Commentary on 1 Samuel

Tertullian (155–240)

Thus a Godward fast is a work of reverential awe. By its means also Hannah the wife of Elkanah making suit, barren as she had been beforetime, easily obtained from God the filling of her belly, empty of food, with a son, indeed, and a prophet.

Certainly his making alive is to take place after he has killed. As, therefore, it is by death that he kills, it is by the resurrection that he will make alive. Now it is the flesh which is killed by death; the flesh, therefore, will be revived by the resurrection. Surely if killing means taking away life from the flesh, and its opposite, reviving, amounts to restoring life to the flesh, it must needs be that the flesh rise again, to which the life, which has been taken away by killing, has to be restored by vivification.

See also

• More works by Tertullian

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