Is Resurrection found in the Old Testament?

Happy New Year, everyone!

"Is resurrection found in the Old Testament?" This was an insightful question asked by someone in this past week's Wednesday evening Bible Study on the Gospel of Matthew. We were in Chapter 22, where Jesus is confronted by the Sadducees with the story problem of the woman who marries seven brothers this side of heaven. We talked about the fact (which Matthew points out in the text) that the Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection of the dead, though the Pharisees did. This got our class to thinking about resurrection as it is taught in the Old Testament. The drafters of the Nicene Creed certainly believed that the Old Testament taught that the Messiah would rise from the dead: "And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures..." Jesus himself revealed to a pair of disciples on the road to Emmaus that the Scriptures had foretold his death and resurrection: "Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?"

This question was fresh in my mind as I was reading through Isaiah 25 and 26 the other day. Isaiah is looking forward to the day of God's salvation. That day is often pictured in the Old Testament as all people streaming to the "mountain of the Lord," the place where God is present. Isaiah 25:7-8 reads, "On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever..."

I found this image to be very vivid - death as a covering or shroud that enfolds all people. We can't get away from it... we can't get out from underneath it. It swallows us all up.

But one has come through death. He has destroyed the shroud of death by leaving his own shroud behind in the grave. The grave which swallows us all has itself been swallowed up in victory; "its sting is lost forever," as Martin Luther says in his Easter hymn. And because this One has already defeated death, we can be confident that the day will come when we too will toss aside the shroud and come forth from the earth, alive forever in Him. Easter transforms everything!

In the comments, let me know what your favorite Old Testament resurrection promise is...