Ezekiel and Job on the Resurrection

But so that you may not suppose this to be a new teaching peculiar to Paul, I will bring forward also what the prophet Ezekiel foretold by the Holy Spirit. “See,” he says, “I will open your graves and bring you out of your graves.” Let me also recall how Job, whose language is full of hidden meanings, plainly foretells the resurrection of the dead: “There is hope for a tree; for if it is cut down it will sprout again, and its shoot will never fail. But if its root has grown old in the earth, and its stump has died in the dust, yet at the scent of water it will flourish again and put out shoots like a young plant. But man, if he is dead, is he departed and gone? And mortal man, if he has fallen, will he be no more?” [a]

Do you not see that in these words he is appealing, as it were, to people’s sense of shame, and saying, “Is mankind so foolish that when they see the stump of a tree that was cut down shooting up again from the ground, and dead wood restored to life again, they imagine their own case is nothing like that of wood or trees?” But to convince you that Job’s words are to be read as a question, when he says, “But mortal man, when he has fallen, will he not rise again?” take this proof from what follows. For he adds at once, “But if a man is dead, will he live?” And a little after he says, “I will wait until I am made again.” And later he repeats the same thing: “Who will raise up again upon the earth my skin, which is now draining this cup of suffering?”