provides deliverance as the object of his salvation is released from death. But that deliverance also issues in new outcomes both for the one delivered and those whom he is called to serve.

This is the pattern that Jesus’ redemptive work follows. He repeatedly reminds his disciples that he is going to a certain death (Matt 16:21–23; 20:17–19; etc). Jesus’ knowledge of the betrayer and his comment that this is “decreed” (Luke 22:22) shows the certainty of the indictment against him. The gospel narratives make clear that, from the very outset of his ministry, his death is inevitable as they recount the escalating hostility of the religious and secular leaders toward him.[29] Though Peter had protested this path, there was no way to escape it (Matt 16:22). When at last the event occurs, Jesus is declared dead by the practiced eye of the centurion (Mark 15:44). Only divine intervention could reverse this event, which is exactly how the resurrection of Jesus is presented. The angelic presence attests to the divine intervention that reverses the power of death (Luke 24:4–7; Matt 28:2–7). In light of his resurrection, Jesus sends his disciples out to make disciples as they proclaim forgiveness of sins and the arrival of the new age. Peter in his Pentecost sermon traces a similar pattern as he speaks of Jesus’ life and death. Jesus was sentenced to death by the Father, and that sentence was carried out by both Jews and Gentiles. But “God has raised this Jesus to life” (Acts 2:24, 32). And what is more, with that resurrection has come a new order of things marked by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:33). This firstfruits of the age to come signals the beginning of a time of redemption in which all who call upon the name of the Lord may experience God’s forgiveness.

Thus the pattern of death and resurrection found in the OT narratives is indeed consonant with, and prophetic of, Jesus’ own experience. Its pervasiveness in the OT should have informed the disciples so that they expected the resurrection that finally occurred. It is only in this way that the glory could be God’s and his alone!

Notes

1. For many scholars, the OT has nothing to say about resurrection of the body until the post-exilic material (e.g., Dan 12:2). But Ben C. Ollenburger has argued that there is a basis for resurrection theology in God’s reign over all things including the realm of death, and in his vindication as the God of Israel (Ollenburger, “If Mortals Die, Will They Live Again? The Old Testament and Resurrection,” ExAud 9 [1993]: 29-44).
2. Peter C. Craigie writes of Ps 16:8–11, “With respect to the initial meaning of the psalm, it is probable that this concluding section should not be interpreted either messianically or in terms of individual eschatology”(Craigie, Psalms 1–50 [WBC; Waco, Tex.: Word, 1983], 158). H. C. Leupold writes,”The writer does not express the thought that he hopes merely to escape from death but rather the bolder thought that death shall never get dominion over him” (Leupold, Exposition of The Psalms [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1969], 152). Leupold’s observation may include the idea of resurrection but it is not obvious.
3. See Walter Kaiser, The Uses of the Old Testament in the New (Chicago: Moody, 1985), 25–41, for a reading of Ps 16 that argues that David did understand his words to speak of resurrection of the Messiah.
4. See Wendell W. Frerichs, “Death and Resurrection in the Old Testament,” Word & World 11 (1991): 14 n. 2, for a list of some scholars who argue for the absence of any significant texts about resurrection. See also John L. McKenzie who says, “[Resurrection] is simply not a component of the theology of the books of the Old Testament” (McKenzie, A Theology of the Old Testament [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974], 307–8; quoted in Ollenberger, “If Mortals Die, Will They Live Again?,” 29). The article on “resurrection” in NIDNTT (3:259–79) draws attention to a number of texts in the Psalms which give some suggestion of life after death (e.g., Pss 49:15; 73:24), but nothing specific about bodily resurrection, especially of a messianic figure, is included. There are other texts that do ascribe to God life-giving and life-taking powers (Deut 32:39; 1 Sam 2:5–6; Hos 6:1–3), but here resurrection is at best an implication.
5. Alfred Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to S. Luke (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1922), 555.
6. I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 897.
7. Leon Morris, The Gospel According to St. Luke: An Introduction and Commentary (TNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 339.
8. Kaiser, The Uses of the Old Testament in the New, 40–41. But see August Konkel, “The Apostolic Preaching of the Resurrection,” Did 2 (1990): 13, for a number of scholars who object to seeing resurrection in this psalm.
9. Barnabas Lindars, “The Place of the Old Testament in the Formation of New Testament Theology,” in The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Text? Essays on the Use of the Old Testament in the New (ed. G. K. Beale; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 139 (emphasis added).
10. Waltke writes, “Symbolically, Abraham receives Isaac back from death, which typifies Christ’s resurrection from the death of the cross” (Bruce K. Waltke with Cathi Fredricks, Genesis: A Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001], 311).
11. Philip E. Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 484.
12. Walter Brueggeman, Genesis (IBC; Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 193.
13. See K&D 1:253; Gordon Wenham, Genesis 16–50 (WBC; Dallas, Tex.: Word, 1994), 117.
14. U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis: Part 2, From Noah to Abraham (trans. Israel Abrahams; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1992), 97; Waltke, Genesis, 140 (see also his “Parallels between Adam and the Original Creation and Noah and the Recreation,” ibid., 127–29).
15. John Calvin observes that the ark was made resistant to the flood waters, not simply by the artifice of Noah’s construction but by the miraculous work of God (Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses called Genesis [repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979], 272).
16. Creation itself could be considered an example of a death-resurrection theme since the chaos of the original world is unable to sustain life. God’s intervention in creation through his word transforms death into life.
17. Calvin, Genesis, 280; cf. Waltke, Genesis, 152, who also says, “The covenant family emerges out of the waters that symbolize the death of the old world to emerge into a new life (1 Peter 3:20–21).”
18. E.g., the root ירד is used to describe both Jacob’s going down to the grave (37:35) and Joseph’s descent to Egypt (39:1).
19. Note God’s designation as a “warrior” in the Song of the Sea in Exod 15:3.
20. Cf. 1 Cor 10:2 where Paul speaks of this event as a baptism into Moses, linking it to resurrection motifs.
21. The Hebrew word is the hifil form of שוב meaning “to return or restore.”
22. Ollenbeger comments, “By the end of the vision it is clear that, not just an impersonal breath or the four winds, but precisely the spirit of Yahweh is the source of life—and, as we may say, the power of resurrection. It is also, and for the same reason, the life-sustaining power of creation” (“If Mortals Die, Will They Live Again?,” 37).
23. Ibid.
24. Joyce Baldwin, “Jonah,” in The Minor Prophets: An Exegetical and Expository Commentary (ed. Thomas McComiskey; 3 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 2:570.
25. Ibid., 2:571.
26. D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (ed. Frank E. Gaebelein; 12 vols.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 8:296.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Luke shows opposition beginning with Jesus’ opening sermon at Nazareth when the Jews wanted to cast him from the top of the hill (Luke 4:28–29) while Mark records the beginning of the plot for his death in Mark 3:6. Matthew records Herod’s attempts to kill the infant Jesus in Matt 2.