anistēmi

At its plainest this word names the bodily motion of coming up off the ground or out of a seat. A sick man gets up from his bed, a guest rises from the table, a mourner stands up to leave.

From that picture the New Testament draws two natural extensions. One is to set out: in a storytelling habit carried over from the Old Testament, a person gets up and goes, where the getting-up simply signals that the next action has begun (Mary got up and hurried to the hill country). The other is to stand up in a public setting, whether to speak, to give testimony, or to oppose someone, so that the word can describe a leader, a movement, or false teachers coming on the scene.

The same word also works the other way around: God or a person can cause someone to stand up, that is, bring a figure forward onto the stage of history. So Scripture says God will raise up a prophet like Moses, or raise up offspring to continue a family line. The action is still the basic one of bringing someone up and into view.

This is the word the New Testament reaches for again and again to speak of resurrection. It pictures the dead person coming up, the same upward motion as getting off the ground, now applied to coming up out of death.

It works in both directions. Someone rises, said of Jesus rising on the third day and of the dead rising at the last day. And someone raises another, said of God raising Jesus and of Jesus promising to raise his people up on the last day. The two are two sides of one event: God acts, and the dead one comes up alive.

The word is not the only resurrection term in the New Testament, and it overlaps heavily with a near twin. What is distinctive here is the plain bodily picture of standing back up, which is why the same verb covers both a sick man rising from his mat and a dead man rising from the tomb.