After two days will he revive us. On the third day he will raise us up, And we will live before him.
In no other way, could our participation of Christ be foretold. It was not the prophet’s object here, nor was it so direct a comfort to Israel, to speak of Christ’s Resurrection in itself. He took a nearer way to their hearts. He told them, “all we who turn to the Lord, putting our whole trust in Him, and committing ourselves wholly to Him, to be healed of our wounds and to have our griefs bound up, shall receive life from Him, shall be raised up by Him.” They could not understand “then,” how He would do this. The “after two days” and, “in the third day,” remained a mystery, to be explained by the event. But the promise itself was not the less distinct, nor the less full of hope, nor did it less fulfill all cravings for life eternal and the sight of God, because they did not understand, “how shall these things be.” Faith is unconcerned about the “how.” Faith believes what God says, because He says it, and leaves Him to fulfill it, “how” He wills and knows. The words of the promise which faith had to believe, were plain. The life of which the prophet spoke, could only be life from death, whether of the body or the soul or both. For God is said to “give life,” only in contrast with such death. Whence the Jews too have ever looked and do look, that this should be fulfilled in the Christ, though they know not that it has been fulfilled in Him. They too explain it ; “He will quicken us in the days of consolation which shall come; in the day of the quickening of the dead; he will raise us up, and we shall live before Him.”