Why Does Moses Call the Promised Savior a “Seed”? Resurrection Typology in Genesis 1–3

Abstract

A close reading of the creation account in Genesis 1:1–2:3 reveals an author-intended metaphorical connection between seed and man with third day significance. This literary parallel serves as the inauguration of resurrection typology in the Old Testament, the reason that the promised Savior is called a “seed” (Gen 3:15), and the foundational antecedent for Paul’s claim that Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day “according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:4).

Introduction

The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth regarding the substance of his gospel message, “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3–4).¹ The canonical antecedent of “according to the Scriptures” in the final clause is the subject of this article, which raises two key interpretive questions: (1) how do the writings of the Old Testament anticipate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and (2) if they do, how do the biblical authors associate anticipated resurrection with “the third day.”² While the answer to the first question could easily constitute several lengthy volumes, I will seek to answer it with a narrow focus on the text of Genesis 1–4, which is where Moses inaugurates both his peculiar use of the agricultural term “seed” (זֶרַע) to refer to human offspring and the significant “third day” pattern in the Old Testament. In this way Moses connects resurrection typology with the third day in the very first pages of the Bible.³ My thesis is that Moses uses “seed” (זֶרַע) as a metaphor for the promised Savior (Gen 3:15) because the promised Savior will do what seeds do—go into the ground, which is akin to death, and then reappear out of the ground alive, which is akin to resurrection, and he will do so on “the third day.” The inauguration of this type in Genesis is the basis for Paul’s statement “according to the Scriptures” with respect to the third-day resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead in 1 Corinthians 15.

I will pursue this thesis in three parts. First, I will propose a literary structure for Genesis 1:1–2:3 that serves as the foundational textual indicator of Moses’ intention to metaphorically connect human offspring to agricultural seed throughout the book of Genesis. Second, I will survey recent scholarship regarding the Old Testament antecedent of “on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Finally, I will offer exegetical observations from the text of Genesis 2–3 to support my thesis along with several examples of New Testament interpretation of these texts that validate my interpretation of Genesis.

The Literary Structure of Genesis 1:1–2:3

The author-intended literary structure of biblical texts communicates the author-intended meaning of those texts, and the highly stylized and repetitive creation account in Genesis 1:1–2:3 is no exception.⁴ In fact, I intend to demonstrate that literary structure often indicates how the author intends for readers to define and interpret certain words, phrases, and concepts in his composition by observing the use of “seed” (זֶרַע) in Genesis 1–3.⁵ The answer to the question posed by the title of this article lies in the paneled literary structure of the creation account in Genesis 1:1–2:3 and carries with it implications for biblical-theological interpretation in the rest of Genesis and beyond.

Commentators on the book of Genesis generally agree regarding the two-paneled, six-part literary structure of the creation account in Genesis 1:1–2:3.⁶ Furthermore, that this structure intentionally links the creation of the cosmos with the design and construction of the tabernacle is well-established.⁷ In the first three days of creation God creates spaces to address the initial “formless” (תֹהוּ) problem of the heavens and the earth, and then in the second three days he fills those spaces to address the initial “void” (בֹהוּ) problem.⁸ These three space-creating days correspond to the three spaces in the tabernacle—the outer court, the Holy Place inside the tent, and the Most Holy Place in the innermost chamber of the tent—and the space-filling days correspond to the special furniture items in each of the three tabernacle spaces—the bronze altar and sea in the outer court, the table and lamp in the Holy Place, and the ark and altar of incense in (or associated with) the Most Holy Place.⁹ I am not arguing that there is a one-to-one correlation between these items and the creative acts of God; rather, I am arguing for a symbolic relationship according to the categories of (1) form or space and (2) the objects that fill or inhabit those spaces.¹⁰ Therefore, Moses intends to communicate that in creating the heavens and the earth and everything in them, God has created a three-spaced cosmic tabernacle—each space having its proper inhabitants or rulers—in which he will dwell among his image-bearing, royal-priest vicegerents.¹¹ The literary structure of Genesis 1:1–2:3, then, is as follows:

This passage—called “exalted prose narrative” by C. John Collins—contains a tremendous amount of repetition throughout that indicates its structure.¹² Certainly the most prominent structural feature is the refrain “And there was evening, and there was morning” that concludes each of the six creative days on which God spoke something into existence (Gen 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31).¹³ It is these six days that form the two three-fold complementary panels depicted above.

That God spoke everything into existence is clear from the ten instances of “And God said” throughout the passage (Gen 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 29). These ten words from God may very well foreshadow the ten words spoken by YHWH at Mount Sinai when he covenanted with Israel.¹⁴ The distribution of this repeated statement across the six creative days demands closer examination because of the way that it highlights a parallel between the third and sixth days.¹⁵ Every creative day begins with a single “And God said” statement except the third and sixth days. During the course of the third day God speaks twice (Gen 1:9, 11) and on the sixth day God speaks four times, or two times twice (Gen 1:24, 26, 28, 29).¹⁶ In each case, God’s two creative acts are headed by “And God said” statements—on the third day God speaks the dry land and the vegetation into existence, and on the sixth day God speaks the land animals and humanity into existence. The two extra “And God said” statements on the sixth day (Gen 1:28, 29) serve to highlight God’s blessing of humanity and to explicitly connect seed-bearing plants and humanity to each other.¹⁷ More on this connection below.

Finally, another prominent structural feature of the creation account is the way that creative days one through three solve the “formless” problem and creative days four through six solve the “void” problem. Having alluded to this feature and its significance above, here I will offer further evidence for this observation as a basis for establishing an intentional structural parallel between the third and sixth days. First, the first and fourth creative days uniquely complement each other. On the first day, God “caused a separation” between the light and darkness (Gen 1:4), and then on the fourth day, God created the greater and lesser lights to “rule over” the light and the darkness, respectively (Gen 1:18).¹⁸ Second, these created lights “cause a separation” between “day” and “night” (Gen 1:16), which were the names that God “called,” or gave to, the separated light and darkness on the first creative day (Gen 1:5). The separation phraseology is not unique to the first and fourth days as it appears on the second day as well (Gen 1:6–7), but only on the fourth day do the things created to fill contribute as a cause of the separation: “And God set them in the expanse of the heavens . . . to cause a separation between the light and between the darkness” (Gen 1:17–18).

