These three psalms are built separately.452 On the contrary, in Psalms 33 and 36 the righteous receive recompense in this world. The agonizing entreaties of one of the darkest Psalms, the 87th, pose their terrible questions, seemingly without any hope of a good answer. Only Psalm 15, and Psalm 72 and 48 alone among the biblical texts, hint at a future unknown to the rest of the ancient writings of Israel.

(iv) The Basis of Future Hope

If we find a glimmer of such hope anywhere, it rests not on some attribute of human nature (as, say, the "immortal soul"), but on the LORD, and on Him alone. Moreover, the LORD is the essence of hope, not merely its foundation: He Himself is the "inheritance," i.e., the inheritance, of the righteous and godly Israelites. At the same time, only His power can give life, as it is said in some ancient prayers.455 "For with Thee is the fountain of life," says the Psalmist, "in Thy light we see light."456 When this strong faith in the LORD the Creator, the Giver of life, the God of ultimate justice, came into conflict with the injustices and sufferings of life, it was at this point that a new faith could be born. However, Israel's suffering did not always generate such a response. Psalm 87 and the book of Job are the opposite. Ecclesiastes, that Old Testament donkey Eeyore, who sometimes seems lost, would just shrug his shoulders and advise you to make the best use of what little you have. But if the LORD is the inheritance of his people, and if their love and faithfulness are as strong as the traditions of Israel portray them, then in the end there is nothing to prevent them from seeing death itself as a defeated enemy. That is what some of the key texts are about, and we must now come close to them.

4. Awakening the Sleepers

(i) Introduction

No one doubts that the Old Testament speaks of the resurrection of the dead, but there is no agreement among scholars about what this means, where the idea came from, or how it relates to everything else Scripture says about the dead. But since the Jewish world in which Jesus and Paul lived saw these texts as the primary sources of their belief in the resurrection, we must study the relevant texts and understand how they work. Is the resurrection there a novelty that has burst into the unprepared Israelite world? If so, where did the ancient Hebrews get this idea? Or did they come to it on their own, as the culmination of their hope?