He Makes Her Desert Like the Garden of YHWH: A Typological Understanding of the Birth of Isaac as Resurrection from Death

Abstract

This dissertation argues that the birth of Isaac from Sarah’s barren womb typifies resurrection from death. This typology is author-intended, prospective, and culminates in salvation history in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, resurrection from death as typified by Isaac’s birth is the anticipated means by which YHWH will accomplish his promised destruction of the serpent (Gen 3:15) and restoration to life in his presence. To defend this thesis, I argue that Moses inaugurates death and resurrection typology in the Eden narrative (Gen 2:4–3:24) with the disinheritance of Adam and Eve from the garden alongside the anticipation of return and renewed access to the tree of life through the promised seed (Gen 3:15). This promised return to Eden as resurrection from death is developed both in Deuteronomy’s expectation of exile and return for the people of Israel (Deut 30–31) and in Sarah’s veiled reference to Eden regarding YHWH’s promise of restored fertility (Gen 18:12). Additionally, textual indications in the accounts of Abraham’s encounter with Abimelech (Gen 20) and the barrenness of Rebekah (25:21) and Rachel (Gen 29:31) together with the macro-literary structure of Genesis further support the connection between barrenness and death and between birth and resurrection in the book of Genesis. The interpretive perspectives of both the prophet Isaiah and the author of Hebrews, among several other later biblical authors, further join the barrenness of Sarah to the desolation of exile and the birth of Isaac to restoration from exile to the fertility of Eden (Isa 51:1–3). This dissertation seeks to demonstrate the prospective nature of anticipatory typological structures and the hermeneutical primacy of inner-biblical interpretation based on authorial intent in biblical theology.