5. In the course of time, however, the question of existence after death demanded more and more a satisfactory answer. Under the severe political and social oppression that came upon the Jewish people, the pious ones failed to see a just equation of man’s doings and his destiny in this life. The bitter disappointment which they experienced made them look to the God of justice for a future, when virtue would receive its due reward and vice its befitting punishment. The community of the pious especially awaited in vain the realization of the great messianic hope with which the prophetic words of comfort had filled their hearts. They had willingly offered up their lives for the truth of Judaism, and the God of faithfulness could not deceive them. Surely the shadowy realm of the nether world could not be the end of all. So the voice of promise came to them from the book of Isaiah, where these encouraging and comforting words were inserted by a later hand: “Thy dead shall live; thy (My) dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust, for Thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast forth the shades.”(898) Even before this time the God of Israel had been praised as “He who killeth and maketh alive, who bringeth down to Sheol, and bringeth up.”(899) So was also the miraculous power of restoring the dead to life ascribed to the prophets.(900) Furthermore, the vision of the prophet Ezekiel concerning the dry bones which arose to new life, in which he beheld the divine revelation of the approaching event of the restoration of the Jewish nation,(901) shows how familiar the idea of resurrection must have been to the people. Hence the minds of the Jewish people were sufficiently prepared to adopt the Persian belief in the resurrection of the dead.