to rise up, stand, and stay standing, and to raise up or make something stand, the whole arc from getting to one's feet to bringing a covenant or kingdom into lasting force
One picture holds all of this together: standing up and staying upright. At its plainest the word is bodily. A person gets up from sleep, from a meal, from sitting, or from mourning:
- Job rises and tears his robe
- Naomi sets out from Moab
- Elijah is woken twice by an angel
Hebrew loves to pair this with going somewhere, so "he rose and went" becomes a stock way of saying someone took decisive action and set off.
From that bodily base the meaning fans out. To rise can mean to come onto the scene for a purpose:
- a new king arises in Egypt who never knew Joseph
- no prophet has arisen in Israel like Moses
- a deliverer steps forward
It can turn hostile: to rise against someone is to attack or oppose, and the form meaning "those who rise against me" is one of the most common ways the Psalms name enemies. It can also settle into permanence. When a vow, a word, a plan, or a kingdom stands or fails to stand, the word has shifted from a single movement to staying in force over time. Isaiah's promise that God's word stands forever, and the proverb that the LORD's purpose is the one that stands, live here.
A causative use widens the picture again, because now someone makes something else stand. God raises up judges, prophets, and the promised heir of David. Builders set up pillars, altars, and the whole tabernacle. Above all God establishes a covenant, a promise, or an oath: he gives his word binding, lasting force, the same act on the divine level that a husband performs when he lets his wife's vow stand. A late and more formal use, mostly in legal and ceremonial texts, is to ratify: Ruth's redemption custom, Esther confirming the keeping of Purim.
Finally, in a handful of late and poetic texts the word is stretched to its furthest reach: the dead rising. This is not the word's original home, but it is drawn into Israel's growing hope that the dead will live, and later Greek translators made it the standard verb behind the New Testament language of resurrection (ἀνάστασις).
Nuances
Whether the phrase usually translated "establish a covenant" always confirms a covenant that already exists, or can also begin a brand-new one. A different and far more common Hebrew expression, "to cut a covenant," is the normal way to speak of starting one, and this verb clusters in passages tied to the priestly tradition (Genesis 6, 9, 17; Leviticus 26; Ezekiel 16), which raises the question of whether it carries a distinct, confirmatory force.
- minorityThe expression never inaugurates a new covenant; it always confirms or perpetuates one already in place. On this reading the covenant with Noah and the covenant of circumcision with Abraham are confirmations of an earlier arrangement, and the lexical difference carries real theological weight.; W. J. Dumbrell, Covenant and Creation: A Theology of the Old Testament Covenants (Paternoster, 1984); P. J. Gentry and S. J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant (Crossway, 2012)
- contestedThe expression usually does confirm a prior covenant, but the pattern is real yet porous and cannot bear that systematic weight: counter-examples (especially Ezekiel using it of an explicitly new covenant) show the verb working in a broad performative sense, "to bring into force," which context can direct toward either beginning or confirming.; Paul R. Williamson, Sealed With an Oath, NSBT 23 (IVP Academic, 2007); J. G. McConville, NIDOTTE, vol. 1, s.v. בְּרִית
- contestedThe verb is essentially synonymous with "cut" in covenant-initiation contexts, introducing the covenant with at most a nuance of personal divine establishing; the distribution reflects a later reshaping of covenant vocabulary rather than a fixed semantic rule.; G. J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, WBC 1 (Word, 1987); S. L. McKenzie, Covenant (Chalice, 2000)
Whether "your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise" affirms a genuine bodily rising of the righteous dead or is figurative language for the restoration of the nation after exile.
- contestedA genuine, possibly unique, Old Testament affirmation that the righteous dead will be bodily raised, standing in deliberate contrast with the preceding denial that the dead tyrants will rise.; Hans Wildberger, Isaiah 13-27, Continental Commentary (Fortress); N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003), 115-28; G. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life, exp. ed. (Harvard, 2006), 17-23
- contestedFigurative language for national restoration in the manner of the valley of dry bones, not yet a doctrine of individual bodily resurrection.; J. D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1-33, WBC (Word); J. Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1-39, AB 19 (Doubleday, 2000)
- contestedA mediating canonical reading: the text moves toward the later two-outcome resurrection of Daniel 12 without yet being equal to it, and resists a clean split between "real" and "metaphorical" raising.; B. S. Childs, Isaiah, OTL (WJK, 2001); J. D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel (Yale, 2006)
Whether "on the third day he will raise us up" is healing and national restoration language applied to Israel, or genuine raising of the dead; the verse is also the closest Hebrew background to the New Testament claim that Christ was raised "on the third day."
- contestedHealing and restoration language drawn from individual laments and applied to the nation; the "two days, three days" is a graded numerical figure, not a timetable, and resurrection is not in view.; H. W. Wolff, Hosea, Hermeneia (Fortress, 1974), 117-18
- contestedThe pairing of "revive" and "raise up" clearly denotes coming back to life from the dead, and attempts to remove resurrection from the verse do not succeed.; F. I. Andersen and D. N. Freedman, Hosea, AB 24 (Doubleday, 1980); J. D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel (Yale, 2006)
Whether Job's "redeemer" who will "stand upon the earth" expresses hope of bodily resurrection or pictures a legal defender rising to plead Job's case and secure his vindication.
- majorityA courtroom image: the redeemer or vindicator stands up to bring Job's case, so the rising is judicial vindication, not the dead rising; the early Greek translation does not use the resurrection verb here.; D. J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, WBC 17 (Word, 1989), 457-66; N. Habel, The Book of Job, OTL (WJK, 1985); C.-L. Seow, Job 1-21, Illuminations (Eerdmans, 2013), 808-18
- minorityThe traditional reading takes it as Job's confession of hope that he will see God after death, a hope later Christian reading heard as resurrection.; M. Pope, Job, AB 15, 3rd ed. (Doubleday, 1973)