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The Resurrection of Yeshua in the Hebrew Scriptures
Shalom and Happy Resurrection Day!
Forty-one years ago, on March 24, 1984, I came to faith in Yeshua as the Messiah here in Australia. Amazingly, on that very same night—thousands of kilometers away in South Africa—my childhood sweetheart, Louise, also prayed to receive Yeshua as her Lord and Savior.
Louise and I first met when I was 15, and she was 14. In 1982, my family made the difficult decision to leave South Africa for Australia, forcing me to leave her behind. It was heartbreaking. But God had a plan. Though separated by distance, He brought us to faith together on the very same night. Praise the Lord!
That first Passover, soon after coming to faith, was a complete paradigm shift for me. For the first time, the story of Passover wasn’t just history—it was deeply personal and complete. It was no longer just about the deliverance of the Jewish people from Egypt thousands of years ago; it was my own story of redemption. Yeshua had come as our Passover Lamb, offering Himself for us. His blood was figuratively painted on the doorposts of my heart. Not only did He die on the cross, but He was buried and rose again on the third day—all of which had been foreshadowed in the Passover story. As a new believer, this revelation was electrifying!
Ever since, Passover has remained my favourite Jewish holiday. I cherish memories of our family Seders, my mother’s incredible cooking, and the retelling of God’s mighty deliverance. Even today, the Hirsch family continues to celebrate Passover, giving thanks to God for Yeshua, our risen Passover Lamb.
As Paul so eloquently wrote in his introduction to his epistle to the Romans:
“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,” (Romans 1:1–4, ESV, emphasis added)
Yeshua’s death, burial and resurrection was a fulfillment of what God had said through his holy Prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Since Yeshua rose, we who believe will one day rise as well! It is a glorious hope, and if we need anything today in this world, it is hope. My hope is built upon His rising from the dead, and it endures the most difficult circumstances. I cannot wait to see Him face to face!
I fervently pray that my Jewish family and community will recognise that the resurrection is a very Jewish belief, and it should not be strange for a Jewish person to believe the Messiah would rise from the dead.
There is a group of Jewish people called the Lubavitch Hasidim who believe their rebbe, who died decades ago, will, one day, rise from the grave. They even base this view on Isaiah 53! Though I know this is a minority position, it still gives me hope that my Jewish people can be persuaded of this magnificent truth.
Resurrection in Scripture
Let us briefly walk through Scripture, and maybe you will have the opportunity to share these passages with a Jewish friend during this wonderful resurrection season.
First, we learn from the apostle Paul’s chapter on the resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15, that Yeshua’s resurrection was predicted in the Hebrew Scriptures.
“Now I make known to you, brothers and sisters, the Good News which I proclaimed to you. You also received it, and you took your stand on it, and by it you are being saved if you hold firm to the word I proclaimed to you—unless you believed without proper consideration. For I also passed on to you first of all what I also received— that Messiah died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” (1 Corinthians 15:1–4, TLV, emphasis added)
We might ask where the resurrection of the Messiah was predicted in the Hebrew Scriptures, as Paul proclaims. We can turn to one of the most well-known prophecies about the Messiah in Isaiah 53:
By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth. (Isaiah 53:8–9, emphasis added)
This passage is important, as the Servant of the Lord must have died to rise, of course! Isaiah’s words in the final verse of this chapter speak clearly of the Messiah’s death for our sins: “Because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12).
Old Testament prophecy predicted Messiah’s suffering and death for the sins of the Jewish people and the nations as well as His resurrection. Isaiah wrote:
But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. (Isaiah 53:10)
We also see the hope of the resurrection predicted in the Psalms, where King David spoke prophetically. In Psalm 16, David referred to the afterlife:
For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay. You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever. (Psalm 16:10–11)
This passage refers to someone greater than King David. The Jewish apostle Peter confirmed that David was speaking about the risen Messiah:
Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay. (Acts 2:29–31, emphasis added)
This psalm looked forward to the future resurrection of the Messiah.
Immediately after quoting from Psalm 16, Peter proclaimed the promise of the resurrection once again through the mouth of King David by quoting another of his psalms, “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet’” (Psalm 110:1).
The Lord of King David is, of course, Jesus—the Messiah and the greater Son of David!
There is another prophecy of Messiah’s resurrection that is more of a prophetic picture of a future event than an explicit prophecy. In the Passover story, the smeared blood of the perfect lamb during the first Passover in Egypt points to a greater “Lamb of God” and a more powerful redemption from the bondage of sin.
