The Voices We Listen To

https://gemsofknowledge.com/2026/05/16/the-voices-we-listen-to/

Thought for today “Not learning to do according to the abominations of some nations” (May 01)

9 When thou comest to the land which Jehovah thy God gave to thee, thou shalt not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations.
10 There shall not be found in thee him causing his son or his daughter to pass through in fire, divining divinations, practicing magic, and taking omens and a sorcerer,
11 And charming a spell, and asking of a necromancer, and a wizard, and seeking to the dead.
12 For every one doing these things is an abomination to Jehovah and on account of these abominations, Jehovah thy God destroys them from thy face.

The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Dt 18:9–12). (1876). American Publishing Company.

Before the people entered the land, Moses made it clear how they were not to hear from God.In the previous chapters, we have seen how God gave the Ten Words or Ten Commandments and how Moses warned them against paganism. Earlier, he had said to the people not to worship those gods of the people around them, because they had to worship only the One True God.

5 Thou shalt not worship to them, and thou shalt not serve them: for I am Jehovah thy God, a jealous God, striking the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and to the fourth, to them hating me;
6 And doing kindness to thousands to them loving me and to them watching my commands.
7 Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain: for Jehovah will not cleanse him who shall take his name in vain.

The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Ex 20:5–7). (1876). American Publishing Company.

Around them, they saw man-made gods of wood and how people bowed down to them, but how the people of God did find their God.

14 For thou shalt not worship another God: for Jehovah, his name is Jealous; he is a jealous God.
15 Lest thou shalt make a covenant to those dwelling in the land and they committed fornication after their gods, and sacrificed to their gods, and call to thee, and thou didst eat from his sacrifice;
16 And thou didst take from his daughters to thy sons, and they committed fornication after their gods, and they made thy sons commit fornication after their gods.
17 Thou shalt make to thee no molten gods.

The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Ex 34:14–17). (1876). American Publishing Company.

28 And ye served there gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which shall not see, and shall not hear, and shall not eat, and shall not breathe.
29 And thou sought from thence Jehovah thy God, and thou didst find, for ye shall seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.

The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Dt 4:28–29). (1876). American Publishing Company.

Moses had asked the people who left Egypt with him to keep remembering their Saviour.

18 And remember Jehovah thy God; for he gave to thee strength to make wealth in order to set up his covenant, which he sware to our fathers, as this day.

19 And it was, if forgetting, thou shalt forget Jehovah thy God, and thou wentest after other gods, and served them and worshipped to them, I testified against you this day, that perishing, ye shall perish.
20 As the nations which Jehovah destroys before you, so shall ye be destroyed, because ye will not hear to the voice of Jehovah your God.

The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Dt 8:18–20). (1876). American Publishing Company.

Here again, we find Moses issuing another stern warning against worshipping false gods. This time He is quite specific about child sacrifice and all aspects of the occult. Israel is to be a no-go area for the black arts of witchcraft and spiritism. On the contrary, the whole nation is to live in the light of God’s word.

They had to remember that anyone who practices divination, or tells fortunes or interprets omen, is not to be found among God’s people (v 10).  In the ancient world, there were many ways to come to know what would happen. Many attempted to know the future, such as the outcome of a battle or of an illness.

Augury (deriving from the official Roman augur), belomancy or divination, was first systematised by the Chaldeans. The Greeks were addicted to it; and among the Romans no important action of state was undertaken without the advice of the augurs.
Belomancy attempted to interpret the way that arrows would fall when they were shaken out of a quiver. Hepatoscopy (only once mentioned in the Bible) was interpreting the configurations of the liver of a sacrificial animal. There was also a type of divination called oleomancy, the practice of divination by pouring oil into water and observing the resulting patterns. Some would attempt to discern divine messages by reading the flight patterns of birds or cloud formations.

Behind all these efforts at sorcery, divination, and communicating with the dead is the desire to know, and thereby control, the future. Interestingly, these practices are not forbidden because they do not work. Rather, the Bible records cases in which the magicians of Egypt were able to duplicate some of the plagues and in which King Saul learned the outcome of a battle by consulting Samuel’s ghost.

The issue is that the people are not looking to God for what they seek. God assigned prophets to communicate to his people clearly and unambiguously, in ways that did not require strange and esoteric methods. Today we have His completed Word in the Bible. When the people of God go to these other methods, they are trying to circumvent God, and it is another form of unfaithfulness to Him.

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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 wasn’t 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 Samuel’s spirit show up for King Saul.

It’s often pictured as being “down.” Either deep under the earth or the floor of the ocean.

The residents of Sheol were called Raphaim (shades or ghosts). They weren’t exactly “alive” per se. But they weren’t 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 “compartments.” Like a pleasant area for the righteous (often called “Abraham’s Bosom”) & 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 he’ll “go down to Sheol,” 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 Jacob’s sorrow is repeated when another 1 of his sons, Benjamin, couldn’t return to him with his other brothers.

Sheol shows up again during Korah’s 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 “enter Sheol alive.”

In Deuteronomy, Moses sings that the anger of Yahweh is a flame which burns in the “depths” 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 humanity’s ultimate postmortem destination. I Kings uses “going down to Sheol” as a metaphor for death. Describing those who go do it both “in peace” & “in blood.”

Isaiah, the prophet, explains Sheol at great length during some of his “sermons.” 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 Egypt’s 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 “home” 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 (“ruin,” Psalms 88:11; Job 28:22; & Proverbs 15:11) & Sahat (“corruption,” 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 don’t 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 can’t escape. Yet Yahweh raises souls from it.

Despite the abstract nature of Sheol, there’s some physicality to it. Because it was clearly understood to be underground, which is further supported by the term bor (“pit”, Isaiah 14:15 & 24:22 & Ezekiel 26:20).

It’s a “land,” has “gates,” has sections (think Dante’s Inferno), & there are multiple mentions of its “deepest depths” & “farthest corners.”

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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