Isaiah 26:19 - Homiletics

The doctrine of the resurrections.

The belief in a future life and a future judgment was held by the Assyrians and Babylonians from a time anterior to the departure of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees. A very elaborate doctrine of a resurrection was also held by the Egyptians from an extremely remote antiquity. The Jews, on the other hand, do not appear to have had definite notions on the subject until the period of the Captivity. It is, perhaps, possible to account for the indistinct and undeveloped state of the doctrine among the early Israelites by the effect upon them of their Babylonian and Egyptian experiences.

I. THE BABYLONIAN VIEW , with which they came into contact in Ur of the Chaldees, was the following. A life beyond the grave was expected; but the duration of this life was quite uncertain. Merodach, a sun-god, was the Dayannisi , or "judge of men," and by his favor the souls of the just were received into a heavenly abode, where they enjoyed life and happiness. The wicked descended at death into an infernal region, where there was no enjoyment, and (apparently) suffered different degrees of punishment according to their deserts. Fire was, perhaps, an agent in their suffering.

II. THE EGYPTIAN VIEW was far more complete and elaborate. The Egyptians held that the soul was quite distinct from the body, and that, immediately after death, it descended into the lower world (Amenti), and was conducted to the "hall of truth," where it was judged in the presence of Osiris and of his forty-two assessors, the "lords of truth" and judges of the dead. Anubis, the son of Osiris, who was called " the director of the weight," brought forth a pair of scales, and, after placing in one scale a figure or emblem of truth, set in the other a vase containing the good deeds of the deceased, Thoth standing by the while, with a tablet in his hand, whereon to record the result. If the good deeds were sufficient, if they weighed down the scale wherein they were placed, then the happy soul was permitted to enter "the boat of the sun," and was conducted by good spirits to the Elysian fields (Aahlu), to the "pools of peace," and the dwelling-places of the blest. If, on the contrary, the good deeds were insufficient, if the scale remained suspended in the air, then the unhappy soul was sentenced, according to the degree of its ill deserts, to go through a round of transmigrations in the bodies of animals more or less unclean; the number, nature, and duration of the transmigrations depending on the degree of the deceased's demerits, and the consequent length and severity of the punishment which he deserved or the purification which he needed. Ultimately, if after many trials sufficient purity was not attained, the wicked soul, which had proved itself incurable, underwent a final sentence at the hands of Osiris, supreme judge of the dead, and, being condemned to complete and absolute annihilation, was destroyed upon the steps of heaven by Shu, the "lord of light." The good soul, having been first freed from its infirmities by passing through the basin of purgatorial fire guarded by the four ape-faced genii, was made a companion of Osiris for a period of three thousand years, after which it returned from Amenti, re-entered its former body, rose from the dead, and lived once more a human life upon the earth. This process was gone through again and again, until a certain mystic cycle of years became complete, when, to crown all, the good and blessed attained the final joy of union with God, being absorbed into the Divine essence from which they had once emanated, and so attaining the full perfection and true end of their existence. With this elevating belief were mixed up a number of strange, superstitions, not very easily reconcilable with the main creed, yet occupying an important place in the thoughts of the people. The soul, notwithstanding its transmigrations and presence in Amenti and Aahlu, was never at any time wholly separated from its body, but still inhabited the tomb, partook of the offerings left for it, and even had meetings and held converse with the souls belonging to other neighboring bodies. It could at all times read the passages from the "ritual of the dead" painted on its sarcophagus, or its mummy-bandages, or the inner walls of its tomb, and could thus refresh its memory if at any time in its long journeyings through the lower world it failed to recollect at the right moment the proper invocation or prayer under circumstances of danger.

III. THE HEBREW VIEW . Coming from Babylonia into Egypt, with probably only some vague notions of an after-life, in which the inequalities of this life should be remedied and justice meted out to all, the Hebrews were brought into contact with the complicated and elaborate creed of Egypt upon the subject—a creed which filled the thoughts of the Egyptians, and dominated their whole life, entering into all their relations, political, social, and domestic. This creed was mixed up with all the intricacies of the Egyptian polytheism, involved acceptance of the Osirid myth, acknowledgment of half a hundred deities, and adoption, if it were accepted, of numerous superstitious practices. Whatever may have been the case with individuals ( Joshua 24:14 ; Ezekiel 20:6-9 ), the Hebrews, as a nation, rejected the Egyptian creed, viewed it as corrupting and debasing, and put it aside en bloc , without troubling themselves to sift the wheat from the chaff, the grains of gold from the mud and sand in which they were embedded. The rejection of the imaginative theosophy of Egypt produced a reaction in the Hebrew mind towards the material and the mundane. They seem to have left Egypt with less definite views on the subject of a future life than those which their ancestors had had in Babylonia. And in his revelations from Sinai it did not please God to enlighten them. Light was vouchsafed them gradually through the psalmists and prophets—by the present statement of Isaiah, by Ezekiel's vision el the dry bones ( Ezekiel 37:1-10 ) and the teaching which followed it (verses 11-14), by Daniel's prophecy ( Daniel 12:2 ) already referred to, and otherwise, until, in the time of the Maccabees, their faith in the resurrection was as strong, and almost as full and definite, as that of Christians (see 2 Macc. 7:9, 14, 23, 29, 36; 12:43, 44).