Secondly, the second and fifth days uniquely complement each other in that, like the first and fourth days, the creatures that God created uniquely inhabit the spaces between which God caused a separation on the second day, namely, the expanse between the waters above and below (Gen 1:6–7), which God called “heavens” (Gen 1:8), and the waters below, which God called “seas” on the third day after he gathered the waters below together (Gen 1:10).¹⁹ On the fifth day, the waters in the seas swarmed with the “great sea creatures” and “living things that breathe” while the birds “[flew] over the earth upon the face of the expanse of the heavens” (Gen 1:20). Each of these classes of creatures are uniquely equipped to occupy their respective spaces and cannot occupy the space of the other. These parallels between the first and the fourth days (B and B’) and between the second and fifth days (C and C’) indirectly support a similar parallel between the third and sixth days.

There is also a tremendous amount of direct textual support for proposing a structural parallel between the third and sixth days. First, while there is one direct creative speech on days one, two, four, and five, there are two direct creative speeches on days three and six. On day three, God first spoke, and the dry ground appeared (Gen 1:9), and then he spoke again, and the earth sprouted vegetation (Gen 1:11). On day six, God spoke the first time, and the land animals appeared (Gen 1:24), and after speaking again man was created (Gen 1:26). This unique textual feature is why I divided the third and sixth days into two parts each corresponding to God’s creative acts on those days. Thus, there is a correspondence between the dry land and the land animals (D and D’)—God commanded that “the earth cause to go out living things that breathe” (Gen 1:24), which indicates a probable correspondence between the vegetation and man (E and E’).

Second, the third and sixth days are the only creative days that have two “And God saw that it was good” statements (Gen 1:10, 12, 25, 31).²⁰ Interestingly, in order to maintain a total count of seven of these statements in the passage, Moses did not include one in the second day. This feature indicates that the twofold repetition on the third and sixth days is intentional and serves to parallel the days.

Likewise, the third and sixth days are the only creative days that have two “And it was so” statements following God’s creative decrees (Gen 1:9, 11, 24, 30).²¹ Once again, there are seven such statements in total throughout the passage, but on the fifth day this component plays truant. This textual feature serves as another correlation between the second and fifth days in the structure of the passage—they each lack a repetitive phrase so that (1) the third and sixth days can each have two of those phrases and (2) there remains a total of seven of each repetitive phrase in total.

Finally, to return to God’s multiple creative statements on days three and six, as I explained above, on the third day God spoke twice, and on the sixth day God spoke four times. While the number of “And God said” statements is not exactly the same on these days, the sixth day doubling of the third day double likely indicates both correlation between the created things and escalation in significance. Furthermore, the final two are not properly creative statements—the first is the blessing of humanity (Gen 1:28) and the second is the provision of food (Gen 1:29).

Therefore, the third and sixth creative days are structural parallels in Genesis 1:1–2:3. As the only days with multiple creative acts, those creative acts themselves are also literary parallels—the appearance of dry land parallels the land animals as the former brought forth the latter (Gen 1:24), and the sprouting of seed-bearing plants and trees that bear fruit with seed in them parallels the creation of man to whom those very seed-bearing plants are given as food (Gen 1:29). There are two exegetical takeaways that I want to highlight resulting from this close examination of the literary structure of the creation account. First, the structural parallel between the third- and sixth-days links man to the third day. Seed-bearing vegetation sprouted on the third day and man was created on the sixth day, or the second third day, the third day of the second panel of creative days. Second, the double creative acts on the third and sixth days link together “seed” (זֶרַע) and man. My contention is that the former prepares the reader for the significant third-day reversal motif throughout the rest of the Old Testament, while the latter prepares the reader imminently for the human-seed promise after the Fall (Gen 3:15), and more broadly for the human seed motif throughout the rest of the book of Genesis. Furthermore, I propose that together these two exegetical takeaways anticipate the human-seed promise being accomplished via a third-day reversal.²² The structural parallel between the third and sixth creation days, then, inaugurates a symbolic connection between man, seed, and the third day that is interpreted by later biblical authors. Thus, when Paul asserts that Jesus was raised “on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:4), he is interpreting the very symbolism that Moses inaugurated on the first pages of Scripture, that Moses developed especially in Genesis, and that later biblical authors interpreted and developed in their own texts, all typologically anticipating the human seed who would accomplish the ultimate reversal on the third day to restore sabbath rest for the created order.²³

“On the Third Day According to the Scriptures” in Recent Scholarship

Having demonstrated a probable symbolic connection between seed and man in Genesis 1 and having identified the third day as the means of that connection, I will now briefly summarize the recent contributions of three scholars concerning the question of the biblical antecedent of Paul’s statement, “according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:4).²⁴

Joel White

In a 2015 article, Joel White argued that Paul sought to draw attention to the typological significance of the firstfruits ritual that was to be carried out before the Lord on the day after the Sabbath after Passover.²⁵ In the specific case of the resurrection of Jesus, he died on Passover and was raised on the third day, that is, the day after the Sabbath day after Passover.²⁶ Paul’s specific scriptural antecedent according to White is Leviticus 23:10–11, which states, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you come to the land that I am giving to you and you reap its harvest, and you bring the sheaf of the first of your harvest to the priest, and he waves the sheaf before YHWH for your favor, the priest will wave it on the morrow of the Sabbath.’”

