Chapter 17
If you read the Old Testament looking for a clear, developed doctrine of postmortem salvation, you will not find one. I want to say that plainly at the start. The Hebrew Scriptures are far more interested in life in this world than in life beyond the grave. Israel's hope, for most of the Old Testament, was largely earthly — a long life, a peaceful family, a fruitful land, and a faithful God who keeps His covenant promises across generations.
So why have a chapter on the Old Testament at all? Because the foundations of our doctrine were laid long before the New Testament was written. The Old Testament tells us who God is. It introduces us to a God who reigns over Sheol, who can ransom souls from the grave, and who will one day swallow up death itself. And in its prophetic books, it points us toward a future in which the nations — even those once at war with God — come streaming to Him in worship.
The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: while the Old Testament does not teach a fully developed doctrine of postmortem salvation, it provides four important foundations. First, God is sovereign over the realm of the dead — His presence reaches into it, and He can rescue from it. Second, the Old Testament's hope of resurrection means the grave is not the final word. Third, the prophets envision a redemption wide enough to include the most unlikely peoples of the earth. And fourth, the Old Testament saints themselves died before Christ, which raises a question that points us toward the descent of Christ to the dead — a doctrine I treat in Chapters 11–13.1
Before we look at specific passages, we need to grasp something important. The Old Testament's view of the afterlife develops over time. Early on, the picture is shadowy. Later, it becomes clearer. By the time we reach Daniel and the prophets, we begin to see the outlines of a doctrine of resurrection and judgment that the New Testament will fill in.
The earliest texts present Sheol (שְׁאוֹל) as the destination of all the dead — both the righteous and the wicked. Jacob expects to go there mourning his son Joseph (Gen 37:35). Job longs for it as a refuge from his suffering (Job 14:13). It is described as a shadowy underworld where the dead exist in a state of diminished vitality, with little distinction between the fates of good and evil people.2
That early picture begins to expand. The Psalms speak of God's presence reaching into Sheol and of His power to rescue from it. The prophets begin to speak of resurrection — first as a metaphor for national restoration (Ezek 37) and then, by the time we reach Daniel, as a literal hope for individuals (Dan 12:2). By the intertestamental period, Jewish writings like 1 Enoch describe Sheol as having multiple compartments. And by the time of Jesus, the parable of Lazarus and the rich man assumes that distinction (Luke 16:19–31).
This development matters. We should not expect a fully formed New Testament eschatology in the early chapters of Genesis. What we should expect is a steady unfolding of God's character and His relationship to the dead. (For the full taxonomy of Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and the Lake of Fire, see Chapter 21.)
The Old Testament's view of the afterlife develops. The early shadowy Sheol gives way to a richer hope of resurrection and divine rescue. We should read the Old Testament for what it is — the foundation, not the finished house.
Now we turn to the texts. The first foundation for postmortem opportunity is the Old Testament's witness that God's reign — and His mercy — extends even to the realm of the dead.
King David sings, "For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption" (Ps 16:10 ESV). In its original setting, the verse expresses David's confidence that God will not let him die prematurely. But Peter, preaching at Pentecost, applies the verse messianically — to Christ Himself, whose soul was in Hades but whom God did not abandon there (Acts 2:27, 31).3
Two things stand out. First, the psalm assumes that something of David — his "soul" (nephesh, נֶפֶשׁ) — could continue to exist in Sheol. The dead are not simply nothing. Second, God's reach extends into Sheol. No place is closed off to His sovereign mercy. Peter's application of this verse to Christ in Acts 2 shows that the early church understood Psalm 16:10 as an Old Testament foreshadowing of Christ's descent and resurrection — a precedent for divine activity among the dead.4
The same theme appears in Psalm 49: "But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me" (Ps 49:15 ESV). The Hebrew verb translated "ransom" is padah (פָּדָה), which means to redeem, to buy back, to deliver at a cost. Sheol, in this psalm, is not a sealed prison. It is a power from which God can — and will — ransom His own.
What is the psalmist hoping for? Some scholars suggest he is simply hoping for rescue from death in this life. But the broader context (vv. 14–15) contrasts the fate of the foolish wealthy, who "are appointed for Sheol," with the psalmist's confidence that God will receive him. This sounds like more than a temporary medical recovery. It sounds like an early hope of resurrection or, at minimum, of deliverance from the grave's grip.
"If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!" (Ps 139:8 ESV). I treat this verse more fully in Chapter 16, but I want to emphasize one point here. The psalmist is not making a doctrinal claim about postmortem opportunity. He is describing the overwhelming reach of God's presence. But the implication for our doctrine is profound. If God's presence is in Sheol, then God can act in Sheol. God is not absent from the realm of the dead. The dead are not beyond Him.5
From the depths of his suffering, Job cries out:
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another (Job 19:25–27 ESV).
