Charles Ellicott Commentary Revelation 20:5

"The rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished. This is the first resurrection." — Revelation 20:5 (ASV)

But the rest of the dead lived not again...—Rather, The rest of the dead lived not (we must omit the word 'again') until the thousand years be finished. This is the first resurrection. In those words, we find one of the keys to the controversy respecting the millennium. What is this resurrection? Is it the resurrection at which the saints will assume their glorified bodies, and their perfect consummation and bliss?

It has been argued that the word must be understood literally as a bodily resurrection. It is further said that the contrasting words, 'the rest of the dead lived not,' necessitate this literal interpretation. But there is no reason for restricting the word Resurrection to a literal meaning. The sacred writers frequently use the idea figuratively. They speak of a resurrection that is spiritual; the dead in sin are summoned to rise from the dead so that Christ might give them light (Ephesians 5:14); indeed, the figure often underlies the language and arguments of New Testament writers (John 5:24–25; Romans 6:5; 2 Corinthians 5:15; Colossians 2:12).

But do the words, 'the rest of the dead lived not,' force upon us so sharp a contrast that we must understand the first resurrection literally? Undoubtedly the words are in contrast. If the words 'lived not' necessarily mean that the rest of the dead did not enjoy physical life on earth, then the living with Christ of the saints and the first resurrection must be understood as giving physical life on earth to the saints. But are we bound to thus understand literally the 'lived' of Revelation 20:4 and the 'lived not' of Revelation 20:5?

There are two or three considerations that will be enough to show that they need not be understood thus.

1. The word 'to live' is used about sixteen times in the Apocalypse. On nine of these it is applied to the eternal life of God the Father or God the Son; it is twice used in the passage before us (Revelation 20:4–5). Of the remaining five occasions where the word is used, it is four times employed in what can scarcely be other than a figurative sense (Revelation 3:1; Revelation 7:17; Revelation 13:14; Revelation 19:20—some might doubt the figurative use in this last passage), but only once is it employed in a sense that can fairly be defended as literal (Revelation 16:3).
2. There will be faithless people during the millennium—the nations to be deceived (Revelation 20:8). Are we then to picture saints with glorified resurrection bodies living on the earth, which at the same time is tenanted by men and women still in the natural body?
3. There is a resurrection, which surely is the second resurrection, described in Revelation 20:12-13: this last is a general resurrection of the dead, small and great. There seems no adequate reason to affirm that this first resurrection, then, must be physical. Our notions of life and death are so circumscribed by the geography of earth that we seldom give to the word 'life' in our thoughts its true richness and fullness of meaning. We fail to remember that the faithful ones who live, because Christ lives, have the promise of the life that now is, as well as that which is to come; we forget that God is not God of the dead, but of the living.