“…for Messiah, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed.” (1 Corinthians 5:7, TLV)
Paul also envisioned a prophetic picture of Messiah’s resurrection embedded in the Festival of First Fruits.
Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, “When you enter the land which I am going to give to you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord for you to be accepted; on the day after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.” (Leviticus 23:10–11)
Paul linked the waving of the sheaf of grain (the first fruit) from this festival mentioned in Leviticus, which takes place on the day after the Sabbath—Sunday. Therefore, this picture of the Festival of First Fruits alludes to the Passion, when Jesus died as the Lamb of God and rose as the first fruits of the coming resurrection. He was the first to rise, and all those who accept Him as their Savior will follow.
Paul, a well-trained first-century Pharisee, understood these parallels and pointed them out under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, especially to his Jewish readers.
“But now Messiah has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also has come through a Man. For as in Adam all die, so also in Messiah will all be made alive. But each in its own order: Messiah the firstfruits; then, at His coming, those who belong to Messiah;” (1 Corinthians 15:20–23, TLV, emphasis added)
If Yeshua died on a Friday and rose on a Sunday, then the resurrection may well have happened on the Festival of First Fruits.
With so much written in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Jewish people should have been expecting the atoning death and resurrection of the Messiah, according to the prophetic promises found in the Jewish Bible. We have the joy of reminding our Jewish friends and family of the Jewishness of the resurrection and that Jesus perfectly fulfills these predictions.
May the Lord fill you with His power and hope, and please pray for the Jewish people during this Passover and Easter season. The Jewish people desperately need hope in this post-October 7 environment.
Thank you for your love, prayers, and support!
He is Risen,
Lawrence Hirsch
Executive Director of Celebrate Messiah
The Jewishness of the Resurrection
Believers in Jesus often have difficulty stating what they think heaven will be like. When many of us think about it, images of clouds, singing, floating, worship, and angels might come to mind. When we attempt to picture eternal life, we tend to come up with an otherworldly, disembodied existence that sounds like a never-ending worship service in the sky.
You may be surprised to hear that this version of “heaven” has more to do with Greek philosophy than it does with the New Testament hope. Ultimately, the New Testament rests upon the Jewish understanding of heaven and the resurrection of the dead as the expectation for the age to come. The apostle Paul may have had the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures in mind when he attempted to describe it: “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9; cf. Isaiah 64:4).
The Importance of Resurrection
The New Testament’s vision for the believers’ future is a bodily resurrection that enables us to live with Messiah eternally on a restored earth (Revelation 21:1–5; Romans 8:18–25). A believer’s eternal existence will still involve everything a physical life requires, even eating and drinking (Luke 22:30; 24:41–43)! Those who follow God through Messiah will arise to a new life in a new body, but this time without sin. Believers’ hope is founded on their belief in the resurrection from the grave.
The idea of resurrection was so important to the apostle Paul that he sternly warned the Corinthians that their Greek understanding of the afterlife undermined the faith (1 Corinthians 15:12–19). Some in the Corinthian church still seemed to cling to a Greek philosophical approach, which asserts that the soul separates from the body at death and continues to live on eternally.[1] Paul argues, “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised” (1 Corinthians 15:13). In Paul’s mind, the alternative to resurrection is not souls floating on clouds, but eternal loss; without Messiah’s resurrection, no one could be raised from the dead.
Paul made it clear: A believer’s hope must be founded on resurrection, which was nothing new for Paul. He believed much the same thing before he encountered Yeshua (Jesus) on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). As a Pharisee, Paul had a deep knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures (2 Timothy 4:13) and understood that resurrection was a very Jewish belief.
Resurrection in the Hebrew Bible
The Torah of Moses (the Pentateuch) was more interested in moral and procedural issues on earth rather than discussions about heaven. Every so often, a reference is made to Sheol, the realm of the dead, but this is dimly illuminated. Some prophets had visions of heavenly scenes (Isaiah 6:1–3; Zechariah 3:1–7), but they did not dwell on what happened after an Israelite died. The New Testament gives us a better sense of clarity regarding resurrection, yet the examples and predictions of resurrection (Enoch, Elijah, etc.—though not exactly a resurrection as they did not die) in the Old Testament establish the foundation for this glorious hope that is more explicitly revealed in the New Testament.
The book of Job is one of the earliest written books of the Hebrew Bible. Amid Job’s suffering, he put his trust in the resurrection. At first, Job questioned whether anyone who dies will live again (Job 14:12–14) since he was torn between what he believed and the pain he was experiencing. Eventually, his faith in God prevailed, and he powerfully declared:
As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God; whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eyes will see and not another. My heart faints within me! (Job 19:25–27)
For Job, the decay of his flesh was not the end. Somehow, God would enable Job to see Him with resurrected eyes.