White’s thesis assumes that in 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 Paul is referring to an early Christian creedal statement and that “there is no way of knowing what specific OT texts the creed’s author or authors had in mind.”²⁷ White’s contention is that the context of 1 Corinthians 15 offers clues to the particular OT traditions or texts that stand behind the creed in Paul’s mind even if the creed’s authors had other, more obvious texts in view, such as Hosea 6:2 or Jonah 1:17.²⁸ These contextual clues include (1) the possibility that Paul composed 1 Corinthians during the spring season around the time of Passover, and (2) that Paul alludes to the sheaf of firstfruits in 1 Corinthians 15:20–23.²⁹ White argues that “One searches in vain for any other logical or scriptural mooring” for Paul’s argument regarding the unity and temporal discontinuity of the resurrection.³⁰ Thus, “the sheaf of firstfruits stands in the same relationship to the subsequent harvest as the resurrection of Christ stands to the future resurrection of believers.”³¹ White summarizes further,

The waving of the sheaf of firstfruits on the day after the Sabbath after Passover is connected to the waving of the bread of the firstlings in that together they represent the beginning and the end of the grain harvest, and the former consecrates the latter. In the same way the resurrection of Christ on the third day is the beginning of the resurrection that will be completed at the Parousia.³²

White anticipates the response that Paul’s audience could not have identified or understood such a complex OT allusion. His threefold response is that (1) authors often write things that readers do not understand; (2) rather than a simple “either they get it or they do not” dichotomy, first century reader competencies are better characterized as minimal, competent, or informed, and this final category would have been able to comprehend complex allusions; and (3) there is evidence in Paul’s letter to the Romans, which he composed while in Corinth, that he expounded on this firstfruits resurrection typology during his extended stay there.³³

White’s interpretation of Leviticus 23 is plausible and his argument for an allusion to that text in Paul’s defense of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 is erudite. In fact, I find his article rather convincing. I do not think, however, that it is necessary to ascertain a specific OT referent in the phrase “according to the Scriptures.” Such an attempt appears to me to be outside of Paul’s intent in this text. White’s discussions concerning the minds of the supposed creedal authors, the mind of Paul, and Jewish interpretations and applications of the cultic calendar in the first century unnecessarily muddle the interpretive enterprise. I affirm the intentional typological significance of the feasts in Leviticus 23 and their fulfillment in the resurrection of Christ, but I think seeing the antecedent for “according to the Scriptures” as all of Scripture—rather than a specific passage in Leviticus—is far more likely and better fits Paul’s actual statement. If Paul had wanted to specifically raise Leviticus 23 in the minds of his readers, based on his practice elsewhere, he would have specifically referred to it. An appeal to the use of a creed that originally had other intentions for Paul’s own more specific purpose, while certainly in the purview of “according to the Scriptures,” ultimately falls flat hermeneutically.

Michael Russell

In his 2008 article, Russell focuses on OT references to “the third day” or “three days.”³⁴ Unlike White, he dismisses attempts to tie “according to the Scriptures” to a single passage such as Hosea 6:2 or Jonah 1:17. Instead, Russell adapts and improves upon the work of Karl Lehmann in which Lehmann observes “a pattern of divine action on the third day in such passages as Exodus 19:11, 16 (cf. also Gen 22:4; 2 Kgs 20:5, 8; Esth 5:1; Hos 6:2), and argues that this pattern is the substance of Paul’s thinking in 1 Corinthians 15:4b.”³⁵ While Lehmann proposed that the third day is the day of salvation for the righteous, Russell, after summarizing all the OT data on third-day occurrences, argues first that a time period of “three days” carries with it the notion of certainty: “Events can be considered firmly established once they have been established for three days.”³⁶ Second, Russell concludes that “the third day” is “a climactic reversal, usually involving a death, or the escape from likely death.”³⁷ Observing several OT passages, Russell further argues that often these two themes intersect, such that “a climactic reversal follows a period of ‘safety margin,’” that being three days.³⁸ To avoid accusations of selectivity regarding biblical evidence, Russell convincingly shows that the second, fourth, fifth, and sixth days do not carry the theological significance that the third day clearly does.³⁹ He concludes his inductive presentation, “The most striking element of the ‘third day’ pattern is prominence of reversals from death to life. Other, less noteworthy features include climactic reversals and deaths.”⁴⁰ He further concludes,

First, ‘three days’ in the tomb were sufficient to be sure that Jesus was dead. Second, the resurrection of Jesus exemplifies the Old Testament pattern of God’s involvement with people ‘on the third day.’ Here is another climactic reversal from death to life on the third day. Our conclusion then is that…these two Old Testament patterns…are not sufficient alone to establish the Christ’s resurrection on the third day. But if the Christ’s (speedy) resurrection is successfully demonstrated from the Old Testament, the addition of our patterns brings a decisive conclusion. If an astute Old Testament reader were asked ‘when do you think Christ should rise?’, he or she would say, ‘the third day fits the pattern best.’⁴¹

Russell’s work adds the needed recognition of the significant third-day pattern in the Old Testament by exhaustively observing the relevant textual data. I am sympathetic to an argument for intentional patterning in both history by the providence of God and in the text of Scripture, which progresses according to author-intended typology.⁴² According to Russell, however, the “third day” in Genesis 1:13 should be separated from the other data developing this third day theme. He bases this argument on the fact that in this instance, the phrase lacks the article, and the genre of Genesis 1 is different from the rest of the examples cited from narrative texts.⁴³ In response, based on my interpretation of the literary structure of Genesis 1:1–2:3 above, the third creation day is not only significant for the third day pattern in the OT, it is the inauguration of it, and the symbolic correlation between seed and man anticipates the very theme Russell highlights regarding the third day pattern—climactic reversal from death to life or, simply put, resurrection.

Nicholas P. Lunn

Lunn’s work in his 2014 article best aligns with my own, as he draws attention to the third creation day in a way that White bypasses due to his overemphasis on the firstfruits ritual, and that Russell dismisses because of his hermeneutical presuppositions regarding the genre of Genesis 1.⁴⁴ Lunn identifies two “symbols of resurrection” in the Old Testament. The first is “rising up out of water,” for which he points readers primarily to Jonah 1:17 and then, via repeated words and phrases, to the account of the Red Sea crossing (Exod 15) and the flood (Gen 6–8).⁴⁵ The second is “rising up out of the ground.” Here Lunn highlights Jesus’ metaphorical prediction of his own death and resurrection with the image of a seed going into the ground and subsequently producing life (John 12:24) and Paul’s use of imagery throughout his defense of bodily resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, namely, his use of “sowing” referring to death and repeating Jesus’ reference to a grain of wheat (1 Cor 15:36–38, 42–44) along with his reference to Christ as the firstfruits of the resurrection (1 Cor 15:20).⁴⁶

Lunn’s unique contribution to this discussion comes in his relation of these two “symbols of resurrection” to the creation narrative in Genesis 1. He observes that God’s two creative acts on the third day are a rising out of water and a rising out of the ground.

