What resurrections besides Jesus should I know about?

Question 3062.

The other resurrections of the Bible are far less famous than the empty tomb, but they are worth knowing well: nine raisings by my count, spread from the days of Elijah to the ministry of Paul. People genuinely dead were genuinely restored to life, and each account is told with the Bible’s characteristic sobriety.

These accounts matter for two reasons. They reveal a God who has always held authority over death, and, set beside Jesus’ rising, they make the uniqueness of his resurrection stand out in sharp relief. Let me walk you through them, and then show you the difference that changes everything.

Other Resurrections in the Old Testament

The Old Testament records three raisings, all connected with Elijah and Elisha. Elijah stretched himself over the dead son of the widow of Zarephath and cried to the LORD, ‘and the life of the child came into him again, and he revived’ (1 Kings 17:21-22). The widow’s response captures what such miracles certified: ‘Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in your mouth is truth’ (1 Kings 17:24).

Elisha, who had asked for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit, raised the Shunammite woman’s son, the boy God had given her through the prophet’s promise (2 Kings 4:32-37). And in the strangest of the three, a corpse hastily thrown into Elisha’s tomb sprang to life the moment it touched the prophet’s bones (2 Kings 13:21). Even in death, the God of Elisha remained the God of life. Three raisings, two prophets, one unmistakable lesson: death obeys the word of the LORD.

Resurrections in the Ministry of Jesus

The Gospels record three people raised by Jesus, and the settings could hardly be more varied. Jairus’s twelve-year-old daughter had just died; Jesus took her by the hand and said, ‘Talitha cumi’, ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise’ (Mark 5:41), and she got up and walked. The widow of Nain’s son was already on the funeral bier; Jesus, moved with compassion for a mother who had lost everything, touched the bier and commanded, ‘Young man, I say to you, arise’ (Luke 7:14).

Lazarus had been four days in the tomb, decomposition already begun, when Jesus called, ‘Lazarus, come out’ (John 11:43). Notice the pattern across all three: no rituals, no prayers of desperation, no stretching over the body as the prophets had done. Jesus simply commands, and the dead obey him as naturally as servants obey a master. He raised the newly dead, the being-buried and the long-buried alike, deliberately demonstrating what he had claimed: ‘I am the resurrection and the life’ (John 11:25).

The Strange Sign at the Crucifixion

Matthew records the most mysterious of the other resurrections. At the moment Jesus died, ‘the tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many’ (Matthew 27:52-53).

Scripture tells us tantalisingly little more, and I will not pretend to certainties the text withholds. But the timing preaches. At the very moment death swallowed the Son of God, death began losing its grip on the saints. The event was a sign that the cross had broken something open, a first tremor of the harvest to come. Even the sequence is careful: they came out ‘after his resurrection’, for he must have first place in everything (Colossians 1:18).

Resurrections Through the Apostles

The book of Acts completes the list with two raisings. In Joppa, Peter was brought to the body of Tabitha, called Dorcas, a disciple ‘full of good works and acts of charity’. Peter knelt, prayed, and said, ‘Tabitha, arise’, and she opened her eyes (Acts 9:40). Many believed in the Lord as the news spread. In Troas, a young man named Eutychus sank into sleep during Paul’s long sermon, fell from a third-storey window and ‘was taken up dead’; Paul embraced him and life returned (Acts 20:9-12).

Notice that the apostles raised the dead the way the prophets had, as dependent servants. Peter prayed first. The power belonged to their risen Lord, working through them exactly as he had promised (John 14:12). These other resurrections continued to function as God’s authentication of his messengers and his message, just as they had in the days of Elijah.

What All These Raisings Have in Common

Line the nine accounts up and a common thread appears: every one of these people was restored to ordinary mortal life. The widow’s son grew old. Jairus’s daughter grew up. Lazarus, whom the chief priests promptly plotted to kill (John 12:10), eventually died a second time. Each raising was a resuscitation, a reversal of a particular death, not an exit from mortality itself. Wonderful, but temporary.

That is the category difference to hold onto. These were restorations to the old life; resurrection in the full biblical sense, anastasis to glory, is a standing up out of death’s dominion altogether, as I explain in my article on what the resurrection is. The nine raisings prove God can reverse death. They could not, by themselves, defeat it.

Why Jesus’ Resurrection Stands Alone

Now set the empty tomb beside them. Jesus was not raised by a prophet or an apostle; ‘I lay down my life that I may take it up again… I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again’ (John 10:17-18). No one stretched over his body or prayed beside it. And he did not return to mortal life. He rose immortal, glorified, ‘the firstborn from the dead’, death having no more dominion over him (Romans 6:9).

That is why Paul calls him ‘the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep’ (1 Corinthians 15:20) even though, chronologically, others had been raised before him. Firstfruits describes kind, not calendar. Lazarus walked out of his tomb still wearing grave clothes he would one day need again; Jesus left his folded up behind him (John 20:6-7). The other resurrections were death interrupted. His was death conquered, and the evidence for it is the best-attested fact of ancient history, as I argue in my article on the evidence for the resurrection.

The Resurrections Still to Come

The story is not finished, because the harvest whose firstfruits rose that Sunday morning is still standing in the field. The dead in Christ will rise at his coming for the church (1 Thessalonians 4:16), Old Testament saints and tribulation martyrs at his return in glory, and finally all the unbelieving dead before the great white throne (Revelation 20:12-13). Jesus said it plainly: ‘an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out’ (John 5:28-29).

In that sense, the nine raisings I have surveyed are previews of coming attractions. Every one of them whispered what the empty tomb shouted and what the last day will display to the whole universe: the voice of the Son of God is stronger than the grave. For the sequence of these future risings, see my article on the first resurrection.

Why So Few Other Resurrections?

Nine raisings across some fifteen centuries of biblical history is not many, and the scarcity is itself telling. The other resurrections cluster around particular moments: the prophetic showdown with idolatry under Elijah and Elisha, the earthly ministry of the Son, and the founding generation of the church. These were hinge points of revelation, when God was authenticating messengers and message, and the miracle of miracles served exactly that purpose. Scripture never presents raisings as routine, and it never encourages believers to expect them on demand.

That restraint guards something important. If the other resurrections had been commonplace, death would have come to seem negotiable, a problem occasionally fixed by the right prophet, and the true hope would have been obscured. Instead, the rarity of these events kept every eye on the real solution: not repeated reversals of death but its final defeat. God granted just enough previews to certify his power and his intention, and then, in his Son, he did the thing itself. The other resurrections are lamps along the corridor. The empty tomb is the door.

So, now what?

So yes, there are other resurrections in the Bible, nine of them, and each is worth knowing. But notice what knowing them does: it throws the uniqueness of Jesus into brilliant relief. Prophets and apostles raised the dead by borrowed power; he raised the dead, and then himself, by his own.

Every person in those nine accounts died again, which means every one of them needed what only Jesus provides: not another postponement of death but the defeat of it. That is what he offers you. ‘Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.’ The question he asked Martha still stands at the end of every study of resurrection: do you believe this?

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

John 11:25-26, ESV