Daniel 12:2

2. Contempt Rather, abhorrence.

Many The idea is that of multitudinousness. It neither asserts nor excludes the thought that all shall rise (Thomson). It was left for him who could say, “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” to make the clear, full, and final revelation of the general and universal resurrection.

This is one of the most astonishing verses in Daniel. As Behrmann says, we have here the “very last word” on Old Testament eschatology. What may be hinted in Isaiah 26:14; Isaiah 26:19; Isaiah 25:8, is here clear as sunlight. Not only will the Israelites who live in the Messianic era be blessed, but the martyrs and pious ones who defended the faith in former ages will be brought to life again, and with this resurrection the condition of each individual is fixed for evermore. That all the nations surrounding the Hebrews believed in a future existence, from the earliest times, no one will now deny.*

[* On the coffin of Amam supposed to have been a contemporary of Abraham which is now in the British Museum, is inscribed these affecting words, “He lives, he lives, lives this Amam. He dies not. He passes not away. This Amam passes not away. He lives, this Amam lives, he dies not, dies not.” This could be paralleled in hundreds of texts, both Egyptian and Babylonian. The power of the magical words and elaborate death ceremonial in both cults lay largely in their supposed influence in opening the eyes and mouth of the departed and giving back to him life and protecting him from the monsters of the future world. The difference between the Hebrew and the heathen ideas of the future lay chiefly in the conception of Jehovah as merciful and gracious, and able to protect his chosen ones in this world or any world. As Goethe wrote:

Abraham for his sire Jehovah

Chose, the Lord of star and sun;

Moses, deserts passing over,

Grew to greatness by the One.]

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But that future abode was dark and comfortless or filled with earthly ideas which were not the holiest. (See notes Ezekiel 26:20; Ezekiel 32:18.) Tiele confesses that the Mosaic prophetism alone was an exception to the “gloomy misanthropy combined with voluptuous sensuality which was a characteristic of all other Semitic religions.” But this doctrine of a resurrection, though hinted before (see note as above and Ezekiel xxxvii), is here for the first time seen in a developed state. While the idea of the punishment of the wicked is found previously (Isaiah 66:24, etc.), here for the first time we find a double and distinct resurrection for both good and bad. These views of Daniel are widened out in Enoch and 2 Macc. (See particularly our Introduction, II, 9.) The New Testament conception of the resurrection is much larger and more advanced than that of Daniel; but blessed was the generation which first heard from human lips the utterance of this splendid hope!