The first of these contains an action comparable to what was seen in the flood and at the Red Sea, namely, the emergence of dry land from the midst of water…The second creative act has an obvious conceptual relationship with the statements by Jesus and Paul…what we find created on this day is in actual fact the very firstfruits of the earth. This vegetation rising from the ground was evidently the first ever to do so . . . what is there being described is explicitly said (v. 13) to have occurred on the “third day.”⁴⁷

Although I heartily affirm Lunn’s sound exegetical work in these texts, especially the connection that he draws between rising out of the water and the ground on the third creative day and in other texts in both the Old and New Testaments, his hermeneutic is subject to critique. Lunn asserts that “establishment of textual warrant for a resurrection on the third day requires drawing upon a figural rather than a literal manner of interpretation,” because there is no explicit antecedent text that clearly states that Messiah will rise on the third day.⁴⁸ To interpret literally, however, is simply to interpret in accordance with authorial intent. A figural interpretation, on the other hand, is an imposition on a text, and is not what Paul is modeling in 1 Corinthians 15. Lunn argues further, “A mere historical approach to OT texts will not enable the reader, whether ancient or modern, to discern figures of the kind we have considered here.”⁴⁹ I agree with this sentiment if Lunn is equating a historical approach with historical-critical methodology, but I understand him rather to be equating a “historical approach” with a “literal manner of interpretation,” with which I do not agree. Rather than reading backwards, a much more reasonable and defensible hermeneutic would read OT texts according to the inspired intent of their human authors, which typologically anticipates and inspires third-day resurrection hope, first by Moses in the creation account, then by Moses further throughout the Pentateuch, and subsequently by later authors who interpret the Pentateuch and develop and cast Messianic anticipation further into the future.⁵⁰

Summary

The contributions of all three scholars are significant and helpful, but all three fall short to some degree in identifying the antecedent to Paul’s claim that Christ was “raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” White overemphasizes one specific referent rather than acknowledging the OT third day pattern. Russell fails to incorporate Genesis 1 into his otherwise sound analysis of the OT third day pattern on questionable hermeneutical grounds. Lunn draws attention to the third creative day but what is helpful in his work is overshadowed by reader-oriented hermeneutics.

In what follows, and on the basis of my textual work above regarding the literary structure of the creation account in Genesis 1, I aim to establish that Paul’s OT antecedent for “according to the Scriptures” begins with the structurally parallel first and second “third days” of creation. I will observe several features of the text of Genesis 1–4 to solidify my proposed connection between man and seed as the basis for the Genesis 3:15 promise along with several NT interpretations of that connection. In all of this I hope to exemplify a hermeneutic that acknowledges and interprets the OT as it was intended to be received—progressively and canonically.⁵¹

The Promised “Seed” and Resurrection Typology in Genesis 2–3

Why did Moses—quoting YHWH God himself—call the promised Savior a “seed” (זֶרַע) in Genesis 3:15? Because by employing a structural parallel between the third and sixth days of the creation account he had drawn a literary analogy between seed and man. Thus, the human “seed” to come will do what seeds do—he will go into the ground and return from it alive. Furthermore, because Moses makes this analogy on the third creative day and the sixth—the “second third”—creative day, he ties the man-seed analogy to the third day. As I proposed above, these features anticipate the human seed promise being accomplished via a third-day reversal. In the first pages of Scripture, Moses inaugurates a symbolic connection between man, seed, and the third day that he further develops in the early chapters of Genesis.

In this section I will offer further evidence from the text of Genesis, especially the first toledot, for my thesis along with brief observations of several key NT interpretations of the man-seed analogy.⁵²

Genesis 2:4–4:26

First, the first toledot heading itself supports a metaphorical analogy between seed and man. On the third creative day, God called for the dry ground to sprout plants yielding seed and fruit-bearing trees with seed in them (Gen 1:11). Then the land caused those seed-bearing plants to “go out” from it (Gen 1:12). Not only do seeds go into the ground and then produce plant life that sprouts out of the ground, but in the initial creative act, the seed-bearing plants were generated by the ground. When Moses details the creation of the first man, he writes that YHWH God formed the first man using material from the ground (Gen 2:7). Like those first seed-bearing plants, the first man was generated by the ground as well. This thematic connection is apparent in the first toledot heading, which reads, “These are the generations (תוֹלְדוֹת) of the heavens and the earth” (Gen 2:4). The Hebrew term “generations,” or toledot, is derivative of the verb “to bear, bring forth, beget” (יָלַד), which refers to procreation and often highlights either the mother or the father.⁵³ Thus, it is as if, according to the toledot heading, the heavens and earth produce, or give birth to, or generate, the first man. Throughout the book of Genesis, the toledot headings name not the person on whom the following narrative focuses, but his descendants, or those he begets.⁵⁴ The same is true in this first case. What I am attempting to highlight here is the apparent parallel between the first seed-bearing plants and the first man—they both proceeded from, or came out of, or were generated by, the ground. Granted, there are no specific repeated words or phrases upon which to base this claim, but the apparent thematic correspondence in such relatively close contextual proximity warrants my conclusion.

