The Old Testament Belief in Life After Death

Life and death, and much more, life-after-death constitute issues that we may never completely comprehend with our limited human intellect. The question of the possibility of an afterlife is one to which most religions have had to provide answers. Judaism, as a religion, at some point in its history had to confront this question. The aim of this essay then is to point out how the Israelites, as a religious people, came to answer this question of the possibility of an afterlife. We would notice as we progress in this essay that the ancient Jewish belief about an afterlife is one of progression from despair of survival after death to a reassuring hope of Yahweh’s justice and power to preserve the souls of the righteous from torment.

The Israelite Conception of Life The concept of life that we find in the Old Testament is one that is strongly theistic. Life, first and foremost, for the Israelites of the Old Testament era, is to be understood as a gift of God. Life is God’s own creation. With the creation of the universe and all that lives in it came life. The Israelites, undoubtedly from their creation account, understood the universe as the work of God. If the universe and all that is contained in it, including man, is the work of God, then life is not something man has by virtue of himself, but something that is given him, namely a gift. The Israelites believed that man did not just begin to exist spontaneously. Man had an origin. This origin is to be located in Yahweh, the God of the Israelites. Man, as well as woman, is the creation of Yahweh. Thus, to be alive is to have been created by God.

In as much as this exillic (or probably, post-exillic) creation account of the Israelites speaks of life as Yahweh’s handiwork, the Israelites, from their experiences, saw the ephemerality of this life. Hence the psalmist declares:Yahweh, what is human being for you to notice, a child of Adam for you to think about? Human life, a mere puff of wind, days as fleeting

Bibliography: Baab, J. Otto. The Theology of the Old Testament. New York: Abingdon Press, 1949. Boadt, Lawrence. Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction. New York: Paulist Press, 1984. Heinisch, Paul. Theology of the Old Testament. Minnesota: The North Central Publishing Company, 1955. McKenzie, L. John. “Aspects of Old Testament Thought,” The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Edited by Raymond Brown et al. New Delhi: Indira Printers, 2007, pp. 1284-1315 Rad, Von Gerhard. God at Work in Israel. Translated by John H. Marks. Nashville: Parthenon Press, 1980.