Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [156]
The rabbis interpreted the passages in various ways, including as a literal future resurrection scene, but were reluctant to use it as proof for the general doctrine of resurrection because it did not appear in the first five books of Moses and thus could not offer the best support and precedent for the doctrine. One rabbi even suggested imaginatively that the dead were actually resurrected as a sign of the end, that they sang their song of praise to the LORD, and then they died immediately again to await the final consummation.7
The Isaianic Apocalypse: Isaiah 24-27
THE LANGUAGE in chapters 24 through 27 of Isaiah is visionary; it describes life after death, and, again, it is not likely to be meant literally. But in this passage there is a good deal of ambiguity. While it is scarcely true that the imagery of life after death automatically assumes a mature belief in resurrection, it is quite true that this very concrete resurrection imagery suggests that the belief was present in Israelite society. Yet, the report that a prophet saw this vision is no guarantee that the imagery was not borrowed from Canaanite or Persian thought either.8
If notions of resurrection or beatific life after death were already present in Israelite thought, they had not been emphasized in any significant way. One would expect that a belief like resurrection of the body would enter with a bold statement, not sneak in the back door. One such place is Isaiah 25:8-9 where the prophet envisions a day in which God will destroy death:
He will swallow up death for ever, and the LORD GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth; for the LORD has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
This prophecy is a vision of a perfected future. It would be surprising if death were present in a perfected future. The vision is an example of the prophetic “Day of the LORD.” The question is only how the prophet will articulate the remedy to death. Here, he picks a Canaanite motif of Ba’al’s victory over Mot. Why the prophet has chosen a mythological Canaanite image is not clear-perhaps only because it was a known story or even partly out of a polemical concern to assert YHWH’S, not Ba’al’s, authorship of life and death.
In Canaanite mythology it was Ba ’al who conquered death, but he has to renew the battle periodically. Save for Ba ’al, whom death regurgitates, death itself swallows all. The prophet reverses the metaphor by applying it to YHWH as the savior of Israel and LORD of life and death. It is a brave and striking metaphor but not as much of a religious innovation as it first seems, even in Israel. What is striking about the image is that YHWH will defeat death historically, once and for all and forever, not defeat death every-so-often at the turn of seasons. Indeed, the whole point of the image is that death is still very much part of the world. God’s action is awaited in the future. The vision is for the future, just as it is for the faithful to YHWH alone.
Another place where notions of eternal life enter the Isaianic apocalypse