Daniel 12:2

The resurrection. The doctrine of a future life is not fully developed in the O.T.; it is nascent; and the stages in its growth are clearly distinguishable. The idea of a resurrection appears first, though in a national, not in an individual sense, in Hosea 6:2: it appears next, also in a national sense (see Davidson's note, p. 267), in Ezekiel's famous vision of the Valley of dry bones (xxxvii. 1 14): the resurrection of individuals appears first in the post-exilic prophecy of Isaiah 24-27, viz. Isaiah 26:19 (see Skinner's note), though, as in Ezek. (Ezekiel 37:11), it is still expressly limited to Israel (it is denied, Ezekiel 37:14, of Israel's foes): in the present passage, a resurrection of the wicked, as well as of the righteous, is taught for the first time, and the doctrine of a different future reserved for each is also for the first time enunciated. See further the Introd. p. xcii.

many The resurrection is still limited implicitly to Israel. It is not said who are to compose the -many": perhaps the author thinks in particular of the martyrs, and apostates, respectively, who, on the one side or the other, had been prominent during the reign of Antiochus.

sleep in death: cf. Jeremiah 51:39; Jeremiah 51:57; 1Th 4:14; 1 Thessalonians 5:10.

in the dusty ground] lit. the ground of dust.The expression is peculiar, and occurs only here. -Dust" is often said of the grave, as to -lie down upon the dust" (Job 20:11; Job 21:26), and -they that go down to the dust" (Psalms 22:29).

shall awake cf., in the same sense, Isaiah 26:19; also (where it is denied) Job 14:12, and (of the Babylonians) Jeremiah 51:39; Jeremiah 51:57.

some to everlasting life The expression occurs only here in the O.T., but it is frequent in post-Biblical Jewish writings: e.g. in Enoch (xxxvii. 4, xl. 9, lviii. 3, lxii. 14); Psalms of Sol. 3:16 (cf. 13:9); 4Ma 15:3 (cf. 2Ma 7:9; 2Ma 7:36); and in the Targums (in which passages of the O.T. relating really to the present life are often interpreted as referring to a future life) [394]. A more common synonym is -the life of the age to come" (חיי העולם הבא), Abothii. 7, &c. (Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, p. 129).

[394] See examples in the writer's Sermons on the O.T.(1892), pp. 83, 88 91; Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, p. 128.

some to reproaches (Psalms 69:9-10 [Heb.]) and everlasting abhorrence] the last word (only once besides) from Isaiah 66:24 -And they [the carcases of the transgressors, slain outside Jerusalem] shall be an abhorringunto all flesh." Cf. in the N.T., Matthew 25:46; John 5:29.