Texts in Conversation
Daniel 12 describes a final resurrection where some awaken to life and others to shame, uses Isaiah 26 where the dead rise from the dust like plants revived by dew. Isaiah’s lament over lifelessness becomes a symbol of renewal, and Daniel turns it into hope for the faithful who were shamed in death.
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Isaiah 26:19
Hebrew Bible
17 As when a pregnant woman gets ready to deliver and strains and cries out because of her labor pains, so were we because of you, O Lord. 18 We were pregnant, we strained, we gave birth, as it were, to wind. We cannot produce deliverance on the earth; no people are born to populate the world. 19 Your dead will come back to life; your corpses will rise up. Wake up and shout joyfully, you who live in the dust!32 For you will grow like plants drenched with the morning dew, and the earth will bring forth its dead spirits. 20 Go, my people! Enter your inner rooms! Close your doors behind you! Hide for a little while, until his angry judgment is over. 21 For look, the Lord is coming out of the place where he lives to punish the sin of those who live on the earth. The earth will display the blood shed on it; it will no longer cover up its slain.
Date: 7th-5th Centuries B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Daniel 12:2
Hebrew Bible
1 “At that time Michael, the great prince who watches over your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress unlike any other from the nation’s beginning up to that time. But at that time your own people, all those whose names are found written in the book, will escape. 2 Many of those who sleep in the dusty ground will awake—some to everlasting life, and others to shame and everlasting abhorrence. 3 But the wise will shine like the brightness of the heavenly expanse. And those bringing many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever. 4 “But you, Daniel, close up these words and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will dash about, and knowledge will increase.”
Date: 2nd Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... We should be clear that the exaltation associated with resurrection in Daniel 12 has nothing to do with going to heaven or literally becoming a celestial being; it certainly does not describe the immortality of the soul. Rather, this is a metaphor for the restoration of dignity to the faithful who had been subjected to an ignoble death at the hands of the wicked; it refers to their rising up from death to stand on solid ground once again, since humanity was created to live with dignity on earth. Thus “rising up” and “standing” (Hebrew qûm; Greek anastasis) become synonyms for resurrection in the Bible (note that Jesus raises Jairus’s daughter with the Aramaic words Talitha cum, meaning “Little girl, arise” [Mark 5:41]). And since Daniel 12 draws on the Isaiah 26 image of awakening from the dust, we do well to note the this-worldly reference in Isaiah 26, especially in the final words of the lament to which resurrection is God’s response: “We have won no victories on earth, / and no one is born to inhabit the world” (Isaiah 26:18) ..."
Middleton, J. Richard
A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology
(p. 141) Baker Academic, 2014
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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