Was there any mention of heaven or an afterlife in heaven in the Old Testament?
Was there any mention of heaven or an afterlife in heaven in the Old Testament?
Plenty of scriptures that declare God lives in heaven. Many visions of the prophets describe heaven without saying they were there
Psalm 11:4 - The LORD is in His holy temple, The LORD's throne is in heaven; His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men.
Psalm 33:13 - The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men
Psalm 102:19 - For He looked down from the height of His sanctuary; From heaven the LORD viewed the earth
In regard to the souls of men it describes souls going to Sheol which is the abode of the dead. All souls went there good and bad.
The psalm below says the wicked go to Sheol but this is obviously the judgement part of sheol.
Psalm 55:15 - Let death seize them; Let them go down alive into hell, For wickedness is in their dwellings and among them.
This scripture talks about the righteous having a refuge at death
Prov 14:32 - The wicked is banished in his wickedness, But the righteous has a refuge in his death. Some versions say 'has hope'
From the NT we find Sheol (Hebrew) and Hades (Greek) had Abraham's Bosom for the righteous and hell(gehenna) for the wicked
It's in the oldest book in the Bible.
Job 19:25 (Job speaking) For I know that my Redeemer lives,
And He shall stand at last on the earth;
26 And after my skin is destroyed, this I know,
That in my flesh I shall see God,
27 Whom I shall see for myself,
And my eyes shall behold, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!
In Jewish thinking, the physical resurrection from the dead was what mattered. Afterlife in the sense of the soul hanging out somewhere between death and the subsequent physical resurrection, wasn't treated much. In the NT we see how the righteous, including Abraham, had to wait in the compartment for the righteous in Sheol for the resurrection of Christ - to be released into heaven. Their physical resurrection on a new Earth is still pending.
Last edited by Colonel; 03-23-2022 at 12:34 PM.
Thanks TT and Colonel, I heard someone talking the other day and they said that before Jesus came there was no belief in an afterlife. That it was never taught in the OT and they only believed in nothingness upon death.
Cardinal TT (03-24-2022)
krystian (03-23-2022)
Some people want it to be like that. Just like when people claim that Jesus never addressed homosexuality, even though he said the following :
Mat 19:4 And He answered and said to them, "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,'
5 and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?
Some times an absence of buzzwords like "afterlife" or "homosexuality" is taken as enough to warrant such claims.
Then Samuel said to Saul,
"Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?"
And Saul answered, "I am greatly distressed; for the Philistines are waging war against me,
and God has departed from me and answers me no more, either through prophets or by dreams.
Therefore, I have called you, that you may make known to me what I should do (1 Sam 28:15).
If you put God First, you have Him at Last.
You asked: "Was there any mention of heaven or an afterlife in heaven in the Old Testament?"
There is mention of heaven, but there is no mention of an afterlife in heaven in the Old Testament. Jesus stated: "No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man [Jesus Christ]." -John 3:13.
There is a mention of an afterlife (Abraham's Bosom, a place of comfort for the righteous dead) when David's baby son dies in 2 Samuel 12:23 "But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me."
GodismyJudge (04-26-2022)
Daniel 12:1-3 (Young's Literal Tranlation)
(1) 'And at that time stand up doth Michael, the great head, who is standing up for the sons of thy people, and there hath been a time of distress, such as hath not been since there hath been a nation till that time, and at that time do thy people escape, every one who is found written in the book.
(2) 'And the multitude of those sleeping in the dust of the ground do awake, some to life age-during, and some to reproaches—to abhorrence age-during.
(3) And those teaching do shine as the brightness of the expanse, and those justifying the multitude as stars to the age and for ever.
This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity (futility) of their mind, having the understanding darkened...
(Ephesians 4:17-18)
Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly...
(Psalm 1)