Sheol
This is in the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh). Sheol is the underworld, or the place of the dead. This is a place of stillness & darkness & dust, which is death.
Within the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), there are a few, brief (& nondescript) mentions of Sheol. Sheol wasnโt a punishment or reward. It was the great equalizer. Whether King or beggar, wicked or righteous, every single person went to Sheol. Irregardless of their moral decision in their mortal life.
Even though such practices are prohibited, the residents of Sheol can, under certain circumstances, be summoned/called by the living to the mortal realm. Like when the infamous Witch of Endor makes Samuelโs spirit show up for King Saul.
Itโs often pictured as being โdown.โ Either deep under the earth or the floor of the ocean.
The residents of Sheol were called Raphaim (shades or ghosts). They werenโt exactly โaliveโ per se. But they werenโt totally gone either. They exist in a state of extreme lethargy, cut off from the living & importantly, often pictured as being cut off from active communion with God.
As Jewish thought evolved, particularly during the Second Temple period (circa 500 BCE to 70 BCE), the idea of Sheol began to change. Sheol began to be viewed as having โcompartments.โ Like a pleasant area for the righteous (often called โAbrahamโs Bosomโ) & a separate place for the suffering of the wicked.
When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek (the Septuagint), Sheol was almost always translated as Hades. By the time the New Testament was written, the focus shifted further toward Gehenna (a place of fiery judgment) & Tartarus. So in the New Testament, Hades is both the underworld of the dead & the personification of the evil it represents.
Sheol is mentioned 66x throughout the Hebrew Bible. The 1st mentions of Sheol within the text associate it with the state of death & eternal finality. Jacob says that heโll โgo down to Sheol,โ because he was still mourning the apparent death of his favorite son, Joseph (of Technicolor Dreamcoat fame).
Later in Genesis, the same scene plays out for a 2nd time when Jacobโs sorrow is repeated when another 1 of his sons, Benjamin, couldnโt return to him with his other brothers.
Sheol shows up again during Korahโs story in the Book of Numbers. After Korah attempted to provoke the Israelites to rebel against Moses, Moses vows that Yahweh will prove his legitimacy by splitting open the earth to hurl Korah & his conspirators into Sheol. Sure enough, after Moses stops talking, Yahweh splits the earth open. This causes Korah, his family, & all of his earthly possessions to โenter Sheol alive.โ
In Deuteronomy, Moses sings that the anger of Yahweh is a flame which burns in the โdepthsโ of Sheol, consuming the entire earth from the bottom up.
Later mentions of Sheol in the Tanakh picture it as a representation of death. Suggesting that entry into Sheol is an unavoidable consequence of dying.
I Samuel describes Yahweh as the 1 who brings souls down to Sheol. II Samuel further cements Sheol as humanityโs ultimate postmortem destination. I Kings uses โgoing down to Sheolโ as a metaphor for death. Describing those who go do it both โin peaceโ & โin blood.โ
Isaiah, the prophet, explains Sheol at great length during some of his โsermons.โ He personified it as possessing an ever-increasing hunger for living people, with a great propensity for the souls of sinners, & where pleas to Yahweh cannot escape.
Ezekiel, during his prophecy of Egyptโs downfall, described Egypt metaphorically descending into Sheol as a dead person would, where all the spirits of the dead, as well as other fallen empires, such as Assyria, jeer & mock its fall from might.
The remaining mentions of Sheol are in the poetic literature of the Hebrew Bible. Job mentions Sheol in several of his laments, calling it his โhomeโ as he lies in anguish & yearning for death to take him there to put an end to his suffering. Sheol is also mentioned in several Psalms as the grave of humanity.
Other biblical names for Sheol were/are: Abaddon (โruin,โ Psalms 88:11; Job 28:22; & Proverbs 15:11) & Sahat (โcorruption,โ Isaiah 38:17 & Ezekiel 28:8).
Owing to the evolution of its interpretation, some aspects of Sheol seem to contradict each other:
- Those who are in Sheol donโt remember anything. Not even Yahweh. But elsewhere, in Sheol, its residents have an otherwise impossible perception of earthly events. Even those that happen AFTER their demise.
- Pleas to Yahweh cannot escape Sheol. Yet, Yahweh stays its unmistakable master.
- Those who go to Sheol canโt escape. Yet Yahweh raises souls from it.
Despite the abstract nature of Sheol, thereโs some physicality to it. Because it was clearly understood to be underground, which is further supported by the term bor (โpitโ, Isaiah 14:15 & 24:22 & Ezekiel 26:20).
Itโs a โland,โ has โgates,โ has sections (think Danteโs Inferno), & there are multiple mentions of its โdeepest depthsโ & โfarthest corners.โ
The concept of both the righteous & unrighteous eventually going to Sheol seems to be an unspoken assumption in the Hebrew Bible. With the codification of Rabbinical Judaism & the Talmud, Jewish theology concerning the afterlife largely rejected the idea of a single place for EVERYONE after death.
It adopted what we recognize today. It maintains a place of reward for the righteous & punishment for the wicked called Gehinnom. As a result, Sheol, Abaddon, Bor, Shakhat, & other related terms were reduced to synonyms for a realm of punishment.
In Mandaeism, the World of Darkness (the underworld) is sometimes called Sheol in the Ginza Rabba & other Mandaean scriptures.
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