This is one of the most stunning passages in the Old Testament. Job uses the Hebrew word go'el (גֹּאֵל) — kinsman-redeemer — the family member responsible for buying back a relative who has been sold into slavery or whose land has been lost. Job's hope is that his Redeemer will not just rescue him from earthly suffering, but will somehow bring him to see God after his body has decayed. Scholars debate whether Job is anticipating bodily resurrection or vindication before death.6 But the trajectory of his hope is unmistakable: my Redeemer lives, and somehow He will deliver me — even from the grave.
Four texts, one consistent witness: God is sovereign over Sheol. He can ransom souls from it (Psalm 49:15). He will not abandon His holy one to it (Psalm 16:10). His presence reaches into it (Psalm 139:8). And He is the Redeemer who will bring His suffering servants to see Him face to face (Job 19:25–27). The Old Testament does not yet tell us how. But it tells us that God can.
Building on this picture of divine sovereignty over Sheol, the Old Testament gradually unfolds a hope of resurrection. This is the second foundation for postmortem opportunity. If death is not the final word, then the boundary between this life and the next is not as absolute as the traditional view of postmortem destiny would have us believe.
"Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead" (Isa 26:19 ESV). Some scholars argue that this is metaphorical, referring only to the national restoration of Israel. But the imagery — bodies rising, sleepers in the dust waking up — is so vivid and personal that the trajectory toward a literal resurrection seems clear. By the time we get to Daniel, that trajectory is unmistakable.
"And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Dan 12:2 ESV). This is the clearest Old Testament statement of bodily resurrection followed by judgment. Two destinies are placed before the dead: life or shame. The Hebrew word translated "everlasting" in both clauses is olam (עוֹלָם), a flexible term that can mean "age-long," "long-lasting," or "perpetual" depending on context. I treat the meaning of olam in detail in Chapter 20, where I discuss its Greek equivalents aiōn and aiōnios.7
Daniel 12:2 is sometimes used by traditionalists as proof of eternal conscious torment. But several things caution against that. First, olam does not always mean "without end" — Jonah uses it of his three days in the fish (Jonah 2:6). Second, the very next verse says that the wise will shine "olam and beyond" (olam wa-ad) — a phrase implying that simple olam by itself does not reach the further "and beyond." The grammar suggests that the shame of the wicked, while real and severe, may have a limit that the life of the righteous does not.8
Whatever the precise duration of the shame, Daniel 12:2 establishes something crucial: the dead will rise. The grave is not the final word. The boundary between this life and the next is not the boundary between salvific possibility and impossibility — it is the boundary between this age and a coming age in which God deals directly with each person.
God shows the prophet Ezekiel a valley filled with dry bones, and asks, "Son of man, can these bones live?" Ezekiel cautiously replies, "O Lord God, you know" (Ezek 37:3). At God's command, the prophet preaches to the bones. They come together, bone to bone. Sinews and flesh appear. And then the breath (ruach, רוּחַ) of God enters them, and they live.
The primary reference is Israel's national restoration from exile. But the imagery is unmistakably resurrection imagery. God breathes ruach into dry bones, just as He breathed neshamah into Adam in Genesis 2:7. The vision teaches us something about who God is: He is the God whose breath can raise the dead.9
"Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death?" (Hos 13:14 ESV). Translators struggle with this verse — the Hebrew can be read as a question or as a promise. Paul reads it as a triumphant promise in 1 Corinthians 15:54–55. I treat the Hosea passage and Paul's use of it more fully in Chapter 15.10 What I want to highlight here is that Beilby himself notes Hosea 13:14 as one of the "suggestive echoes" of postmortem opportunity in the Old Testament — a glimpse, however undeveloped, of a God who reaches into Sheol to redeem.11
This passage receives full treatment in Chapter 16. Briefly: Isaiah envisions a banquet on God's holy mountain for "all peoples," a removal of the veil cast over "all nations," and the swallowing up of death itself. The reach is universal, the hope is cosmic, and the language is far too generous to fit within any narrow ethnic or national framework.12
Now we come to what I consider the most striking foundation in the Old Testament for our doctrine. The prophets envision a future in which the nations of the world — the very peoples Israel had once been at war with — come to worship the God of Israel. These visions matter enormously, because they describe the kind of God we serve: a God whose redemptive intent has always been universal in scope.
"It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it" (Isa 2:2 ESV). Isaiah pictures the nations streaming up to Zion, eager to learn God's ways. This is a stunning vision because of who Isaiah's nations are. They are not just neutral peoples. They are often Israel's enemies. And yet, in the latter days, they come of their own accord, eager to learn, eager to walk in God's paths. The result is peace: swords beaten into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks. The same vision is repeated in Micah 4:1–4.13
If Isaiah 2 is striking, Isaiah 19 is breathtaking. Egypt — the great oppressor of Israel's exodus story — is named "my people" by the LORD. Assyria — the empire that destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel — is named "the work of my hands." And Israel becomes "the third" along with them: "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance" (Isa 19:25 ESV).
