1 Samuel 2:8

Hebrew Bible

6 The Lord both kills and gives life; he brings down to the grave and raises up. 7 The Lord impoverishes and makes wealthy; he humbles and he exalts. 8 He lifts the weak from the dust; he raises the poor from the ash heap to seat them with princes—he bestows on them an honored position. The foundations of the earth belong to the Lord—he placed the world on them. 9 He watches over his holy ones, but the wicked are made speechless in the darkness, for it is not by one’s own strength that one prevails.

4Q521

A Messianic Apocalypse
Dead Sea Scrolls

... [the hea]vens and the earth will listen to His Messiah, and none therein will stray from the commandments of the holy ones. Seekers of the Lord, strengthen yourselves in His service! All you hopeful in (your) heart, will you not find the Lord in this? For the Lord will consider the pious (hasidim) and call the righteous by name. Over the poor His spirit will hover and will renew the faithful with His power. And He will glorify the pious on the throne of the eternal Kingdom. He who liberates the captives, restores sight to the blind, straightens the b[ent] (Ps. cxlvi, 7-8). And f[or] ever I will clea[ve to the h]opeful and in His mercy ... And the fr[uit ... ] will not be delayed for anyone And the Lord will accomplish glorious things which have never been as [He ... ] For He will heal the wounded, and revive the dead and bring good news to the poor (Isa. lxi, 1). ... He will lead the uprooted and make the hungry rich ...

 Notes and References

"... The second text is 4Q521. S. A. Reed catalogued it as a text on 'the resurrection.' There are 13 Fragments. The first line of the largest fragment has the noun for 'his (i.e. God's) Messiah.' On another fragment, we see 'all the Messiahs of'. The document thus does not consistently refer to one messiah; hence R. H. Eisenmans claim that this text refers to 'a Single Davidic-style messiah' is misleading. We need to allow for the possibility that in one place one Messiah is mentioned and in another two Messiahs as in 1QS are designated. Most importantly, the claim that the Messiah 'resurrects the dead' is inaccurate. The Lord becomes the ruling noun in fragment 1, line 3, and continues through line 13 in which we do find 'and he will give life (to) the dead ones.' As in many early Jewish texts, including the Amidah, God is perceived as the one who resurrects the dead ..."

Charlesworth, James H. The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity (p. xvi) Fortress Press, 1992

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