The First and the Second Resurrection

THE HEBREW: QUM AND ḤAYAH

The Hebrew Scriptures have no single abstract noun for resurrection in the way that Greek has anastasis. Hebrew does not think in abstractions; it thinks in pictures and in verbs. Where the Greek says a resurrection, the Hebrew says he stands up.

The governing root is ק־ו־ם (q-w-m), qum, meaning to arise, to stand up, to be established, to be confirmed. It is the most ordinary word imaginable — a man rises from a chair with qum, a nation is established with qum, a covenant is confirmed with qum. And it is this domestic, unpretentious word that God selects to carry the greatest event in the universe. When the dead man touched the bones of Elisha, wayyaqom ʿal-raglaw — he stood up upon his feet (2 Kings 13:21). When Isaiah prophesies, nevelati yequmun — my dead body shall they arise (Isaiah 26:19). When Daniel is dismissed at the end of his book, weta'amod legoraleka — thou shalt stand in thy lot (Daniel 12:13).

The second root is ח־י־ה (ḥ-y-h), ḥayah, to live, and in its intensive (Piel) stem, to make alive, to revive, to quicken. Deuteronomy 32:39 places the two great verbs of God's sovereignty in one clause: ani amit wa'aḥayyeh — I kill, and I make alive. Hosea 6:2 pairs both roots in a single verse: yeḥayyenu... yeqimenu — He will revive us... He will raise us up. Revival and standing are distinguished: the first restores the life-principle, the second restores the posture of dominion.

A third root must not be overlooked: ק־י־ץ (q-y-ts), quts, to awake from sleep. Daniel 12:2 uses it — yaqitsu, they shall awake — and Psalm 17:15 uses it — behaqits, when I awake. The Hebrew mind therefore holds three simultaneous images: the sleeper waking, the fallen standing, and the dead reviving. Resurrection is all three at once.

THE ARAMAIC: QYĀMTĀ AND NUḤḤĀMĀ

The Peshitta, the Syriac Scriptures of the Eastern Church, gives us two words of extraordinary richness. The first is ܩܝܡܬܐ, qyāmtā, formed from the identical Semitic root qum that governs the Hebrew. Where the Greek New Testament writes anastasis, the Peshitta writes qyāmtā — a standing-up, a rising. The continuity from Moses to the apostles across a thousand years and two dialects is unbroken: the same three consonants, q-w-m, carry the doctrine from Genesis to the Apocalypse.

But the Peshitta possesses a second word which the Greek cannot match: ܢܘܚܡܐ, nuḥḥāmā. It derives from the root ܢܚܡ (n-ḥ-m), cognate with the Hebrew נחם (naḥam), which means to comfort, to console, to relieve, to sigh with compassion. It is the root behind the name Noah — rest — and behind the prophet Nahum — comforter — and behind the great imperative of Isaiah 40:1, naḥamu naḥamu ʿammi, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.

Observe further the Aramaic ܩܘܡܝ (qumy) preserved untranslated in Mark 5:41 — Talitha cumi. Of all the words the Holy Ghost might have kept in the original tongue, He kept a resurrection word, spoken to a little girl.

The Greek New Testament deploys a precise technical apparatus, and the distinctions matter.

ἀνάστασις (anastasis) — from ana (up) and histēmi (to stand): a standing-up-again. It occurs some forty-two times. It is the word the Athenians mocked (Acts 17:32), the word the Sadducees denied (Matthew 22:23), and the word by which the Lord Jesus defined Himself (John 11:25). Anastasis is the state and the event.

ἐγείρω (egeirō) — to rouse, to waken, to raise up. Where anastasis emphasises the standing, egeirō emphasises the waking. It is used of waking from sleep (Matthew 8:25), of lifting a fallen sheep from a pit (Matthew 12:11), and above all of God raising Christ. The aorist passive ēgerthē — He was raised — is the shortest creed in the New Testament (Matthew 28:6)