I cannot overstate how astonishing this oracle is. Egypt was the nation that enslaved Israel. Assyria was the nation that crushed Samaria. And yet God promises that He will strike Egypt and then heal them; that the Egyptians will turn to the LORD and He will respond to them; that Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together with Israel.14 If God's redemptive heart is wide enough to embrace Egypt and Assyria, how could it possibly stop short at the boundary of physical death? The very reasoning that says "God's love reaches even Egypt" leads naturally to "God's love reaches even those who have died without hearing."
"Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: 'To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance'" (Isa 45:22–23 ESV). This is the OT source-text behind Paul's hymn in Philippians 2:9–11. I treat the Philippians passage in detail in Chapter 14, where I argue that Paul's expansion ("in heaven and on earth and under the earth") deliberately includes the dead.15
What I want to highlight here is the structure of the Isaiah passage itself. God begins with an invitation: "Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth." He then swears by Himself that every knee will bow and every tongue will swear allegiance. The swearing of an oath in God's name was something God's own people did, not defeated enemies. The natural reading is that God is making an irrevocable promise: the very nations He invited to be saved will be saved, willingly, with bowed knee and confessing tongue. Robin Parry argues this passage is best read as a divine oath of universal salvation, while James Beilby reads it as a promise of universal acknowledgment without necessarily entailing universal salvation.16 Whichever side of that debate one lands on — and I treat it more fully in Chapter 33 — what cannot be denied is that the passage envisions God's saving reach extending to all the ends of the earth.
"And the LORD will be king over all the earth. On that day the LORD will be one and his name one" (Zech 14:9 ESV). Like Isaiah 45, this verse points to a future in which God's reign is universally acknowledged. The contexts of these prophetic visions are not always identical, but the trajectory is consistent: the prophets refused to imagine a future in which the nations remain forever outside the reach of God's redemptive love.
Isaiah pictures Egypt as my people and Assyria as the work of my hands. Zechariah pictures the LORD as king over all the earth. The prophets do not draw the boundary of God's redemption at Israel's borders, nor at the line of those who happen to have heard the right preacher. Their God is bigger than that. And so, I believe, He still is.
The fourth foundation comes from a question the Old Testament itself raises but does not answer: what happened to Abraham, Moses, David, and the other Old Testament saints when they died? They did not — and could not — confess Christ in this life. They lived before the incarnation. Yet the New Testament treats them as saved (Heb 11). How?
The Old Testament itself does not give a clear answer. Even David's words after the death of his infant son — "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me" (2 Sam 12:23) — most likely reflect an undeveloped Old Testament eschatology in which both David and his son go to Sheol.17
So how do we account for the salvation of the Old Testament saints? The early church gave a powerful answer: they were saved through the descent of Christ to the dead. After His crucifixion, Christ descended to Hades and proclaimed His finished work to those held there, leading the righteous dead out into His presence (Eph 4:8–10; 1 Pet 3:18–4:6). I make the full case for this in Chapters 11–13. But notice the implication: God provided a postmortem encounter with Christ for those who could not have known Him in this life. The descent tradition is not just an answer to the OT-saints question. It is a precedent. If God reached the OT righteous dead through Christ's descent, the principle of postmortem encounter is already established at the heart of the gospel itself.18
Every believer who reads the Old Testament with care eventually faces this question: If salvation is exclusively through Christ, how were Abraham and David saved? The historic Christian answer — that Christ's atoning work reached backward in time and that He proclaimed it to them in Hades — already concedes the principle of postmortem encounter. To grant it for the OT saints and deny it for the unevangelized in our own day requires a theological cut that, I believe, the Bible does not actually make.
The Old Testament does not teach a developed doctrine of postmortem salvation. I have said this several times because it is true and important to admit. But what the Old Testament does teach lays the foundation for everything that follows.
It teaches that God reigns over Sheol — that no realm, including the realm of the dead, is closed to His sovereign mercy. It teaches that the dead are not beyond hope of resurrection. It teaches that God's redemptive heart is universal in scope — wide enough to embrace Egypt and Assyria, the very nations Israel feared most. And it leaves us with a question — what about the Old Testament saints? — that points us toward the descent of Christ.
When Peter at Pentecost quoted Psalm 16:10 to declare that Jesus' soul was not abandoned to Hades; when Paul quoted Hosea 13:14 to mock the powers of death; when the writer to the Hebrews celebrated the OT saints as having been welcomed into the same hope we share through Christ — they were drawing the lines that the Old Testament itself had already begun to sketch. The God who said, "Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth," is the same God who in Christ stretched out His arms on a Roman cross. And that God, I am convinced, does not give up on anyone simply because their heart has stopped beating.