The great prophet Isaiah also wrote that God will one day “swallow up death for all time” (Isaiah 25:8). He will wipe away the tears of His people, Israel, which is wonderful news! Isaiah continues:
Your dead will live; their corpses will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy, for your dew is as the dew of the dawn, and the earth will give birth to the departed spirits. (Isaiah 26:19)
The idea of resurrection can be found in other prophets and in the book of Psalms. The prophet Ezekiel used the image of resurrection to describe Israel’s physical and spiritual rebirth in the land of Israel (Ezekiel 37). Hosea wrote that God would resurrect fallen Israel after three days (Hosea 6:1–3). The sons of Korah said that God would redeem their souls from the hand of Sheol (Psalm 49:14–15). Likewise, David declared that God would not abandon him to Sheol or allow His “holy one” to see bodily decay (Psalm 16:10–11).
All these references are enough to show that the ancient Israelites hoped in a coming resurrection from the dead, but Daniel removes all doubt when he described a great resurrection that will come after “a time of distress”: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2).
This verse tells us that all people will be resurrected, but only some will awake to “everlasting life.” This proclamation serves as a capstone text for the Hebrew Bible’s theology about the resurrection from the dead—there is an afterlife that can be filled either with eternal joy in God’s presence or eternal disgrace. By the time of Jesus, resurrection was a central doctrine within Judaism, especially for the Pharisaic sect.
Resurrection in Second Temple Judaism
After the Jewish people returned from the Babylonian exile and lived in Israel again, they began separating into groups based on doctrinal differences. The resurrection was one of the main points of disagreement. One example of the resurrection hope during the time between the Testaments comes from the apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees. It tells the story of several Jewish martyrs who were tortured to death by the Greco-Syrian king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who ruled over Israel during the second century BCE. One of the martyrs boldly proclaimed to Antiochus that a martyred Jewish man like himself “cannot but . . . cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by Him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!” (2 Maccabees 7:14).[2]
From the New Testament, we learn that the most prominent group, the Pharisees, accepted the resurrection of the dead, but another group, the Sadducees, rejected it (Acts 23:8). This hope was also embraced by rabbinic Judaism when the resurrection-believing Pharisees were the only sect that survived the Roman invasions. The resurrection was so important to the early rabbis that they made sure to praise God for His resurrection power in the central prayer of the daily prayer service, which is called the Amidah, from the Hebrew word meaning “to stand,” as the prayer is always recited while standing. This prayer is still recited by religious Jewish people three times a day. The second section of the prayer reads:
You are mighty forever, O Lord, you bring to life the dead, you are mighty to save. You sustain the living with steadfast love, you bring the dead to life. . . . Yes, you are faithful to bring the dead to life. Blessed are you, O Lord, who raises the dead.[3]
Resurrection in the New Testament
As a collection of writings by Jewish authors, the New Testament is a thoroughly Jewish work. It affirms the teaching of the Pharisees regarding the resurrection. Not only were Pharisees a part of the early church (Acts 15:5), but the best-known Messianic Jewish person of his day, the apostle Paul, publicly declared twenty-five years after his “conversion” that he was still a Pharisee (Acts 23:6)—and one who believed the resurrection of the dead had begun with the resurrection of Jesus! His resurrection is the bedrock for belief and arises within a Jewish context.
Conclusion
Belief in the resurrection of the dead to new life is both biblical and Jewish. The resurrection of Jesus and of the dead more broadly is the very hope and foundation of our faith. However, our belief in the resurrection should not simply be a doctrine we agree with; we need to make the resurrection personal. How do we do this? We begin by recognizing our own human frailty and that our future without God’s presence is bleak.
The resurrection gives us hope that God has already raised us in Messiah (Colossians 3:1) and will raise us from our graves to live with Jesus forever. Death is not the end; it is the continuation of life for those who put their trust in the Messiah who died for our sins and rose to conquer sin and death. He offers us the hope of new life today and everlasting life for all eternity.
As Yeshua once said to Nicodemus, a Jewish leader,
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. (John 3:16–17)
[1] Plato, Phaedo 66-67; 82-83; Timaeus 90; Republic 517.
[2] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989.
[3] Dr. John Fischer and Dr. David Bronstein, סדור ליהודים משיחים: Siddur for Messianic Jews, 3rd edition (Palm Harbor, FL: Menorah Ministries, 1988), 47.
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