Second, the etymology of the Hebrew words for “man” (אָדָם) and “ground” (אֲדָמָה) indicate a close correlation between the two.⁵⁵ This linguistic connection highlights both the material connection and the vocational connection between the man and the ground. The man was generated by, or was made from the material of, the ground, so they are of the same substance. As a result of his sin, man will return to the ground from which he was made (Gen 3:19; cf. Gen 2:7). In between, his vocation is to “work” the ground (Gen 2:5; 3:23). Especially noteworthy is the fact that YHWH God’s vocational intention for the man was ground-related before the Fall (Gen 2:15).⁵⁶ It is as if man cannot function properly or achieve his divinely ordained purpose apart from the ground, and man’s relationship with the ground is akin to that of seed—when he dies physically, he will go into the ground just as seed goes into the ground.

Finally, as I have observed already, the promised human Savior is called a “seed” in Genesis 3:15. The restorative promise of Genesis 3:15 shapes restorative anticipation throughout the Pentateuch and the rest of the OT.⁵⁷ This term then becomes a leitwort throughout the rest of the book of Genesis, appearing fifty-nine times.⁵⁸ The next time the word appears after Genesis 3:15 is Eve’s pronouncement of thanksgiving that YHWH granted her another “seed” in place of Abel, whom Cain had killed (Gen 4:25), another subtle indication of a metaphorical connection between the manner of seeds, man, and resurrection from death.⁵⁹ By manner of seeds here I mean the necessity that seeds go into the ground prior to producing new life out of it—that death necessarily precedes life. Shortly after, the “seed” of Abraham comes to dominate the narrative as Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—all of whom constitute the blessed Messianic lineage—are born from barrenness.⁶⁰ I have written elsewhere regarding the metaphorical connection between birth from barrenness and resurrection from death.⁶¹ Moses masterfully develops in Genesis his own third day, seed-man, resurrection-from-death analogy in the generational birth from barrenness experienced by the Abrahamic lineage. The culmination of this development may very well be the third-day deliverance of Isaac, the seed of Abraham, from certain death on Mount Moriah (Gen 22).

My main point in highlighting these textual features is this: the blessed Abrahamic seed lineage, birth from barrenness anticipating resurrection from death, and even the promise of Genesis 3:15 do not make very much sense apart from the inauguration of the seed-man analogy in Genesis 1. Moses’ connection between seed and man in the creation days lays the foundation for the Genesis 3:15 promise and the subsequent seed lineage in Genesis resulting in the nation of Israel and, from their midst, the fulfilment of “her seed” (Gen 3:15), Jesus Christ. All of these intentional textual features in Genesis together form a prospective typology that Paul interpreted when he wrote, “according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:4).⁶² It is to the NT that we now turn to observe several texts that I believe validate the reading of Genesis that I have proposed.

New Testament

My goal in this section is to show that the interpretive perspective of the NT authors includes an analogy between seed and man, which they no doubt derived from the early chapters of Genesis. First, Jesus anticipated his own death and resurrection in agricultural terms: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat, falling to the earth, dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). The literary context includes a group of Greeks seeking Jesus and Jesus replying that the hour of his glorification—his death and resurrection—has come (John 12:20–23).⁶³ The analogy is clear—Jesus is the sole grain of wheat that will die and subsequently produce much fruit, specifically, Gentile followers who will likewise give their own lives in service and devotion to him (John 12:25–26). Jesus equating himself to a grain of wheat, that is, a seed that goes into the ground and brings life back out of it, demonstrates an interpretive perspective shaped by Genesis in both Jesus and the apostle John who recounted this speech in his gospel.

Second, concerning the believer’s union with Christ Paul writes this in Romans 6:5, “For if we have become united (σύμφυτοι) in the likeness of his death, we also will be concerning resurrection.” The Greek adjective “united” (σύμφυτος) is a hapax legomenon in the NT and it only appears twice in the Septuagint (Amos 9:13; Zech 11:2).⁶⁴ In both of those instances, the word conveys its concrete meaning of “thickly wooded.” Thus, Paul appears to use the adjective in a metaphorical sense. The believer and Christ are united such that they are like trees planted very close together in a thickly wooded forest. While a rather obscure example, Paul’s statement here betrays a worldview in which it is natural to relate humans and trees metaphorically or analogically, and that in a context dealing, again, with death and resurrection.⁶⁵

Finally, I have alluded to Paul’s defense of bodily resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 earlier in this article and noted the fine work of other scholars concerning the agricultural metaphors employed by Paul therein. My goal here is to briefly highlight Paul’s language regarding the resurrection body to further validate my thesis regarding both the meaning of Genesis 1 and the antecedent of “according to the Scriptures” in verse 4. In the midst of his argument Paul writes, “What you sow will not come to life unless it dies” (1 Cor 15:36). What follows is an extended comparison between mortal fallen human bodies and immortal resurrected human bodies. The similarity between Paul’s introductory statement in verse 36 and Jesus’ own statement regarding his death and resurrection is uncanny.⁶⁶ Life is necessarily preceded by death. This order is evident in the manner of seeds and in the glorification of believers via resurrection. This natural order implies that for the “seed” to bruise the head of the serpent (Gen 3:15), that is, to restore the created order from sin and its consequence, death, he must himself die. He must do what seeds do in order for life—cohabitation with YHWH God in Eden with unfettered access to the tree of life and its effect, eternal life (Gen 3:22)—to be restored. This example, along with the others observed above, displays an interpretive perspective that the NT authors adopted from the early chapters of Genesis. And Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians especially evokes the Genesis analogy between seed and man as the beginning of the background for “according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:4).

Conclusion

My goal in this article was to establish that Moses intentionally, consciously includes YHWH using the term “seed” (זֶרַע) in his narrative as a metaphor for the promised Savior (Gen 3:15) because the promised Savior will do what seeds do—go into the ground, which is akin to death, and then reappear out of the ground alive, which is akin to resurrection, and he will do so on “the third day.” The inauguration of this type in Genesis is the starting point for the other texts that inform for Paul’s statement “according to the Scriptures” with respect to the third-day resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead in 1 Corinthians 15. In doing so, my intended contribution to this discussion is twofold: (1) With regards to the content of the Scriptures, I identify the inaugural OT referent for Paul’s “according to the Scriptures” concerning the death and third-day resurrection of Christ; and (2) with regards to exegetical methodology, I exemplify what I believe to be the most reasonable biblical hermeneutic—reading the Bible according to its own progressive nature, from beginning to end canonically.

