Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Plainly, if the people were only allegorically muttering about their bones dried up and their hope lost, complaining of the outcome of their dispersal, it might reasonably seem that God consoled a figurative despair with a figurative promise. [2] But since the injury of dispersal had not yet befallen the people at that time, while the hope of resurrection had very often collapsed among them, it is plain that he is shoring up confidence in the resurrection that was faltering because of the destruction of bodies: so God was rebuilding the very faith the people were tearing down. [3] And even if Israel was at that time grieving over some conflict in present affairs, that is no reason to take the intent of the revelation as a parable rather than as testimony to the resurrection, meant to lift them up into that hope — namely, of eternal salvation and of a restoration far more necessary than the other — and to turn them away from looking at present circumstances. [4] To this end the prophet says elsewhere, "You shall go out" — from your graves — "like calves loosed from their bonds, and you shall trample your enemies"; and again, "Your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall spring up like grass" — since grass too is re-formed out of the dissolution and decay of seed. [5] In short, if the image of the rising bones is claimed to apply strictly to the condition of Israel, why is that same expectation proclaimed not to Israel by itself but indeed to every nation — the expectation of remains re-embodied and re-animated and of the dead roused up out of their graves? [6] For it is said of all: "The dead shall live and shall rise from their graves: for the dew that comes from you is healing for their bones." [7] So too elsewhere: "Before me shall every kind of flesh come to bow down, declares the Lord." At what point? Once this world's present order has begun passing away — [8] for earlier he had said, "Just as the new heaven and new earth I am fashioning shall endure before me, declares the Lord, so shall your offspring endure." [9] Then, therefore, what follows will also be fulfilled: "And they shall go out" — from their graves, surely — "and shall see the corpses of those who acted impiously, for their worm shall not die and their fire shall not be quenched, and it shall be a spectacle to all flesh" — namely, the flesh that, raised and come forth out of its graves, will worship the Lord for this grace.