ראה נתתי לפניך היום את החיים ואת הטוב, "see here, I have placed before you today life and the good.⁠" This verse shows that man has been given the choice to do either good or evil; for, if he did not have a free will, how could the system of reward and punishment be relevant? The way we have to understand the verse is that if you do good you will reap life, if you do evil your "reward" will be death.
An alternative explanation of this verse: the words "life and the good, death and the evil,⁠" are a reference to the Torah itself. Torah can be the elixir of life for the righteous; at the same time it could be the source of death for the wicked. Our verse would be similar in meaning to Ezekiel 20,25: "and I also have given to them statutes which are not good and social laws that they cannot live by.⁠" [the words "to them" in the verse refer to the wicked, Sabbath-profaning Jews]. Being in exile due to their sins, and forbidden by their hosts in exile to keep the Torah, makes the continued violation of the Torah a source of the people's death for non-observance, or for death by their masters for violating local laws and insisting on observing Torah law instead. The Jewish people's failure to keep Torah while on their own land, ultimately places them in a no-win situation in the land to which they have been exiled.

It is also possible to explain the words: "see I have given you life and the good,⁠" to mean that this passage was written as a follow-up of the previous paragraph which dealt with the promise of redemption. Seeing that the time for the resurrection of the dead is understood to be close to that of the redemption i.e. 206 years later, it is appropriate that this verse commences with the word ראה which is an allusion to that time. In view of all this Solomon said in Song of Songs 8,12: האלף לך שלמה ומאתים לנוטרים את פריו, "I have my own vineyard; the thousand silver pieces are yours Shlomoh, and two hundred more to the ones who guarded its fruit.⁠" [I translated the whole verse, using the conventional translation. Ed.] The word ומאתים is understood as if it had been written ו-מאתים, i.e. "plus 206,⁠" the letter ו meaning the digit 6. Solomon would reveal in this verse that the time when the resurrection occurs is 206 years after the 1,000 years [the traditional interval after the first 6,000 years of our universe have been concluded and a period of complete metamorphosis of the universe has begun. Ed.] The arrival of Shlomoh, described as someone granted 1000 (years?) is a reference to the coming of the Messiah, also known as Shlomoh, which would occur at the end of the 6,000 years we have mentioned. (The source of this whole exegesis is Nachmanides כתבי הרמב'ן חלק ב עמוד תקטו, Mossad Harav Kook edition, commentary on Song of Songs, edited by Rabbi Chavel) The Messiah, of course, is a descendant of Solomon just as much as he is a descendant of David.

The reason why the passage above (verse 14) concluded with the word לעשותו, the same word we find at the conclusion of the Torah's report of the story of creation (Genesis, 2,3), is that the Torah wants to establish a conceptual linkage to the beginning of conventional time and to the end of conventional time, i.e. the arrival of the Messiah. The Torah wants you to know that from the point of view of natural laws, both points in time are no different from one another. The universe will continue to function normally, according to the rules God established at the time of creation also after the arrival of the Messiah. The Talmud in Shabbat 63 stated so explicitly, the wording being: אין בין העולם הזה לימות המשיח אלא שעבוד גליות, "the only difference between this present world and the epoch of the Messiah will be that Israel will no longer be subservient to other nations politically.⁠" The addition of the letter ו at the end of the word לעשתו, instead of לעשות as in Genesis 2,3 is meant to symbolise the number 6, i.e. that the 6th millennium will be no different from the first millennium as far as the conventional laws of nature are concerned. The words ראה נתתי לך היום, are intended to convey that immediately after the 6,000 years the period of the Messiah will commence. During that life the people of Israel will experience all the good that it is possible to experience. The word החיים is synonymous with the life in the world to come, i.e. the life after death and resurrection concerning which we read in Psalms 31,20: "how abundant is the good that You have in store for those who fear You.⁠" the word הרע refers to a category of sinner for whom resurrection will actually spell disaster. They are the ones referred to repeatedly in both Isaiah 66,24 and Daniel (Daniel 12,2) of whom the prophet and Daniel say: "many are those that sleep in the dust of the earth who will awake, some to eternal life, others to reproaches, to everlasting abhorrence.⁠"