Paul can say that Jesus died and was raised on the third day “according to the Scriptures” because he has closely read and observed the structural parallel between seed and man on the two third days in the creation account, the close connection between man and the ground in Genesis 2–3, the peculiar metaphor of “seed” for the promised human Savior, the repeated metaphorical resurrection from death that typological installments of that seed experience in birth from barrenness throughout Genesis, the oft-repeated life-from-death, third-day reversals throughout the OT, and the sayings of Jesus himself. Practitioners of biblical theology would be wise to follow his example.

1. Unless otherwise stated, all translations of the Scriptures are my own. ↩︎
2. The prepositional phrase “according to the Scriptures” modifies the entire clause “he was raised on the third day” rather than merely the portion “he was raised.” This function parallels the function of the identical phrase in verse 3, which modifies, “Christ died for our sins.” For an argument that “according to the Scriptures” modifies only “he was raised,” see Bruce M. Metzger, “A Suggestion Concerning the Meaning of 1 Cor. xv. 4b,” JTS 8 (1957): 118–23. Commentaries that follow Metzger include C. K. Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, HNTC (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1968), 340; Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1997), 256; Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 32 (New Haven: Yale, 2008), 548–49; and Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 748. ↩︎
3. I affirm and assume Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch over and against speculative reconstruction of behind-the-text historical and compositional development. On the interpretation of canonical texts according to their final form, see Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992). For presentations of the Documentary Hypothesis, see J. Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des alten Testaments, 2nd ed. (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1889); and S. R. Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 9th ed. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1913). For helpful discussions of the authorship of Genesis see Kenneth L. Matthews, Genesis 1–11:26, NAC, vol. 1A (Nashville: B & H, 1996), 68–85; John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 23–25 and The Meaning of the Pentateuch: Revelation, Composition, and Interpretation (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009), 22–29. ↩︎
4. L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus, NSBT 37 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2015), 23; Matthew A. Thomas, These Are the Generations: Identity, Covenant, and the ‘toledot’ Formula, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 551 (New York: T & T Clark, 2011), 1. ↩︎
5. See T. Desmond Alexander, “Seed,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology: Exploring the Unity & Diversity of Scripture, edited by T. Desmond Alexander, Brian S. Rosner, D. A. Carson, and Graeme Goldsworthy (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 769–73. See also Samuel Emadi, From Prisoner to Prince: The Joseph Story in Biblical Theology, NSBT 59 (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022), 65, where Emadi observes that the Hebrew word ‘zera is a Leitwort, or leading word, in the book of Genesis. ↩︎
6. For example, C. John Collins, Genesis 1–4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2006), 42–43, observes the six-day structure of the creation account with an introduction (Gen 1:1–2) and seventh-day conclusion (Gen 2:1–3); Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, WBC 1 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 1987), 6–7, posits two panels of three days that highlight the third and sixth days; and Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26, NAC vol. 1A (Nashville: B & H Publishing Group, 1996), 114–116, agrees with and cites Wenham. ↩︎
7. See Michael Fishbane, Text and Texture (New York: Schoken, 1979), 12; John H. Walton, Genesis, NIVAC (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 149; G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, NSBT 17 (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004), 48–49. Additionally, a key theme throughout the creation account is “separation” (Gen 1:4, 6–7, 14, 18) as it is in the context of the tabernacle in the separation of the  clean vs. unclean and holy vs. profane (Lev 10:10; 11:47; 20:24) and the separation between the Holy Place and Most Holy Place (Exod 26:33). ↩︎
8. In Acts 14:15 Paul states that the Lord is “the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them.” Paul here describes God’s creation as three filled spaces in accord with the Genesis creation account. ↩︎
9. The altar was not in the Most Holy Place but was clearly associated with it; see Exodus 30:6. ↩︎
10. On the function of worldview symbolism in biblical theology see James M. Hamilton Jr., What is Biblical Theology? A Guide to the Bible’s Story, Symbolism, and Patterns (Wheaton: Crossway, 2014), 15–16. On the necessity of “shared type,” or shared worldview/genre assumptions and symbolism, between author and reader in interpretation, see E. D. Hirsch Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale, 1967), 64–66. ↩︎
11. T. Desmond Alexander, From Eden to the New Jerusalem: An Introduction to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2008), 76–80; thus, the tabernacle functions as a microcosm of creation and Aaron and the Levitical priesthood as the Adamic, royal-priest representatives therein. ↩︎
12. Collins, Genesis 1–4, 43. ↩︎
13. The lack of this refrain on the blessed seventh day leaves the creation account open-ended and may indicate that the blessed seventh day was intended to continue and characterize life on earth; see Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26, 176 and Collins, Genesis 1–4, 125. ↩︎
14. While sevenfold repetition dominates the passage, and although the ten “And God said” announcements occur within the sevenfold structure of the account; see Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 6. ↩︎
15. With Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 6–7. ↩︎
16. The “And God said” announcement in Gen 1:28 is slightly different from the others but still contains the explicit subject following the wayyiqtolverb as the others do. Therefore, I consider it to be part of the ten rather than an outlier. ↩︎
