EXPLANATORY NOTE. THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. TH ‘HERE is a broad and palpable distinction between Old and New Testament saints in their attitude relative to the future life. And the desire to exhibit this sharply and strongly may perhaps have led to the employment of language that is capable of being misunderstood or misinterpreted. In what has been said upon this subject in this volume, there is no disposition to deny or overlook the fact that from the very beginning of the old economy the immortality of the soul and a future state of unending existence were revealed and were believed. The indications of this are clear. This was a common doctrine throughout the ancient world. The very heathen had some notion, though vague and incorrect, of a life hereafter. This truth is involved in the account of man's creation, who alone of all terrestrial beings was made in God's image (Gen. i. 27), and whose soul, breathed into him by the LORD, is expressly distinguished from his material body (Gen. ii. 7; comp. Eccles. xii. 7). It is also involved in the account of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, and in the law there given rewarding obedience with life and making death the penalty of transgression (comp. Prov. iii. 18, viii. 35, 36, xii. 28, xiv. 27, xv. 24), as well as in the promise of redemption from the damage of the fall (Gen. iii. 15; comp. Isa. xxv. 8, xxvi. 19). It is explicitly recognized in the translation of Enoch (Gen. v. 24), as subsequently in that of Elijah (2 Kings ii. 1), and in the reappearance of Samuel (1 Sam. xxviii. 14); in the expression used of the deceased patriarchs and others, "gathered to his people (Gen. xxv. 8), "gathered unto their fathers" (Judges ii. 10), which is clearly distinguished from their burial, and must therefore relate not to their bodies laid in the ancestral tomb, but to their joining those who had gone before them, in the world of spirits; in the special term "Sheol" (Gen. xxxvii. 35), employed to designate the region of the dead, which is obscured in the common English version by being sometimes translated "the grave" or "pit," and sometimes "hell," though it denotes neither the place of interment nor the place of future torment, but the common receptacle of departed spirits, into which all men pass at death. When Isaiah (xiv. 9, ff.) represents the mighty dead in Sheol as taunting the deceased monarch of Babylon with his downfall, the language is no doubt figurative; but it is based upon and lends its sanction to the current doctrine of a continued, conscious, and intelligent existence after death. Possibly an intelligence beyond that which is possessed in this world may be ascribed to the departed (Job xxviii. 22), where the wisdom that is "hid from the eyes of all living is said to have been at least heard of by "destruction and death;" that is, by those who people the realm over which death holds sway. |