The Lord killeth, and maketh alive. — Death too and life come from this same omnipotent Lord: nothing in the affairs of men is the sport of blind chance. The reign of a Divine law administered by the God to whom Hannah prayed is universal, and guides with a strict unerring justice what are commonly called the ups and downs, the changes and chances, of this mortal life. The following lines of the 7th, 8th, and 9th verses enforce by varied instances the same solemn truth.
The Babylonian Talmud on these words has a curious and interesting tradition: — “Three classes appear on the day of judgment: the perfectly righteous, who are at once written and sealed for eternal life; the thoroughly bad, who are at once written and sealed for hell: as it is written (Daniel 12:2), ‘And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt;’ and those in the intermediate state, who go down into hell, where they cry and howl for a time, whence they ascend again: as it is written (Zechariah 13:9), ‘And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on my name, and I will hear them.’ It is of them Hannah said (1 Samuel 2:6), ‘The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to hell, and bringeth up.’” — Treatise Bosh Hashanah, fol. 16, Colossians 2.