17. God also blessed the birds and fish on day five (Gen 1:22) but this blessing is different from his blessing of humanity in two ways. First, while both parties are commanded to be fruitful, to multiply, and to fill their respective spaces, only humanity is commanded to exercise dominion (Gen 1:28). Second, the blessing of the birds and the fish is not accompanied by an “And God said” announcement (compare Gen 1:22 and 1:28); rather, the text only contains the infinitive “saying” (לֵאמֹר). The “And God said” repetition in Gen 1:28 heightens the significance of the blessing of humanity. ↩︎
18. Not only does each created space receive inhabitants, but those inhabitants rule over their respective spaces: the lights “rule over” (מָשַׁל) the heavens (Gen 1:16, 18); the birds and fish must be “fruitful”(פָּרָה), “multiply” (רָבָה), and “fill” (מָלֵא) the waters and sky (Gen 1:22; cf. 1:28), and humanity—not the land animals—must “subdue” (כָּבַשׁ) the earth (Gen 1:28). Humanity is unique in that they must “exercise dominion” (רָדָה) over not only the land but every space and creature that God created. ↩︎
19. The expanse causes the separation between the waters (Gen 1:6), which are the seas and the clouds from which the rains come. We should not, however, press the language in the passage too hard. There is not an appreciable difference between the expanse itself and the clouds. The idea is that the fish inhabit the waters below and the birds inhabit the expanse where waters above are. ↩︎
20. With Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26, 175. In verse 31 the phrase is heightened: “And God saw all that he had made, and look, it was very (מְאֹד) good.” This variation concludes the six creative days and, thus, indicates the resolution of “formless” and “void” (Gen 1:2) and anticipates the subsequent rest on the seventh day. ↩︎
21. On the sixth day the “And it was so” does not occur until after the designation of vegetation as food for humanity and the land animals while the other occurrences come immediately after God’s creative speeches. Thus, the designation of vegetation as food should be understood as a divine creative speech stating the telos of the plants. See also Gen 1:15 for a telos statement concerning the lights in conjunction with their creation. ↩︎
22. The Pentateuch as a whole anticipates the fulfillment of the promise of Genesis 3:15; see Kevin S. Chen, The Messianic Vision of the Pentateuch(Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019), 5–12 and James M. Hamilton Jr., Typology: Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022). ↩︎
23. According to Paul in Romans 8:21, the entire created order awaits restoration, which I think is the restoration of blessed seventh-day sabbath rest. For more on this, see G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 144, 176. ↩︎
24. See note 2 above. ↩︎
25. Joel White, “’He Was Raised on the Third Day According to the Scriptures’ (1 Corinthians 15:4): A Typological Interpretation Based on the Cultic Calendar in Leviticus 23,” Tyndale Bulletin 66.1 (2015): 103–119. ↩︎
26. White, “He Was Raised on the Third Day,” 112–115. According to his interpretation of Leviticus 23:9–22 as a cohesive unit, “if the offering of the sheaf of firstfruits is to be separated by a full 49 days, no more and no less, from the waving of the loaves on the day of Pentecost, as demanded by the parameters of the cultic calendar in Leviticus 23, it must take place on the first Sunday after Passover.” ↩︎
27. White, “He Was Raised on the Third Day,” 107. According to White, the great majority of scholars agree that 1 Corinthians 15:3–5 is a creedal statement; see White, “He Was Raised on the Third Day,” 103n1 for a list of such sources. ↩︎
28. White, “He Was Raised on the Third Day,” 108. Hos 6:2 reads, “He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will cause us to stand, so that we can live before him.” Jon 1:17 (2:1 HB) reads, “YHWH appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.” ↩︎
29. White, “He Was Raised on the Third Day,” 109, 117. For more on this, see Joel White, Die Erstlingsgabe im Neuen Testament (TANZ 45, Tübingen: Francke, 2007). See also White, “He Was Raised on the Third Day,” 117n46 for other authors who connect “firstfruits” in 1 Cor 15 to Leviticus 23. ↩︎
30. White, “He Was Raised on the Third Day,” 117. By “unity” and “discontinuity” White means that there is a causal link between the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of believers but that the two are separated by an undefined period of time. ↩︎
31. White, “He Was Raised on the Third Day,” 118. ↩︎
32. White, “He Was Raised on the Third Day,” 118. ↩︎
33. White, “He Was Raised on the Third Day,” 119. For a defense of point 2, see Christopher Stanley, Arguing with Scripture: The Rhetoric of Quotations in the Letters of Paul (New York: T & T Clark International, 2004), 62-71. For a defense of point 3, see Joel White, “Christ’s Resurrection is the Spirit’s Firstfruits (Romans 8:23),” in Resurrection from the Dead: Biblical Traditions in Dialogue, eds. Geert van Oyen and Tom Shephard, BETL 249 (Leuven: Peeters, 2012), 289-303, esp. 298-99. ↩︎
34. Michael Russell, “On the Third Day, According to the Scriptures,” The Reformed Theological Review 67 no. 1 (April 2008): 1–17. ↩︎
35. Russell, “On the Third Day,” 3; cf. Karl Lehmann, Auferweckt am dritten Tag nach der Schrift, 2nd ed. (Freiberg: Herder, 1969), 176–181, 262–90. ↩︎
36. Russell, “On the Third Day,” 8. ↩︎
37. Russell, “On the Third Day,” 11. ↩︎
38. Russell, “On the Third Day,” 11. He cites Gen 34:25; Exod 3:18; 15:22; Josh 2:16; 9:16; 1 Sam 30:12; 2 Sam 1:2; 24:13; and Jon 1:17. ↩︎
39. Russell, “On the Third Day,” 14. ↩︎
40. Russell, “On the Third Day,” 14. ↩︎
41. Russell, “On the Third Day,” 16–17, emphasis original. As I argued above regarding White’s proposal, Russell also states that his approach allows for the plural “Scriptures” in 1 Cor 15:4 rather than a single referent. ↩︎
42. Hamilton, Typology, 17–28; Thomas John Sculthorpe, “He Makes Her Desert Like the Garden of YHWH: A Typological Understanding of the Birth of Isaac as Resurrection From Death” (Ph.D. diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2024), 3–27. ↩︎
43. Russell, “On the Third Day,” 7. In note 21, Russell asserts that the creation account in Genesis 1 is not chronological but telic and cites O. O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 45–50, for support. The two-paneled, forming and filling structure of the creation account, however, is both chronological and telic. ↩︎
