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The second type is based on the scriptural verse: 'He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and does not return. Man's days are like grass; he blooms like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it and it is gone' [Ps. 78:39; 103:15–16].
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The purpose of these verses is to state that one of the reasons for God's mercy upon His servants is His knowledge of their weakness and mortality —
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and the inability of their souls to return to their bodies or to their places of abode on their own —
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they do not thereby imply that their Creator cannot return them — on the contrary, the more vividly this state is described from the human side as extreme, the greater God's power to restore them appears.
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This parallels how Scripture expresses wonder at the stand at Mount Sinai: 'Ask now of days long past... has there been such a great thing, or has any heard its like? Did any people hear the voice of God...?' [Deut. 4:32–33].
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God's power is best demonstrated precisely where created beings are most helpless.
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The third type is the scriptural passage: 'Whoever is chosen, among all the living, has hope; for a live dog is better than a dead lion' [Eccl. 9:4].
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'For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more recompense, for their memory is forgotten. Their love too, their hate too, and their envy too have already vanished, and they have no more share forever in all that is done' [Eccl. 9:5–6].
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Now these three verses, although they are the sage's words, are not his own position — they are his narration of what fools say.
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For he preceded them with a description of what churns in the hearts of fools regarding this condition, saying: 'The hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after it — to the dead' [Eccl. 9:3].
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Once he established that in the hearts of people there is evil and madness owing to life's conditions and owing to death, he then described what is in their hearts —
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and stated the three verses — their message being that they say: a live dog is better than a dead lion,
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Since the sage did not speak these words until he had first identified them as the whispers and wickedness of fools, whoever clings to them is himself foolish — one who pays no heed and is unfit to draw upon them.
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Chapter 4. I then examined the traditions and found this in them: whoever does not believe in the resurrection of the dead in this world is not counted among the community at the time of Redemption.
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This is their saying: 'He who denies the resurrection of the dead — therefore he has no share in it; for all the Holy One's measures are measure for measure' [Sanhedrin 90a],
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as it is said: 'Then the captain upon whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God and said: If the Lord made windows in heaven, could this thing be? — and he said: You shall see it with your eyes but you shall not eat of it' [2 Kgs. 7:2].
There is also in the traditions a comment on 'We shall raise against him seven shepherds and eight princes of men' [Mic. 5:4]: the seven are David in the center, Adam, Seth, Methuselah on his right, Abraham, Jacob, Moses
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...on his left; and the eight princes are Jesse, Saul, Samuel, Amos, Zephaniah, Hezekiah, Elijah, and the Messiah.
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The traditions also relate that when God revives the dead, He will restore their garments to them — and that is no more wondrous than restoring the dead persons themselves.
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When this news spread among our community, the people became lavish in shrouding their dead,
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and the cost became burdensome for them, until some of the sages eased it by permitting simple shrouds. This is their saying: 'In earlier times the burial of the dead was hard on the family, to the point that they would leave the body and flee — until Rabban Gamliel treated himself lightly and went out in ironed linen garments, and all the people followed his practice' [Mo'ed Katan 27b].