The view of Maimonides, in his treatise about the resurrection, is that the people resurrected will lead normal lives, will eat and drink and produce children. These functions with which God has equipped them will certainly not cease. They will lead exceptionally long lives, after which they will die a physical death and continue a life of the spirit in what we are fond of terming עולם הבא, "the world to come, the hereafter.⁠" This is what is always meant when the sages speak of someone who has been invited to the hereafter, i.e. עולם הבא. Concerning this world the sages wrote (Berachot 17): "in the hereafter there is no eating, no drinking, there are only disembodied spirits, etc.⁠" If these people had been equipped with the organs enabling them to eat and drink and procreate, these organs would be redundant, and God does not create anything which does not fulfill its assigned purpose. If you were to query this by saying that Moses and Elijah went without eating and drinking for long periods although they did have a body equipped for eating and drinking, and that therefore what Moses and Elijah were able to do in this world, people could do in the world to come in spite of having bodies, this is not a viable argument. The normal bodily functions of Moses and Elijah were made redundant for a limited period and a specific purpose, so that they were never really redundant seeing they were in use both before and after the period when they were temporarily out of use. The people (souls) who are transferred to the עולם הבא will never have any use for the organs in question. Hence it would not make sense for God to equip them with such useless organs. This is why every intelligent person has to believe that in the region we call עולם הבא there are no bodies at all, only souls. This is the view of Maimonides which clearly emerges from his words.

However, the sages of the Talmud are of a different opinion. (Nachmanides elaborates on this at the end of the treatise שער הגמול). The experts in Kabbalah believe that there will be no more death after the resurrection of the dead. They base this primarily on Isaiah 25,8 בלע המות לנצח, "He will destroy death forever.⁠" They also refer to Sanhedrin 92 where the Talmud says that "the dead who will return to life will not again turn into dust.⁠" Concerning the world (life) after death, the sages in Berachot 17 say that that a very precious statement made by Rav was that "in the world to come there will not be eating, drinking, no jealousy or competition, but the righteous will sit with their crowns on their heads and enjoy the brilliance emanated from the Shechinah.⁠" This latter statement makes it obvious that the author does hold that there will be bodies in the world to come. This is why the fact that there will not be eating and drinking, etc., had to be mentioned, seeing that if there were not presumed to be bodies this would be obvious to all. Therefore, it is proper for us to believe that there will indeed be bodies in the עולם הבא but that many bodily functions as we know them will cease to operate, just as they ceased functioning for a period in the lives of Moses and Elijah. What all this means is simply that in that world the spiritual powers of the soul will triumph over the body and what are perceived in our world as its needs.
If you were to ask why the organs of the body which are not being used should exist, the fact is that they are not really redundant at all. On the contrary, these organs receive the reward for all the effort they put in while on earth in fulfilling God's commandments. Seeing that God does not withhold reward from anyone entitled to it, or even shortchanges such a creature (compare Baba Kama 38), He does not want the body to be in a position to complain; therefore He transfers the body to the regions called עולם הבא to enable it to also enjoy these outpourings of the brilliance of the Shechinah. Support for this view comes from Psalms 17,15: "when one day I awaken, I shall be satisfied with seeing a picture of You.⁠" This means that the people in the world to come will experience satisfaction from beholding the brilliance of the Shechinah while their body is intact.⁠" (Just as the disembodied soul functioned in this terrestrial life, there is no reason to believe that the body cannot function in the celestial life). This is the view of Nachmanides, and he cites proof from a Midrash in Sifri Nitzavim, according to which Moses (his body) was hidden in the regions of the עולם הבא. This does not mean that his body is there at this point in time and that he enjoys a physical existence there now. [The text refers to the body of Aaron, Ed.]
The sages made a similar comment about the manner of Rabbi Akiva's death when they said: "hail to you Rabbi Akiva; your soul exited with the pronouncement of the word אחד (first line of Kriyat Shema), you are ready for immediate entry to life in the עולם הבא.⁠" In Berachot 58 the Talmud, in dealing with benedictions to be recited when one witnesses different events, states that when seeing the tombs of the Jewish people one is to recite: "blessed be the One who let you die in accordance with true judgment and Who will bring you back to life in the world of the future.⁠" Bereshit Rabbah understands the words: "God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it" (Genesis 2,3) to mean that God blessed the עולם הבא which commences with the seventh millennium. The words: "He sanctified it,⁠" refer to the fact that He allotted it to the Jewish people. This is the meaning of the words מזומן לעולם הבא, "ready for entry into the world to come.⁠"