44. Nicholas P. Lunn, “’Raised on the Third Day According to the Scriptures’: Resurrection Typology in the Genesis Creation Narrative,” JETS 57/3 (2014): 523–35. ↩︎
45. Lunn, “Raised on the Third Day,” 527–28. Lunn engages in relatively lengthy and, by his own admission, tentative, but ultimately speculative arguments in favor of understanding both the salvation of Israel at the Red Sea and the grounding of the ark on the third day after Passover; see Lunn, “Raised on the Third Day,” 528–30. The oft-repeated phrase “the third day” does not appear in either narrative. ↩︎
46. Lunn, “Raised on the Third Day,” 530–32. With White (see above), Lunn reads “firstfruits” (1 Cor 15:20) as a reference to Lev 23:11, although he does not cite White. Lunn’s proposal—that the firstfruits ritual is an antecedent text of “according to the Scriptures” rather than the antecedent text—is more convincing than White’s. ↩︎
47. Lunn, “Raised on the Third Day,” 532, emphasis original. ↩︎
48. Lunn, “Raised on the Third Day,” 526, emphasis mine. Lunn proceeds to conflate figural reading with “typological reading” and to assert that “most of the NT writers employ such interpretations”; see Lunn, 533, 534. For an argument that typology is a feature of the inspired text rather than a reading or interpretive strategy, see Ardel B. Caneday, “Biblical Types: Revelation Concealed in Plain Sight to be Disclosed— ‘These Things Occurred Typologically to Them and Were Written Down for Our Admonition,’” in God’s Glory Revealed in Christ: Essays on Biblical Theology in Honor of Thomas R. Schreiner, ed. Denny Burk, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Brian Vickers (Nashville: B & H, 2019), 135–55.  ↩︎
49. Lunn, “Raised on the Third Day,” 535. Here Lunn cites and affirms Hays who writes, “Reading in light of the resurrection is figural reading…the resurrection teaches us to read for figuration and latent sense…to discover figural senses of Scripture”; see Richard B. Hays, “Reading Scripture in Light of the Resurrection,” in The Art of Scripture Reading, ed. Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 233–34. ↩︎
50. Although Lunn dismisses the third day “resurrection,” or deliverance from certain death, of Isaac in Genesis 22, the fact is that according to the text Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place YHWH had directed “on the third day” after the divine sentence of death for Isaac (Gen 22:4); see Lunn, “Raised on the Third Day,” 526. Isaac does not arise from the ground, certainly, but Moses is likely metaphorically connecting physical resurrection with substitutionary sacrifice—the latter being the means for the former—via the “third day” repetition. ↩︎
51. Sculthorpe, “He Makes Her Desert Like the Garden of YHWH,” 11–12; James M. Hamilton Jr., “Canonical Biblical Theology,” in God’s Glory Revealed in Christ: Essays on Biblical Theology in Honor of Thomas R. Schreiner, ed. Denny Burk, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Brian Vickers (Nashville: B & H, 2019), 59–76. ↩︎
52. On the toledot structure of Genesis, see Emadi, From Prisoner to Prince, 31–35; Thomas, These Are the Generations; and Jason S. DeRouchie, “The Blessing-Commission, the Promised Offspring, and the Toledot Structure of Genesis,” JETS 56, no. 2 (June 2013): 219–47. On interpreting Genesis 2:4–3:24 as a unit, see Sculthorpe, “He Makes Her Desert Like the Garden of YHWH,” 55–59 and Jerome T. Walsh, “Genesis 2:4b–3:24: A Synchronic Approach,” JBL 92, no. 2 (1977): 161–77. ↩︎
53. David J. A. Clines, ed., The Concise Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2009), 153–54; Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1952), 408–9. In Gen 4:1 Eve “bore” (וַתֵּלֶד) Cain, and in Gen 4:18 to Mehujael “fathered” (יָלַד) Methushael. ↩︎
54. For example, “These are the generations of Terah” (Gen 11:27) heads a narrative that focuses on his son Abram and “These are the generations of Isaac” (Gen 25:19) heads a narrative section that focuses on his twin sons Jacob and Esau; cf. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 55–56 and Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26, 27–28. ↩︎
55. With Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 59. ↩︎
56. The same verb (עָבַד) appears in Gen 2:5, 15; 3:23; and describes Cain’s vocation in Gen 4:2. ↩︎
57. Hamilton, Typology, 6–7; John H. Sailhamer, “The Messiah and the Hebrew Bible.” JETS 44 (2001): 5–23. Chen, The Messianic Vision of the Pentateuch, 38–66. ↩︎
58. See note 5 above. There are 229 total uses of the Hebrew word “seed” (זָרַע) in the Hebrew Bible, so over 25% of those uses appear in the book of Genesis. ↩︎
59. On resurrection hope in the OT, see Mitchell Lloyd Chase, “Resurrection Hope in Daniel 12:2: An Exercise in Biblical Theology” (Ph.D. diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2013). For his more focused work on resurrection hope in the book of Genesis, see Mitchell L. Chase, “The Genesis of Resurrection Hope: Exploring Its Early Presence and Deep Roots,” JETS 57, no. 3 (2014): 467–80. ↩︎
60. The characterization of Joseph types and anticipates the future royal line of Judah as a “narrative prefiguration” according to Emadi, From Prisoner to Prince, 60–63. ↩︎
61. See Sculthorpe, “He Makes Her Desert Like the Garden of YHWH,” 85–112 and Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2006), 122–55. ↩︎
62. To observe textual progressive development of this typology via inner-biblical interpretation, see for example Balaam’s oracle describing the camp of Israel as a planting of cedar trees beside the waters (Num 24:6), the restorative side of Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry as planting the people of Judah in their land after exile (Jer 1:10; 24:6), and similar restorative imagery in Ezekiel’s prophecies (Ezek 34:29). ↩︎
63. With D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 437-38. ↩︎
64. The Greek verb “grow up with” (συμφύω) appears once in the NT (Luke 8:7). The context is the parable of the soils in which the thorns “grew up with” the sown seed, another example of a close analogy between humans and the ground in the worldview of the biblical authors. ↩︎
65. The BDAG entry for “united” (σύμφυτος) translates the word as “identified with” without appeal to a metaphorical meaning; see Frederick W. Danker, Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2000), 960. ↩︎
66. Paul uses “grain” (κόκκος) and “wheat” (σῖτος) in verse 37, the same terms John records Jesus using in John 12:24. ↩︎