1 For the descent of Christ and the early church's understanding that Christ's saving work reached the OT righteous dead, see chaps. 11–13. ↩
2 James K. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), 6–7. Beilby notes that Old Testament personal eschatology is "shockingly silent" on specifics about the postmortem world and that salvation in the OT is understood "primarily in this-worldly terms." For the full taxonomy of Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and the Lake of Fire, see chap. 21 of the present work. ↩
3 William Harrison, Is Salvation Possible After Death?, chap. 5, "Hades — Sheol in the Old Testament," observes that Acts 2:27, 31 specifically applies Psalm 16:10 to Christ's experience of Hades, providing strong NT testimony that Christ's soul was indeed in the realm of the dead between His death and resurrection. ↩
4 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 140–41. Beilby notes that Acts 2:31 is the clearest NT statement that Christ descended to "the realm of the dead" and that this descent — anchored in Psalm 16 — became part of the Apostles' Creed. ↩
5 For the fuller treatment of Psalm 139:8 within the cluster of texts on God's universal presence and salvific reach, see chap. 16. ↩
6 The interpretive issues in Job 19:25–27 are well known; some commentators read Job's hope as confidence in vindication before death, others as an early intimation of resurrection. For our purposes, the trajectory matters more than settling the precise eschatological reference: Job's hope is not bounded by his bodily destruction. Cf. Andrew Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved: The Logic of Apokatastasis (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2023), chap. 7, "Christ Has Conquered Hell," for treatment of OT resurrection trajectories. ↩
7 For the full lexical treatment of olam, aiōn, and aiōnios, see chap. 20. ↩
8 George Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy: The Reconciliation of All through Jesus Christ (2017), chap. 7, "The Meaning of Aionios," develops the olam wa-ad ("olam and beyond") argument from Daniel 12:3 — that the very grammar of the passage distinguishes the simple olam of the wicked's shame from the olam wa-ad ("for an age and beyond") of the righteous' life. R. Zachary Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God: An Essay on the Problem of Hell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 366–67, treats Daniel 12:2 as describing the experience of the unrighteous on the Day of Judgment within the divine presence model. ↩
9 Robin Parry [as Gregory MacDonald], The Evangelical Universalist, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012), chap. 3, "Israel and the Story of the Bible," draws the connection between Ezekiel 37 (the bones receiving ruach) and Genesis 2:7 (Adam receiving neshamah), suggesting that Ezekiel pictures Israel's restoration in the imagery of a "new creation" — a new Adam called forth from the dust by the breath of God. ↩
10 For the exegesis of Hosea 13:14 and its Pauline citation in 1 Corinthians 15:54–55, see chap. 15. ↩
11 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 135. Beilby treats Hosea 13:14 alongside Isaiah 24:21–22 as "suggestive echoes" of postmortem opportunity in the OT, while also acknowledging the difficulty posed by the underdeveloped nature of OT personal eschatology. ↩
12 Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, chap. 4, "Universal Restoration in the Old Testament," gathers Isaiah 25:6–8 with the broader cluster of OT universal-redemption texts. For the full exegesis, see chap. 16 of the present work. ↩
13 Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, chap. 3, "Israel and the Story of the Bible," surveys the prophetic vision of the nations streaming to Zion, treating Isaiah 2:1–4 alongside Micah 4:1–4 and Psalms 67, 86:9, and 117. ↩
14 Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, chap. 3, calls Isaiah 19:18–25 "perhaps the most astonishing oracle in the Old Testament about the destiny of the nations." Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, chap. 4, treats the same passage as one of the strongest OT pillars for universal redemption. ↩
15 For the full exegesis of Philippians 2:9–11 in connection with Isaiah 45:23, see chap. 14. The author's expansion of "every knee" to "in heaven and on earth and under the earth" deliberately incorporates the dead within the universal scope. ↩
16 Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, chap. 3, argues that Isaiah 45:22–25 should be read as a salvific oath because (a) Yahweh has just called the nations to "turn and be saved," (b) swearing in Yahweh's name is something His own people do, and (c) those who confess Him praise Him as the source of righteousness. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 288–91, presents the non-universalist reading: every knee may bow without every knee being saved. The CI-vs-UR question this raises is taken up in chap. 33. ↩
17 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 7. Beilby cautions against projecting NT understandings of heaven and the afterlife back onto OT eschatology and reminds us that David himself most likely understood his deceased son to be in Sheol, not heaven. ↩
18 Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 140–41; Stephen Jonathan, Grace beyond the Grave: Is Salvation Possible in the Afterlife? A Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Evaluation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 86–95, treats the descent tradition extensively as a key biblical foundation for postmortem opportunity. The full case is developed in chaps. 11–13 of the present work. ↩