Tag: Sheol

Sheol in the Book of Job

The oldest book of the Old Testament is not the first one. It is the book of Job. When Job lived exactly is unclear. That he and friends knew about Sheol is abundantly clear, because they use the word many times.   In discourses like you find in Job or in the poetry that you find in Psalms, a certain degree of translational caution is in order. Some poetic license is used in these books. Also, in Job, several people speak who do not speak the truth. Consequently, determining the meaning of a word like Sheol or deriving doctrinal information about it using these books must be done with caution. The good news is that we can learn the meaning of Sheol from other places. While one might poetically refer to a non-existent place of the dead and call it Sheol, the reality of the place is established by its use in other books. So it is proper to understand Sheol as a place even in Job, Psalms and other poetic passages. You just have to double check what you glean from them.

Job first speaks of Sheol in 7:9

As a cloud vanishes and is gone, so he who goes down to (Sheol) does not return.

Job is despairing of his life, but is even more concerned at this point with his death. He knows that he will eventually go to Sheol and considers it to be a one-way trip. This is not to discount Job’s belief in his eventual salvation. Job does speak of the resurrection at the last day in Job 19:25-27:

I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God: I myself will see Him with my own eyes—I and not another. How my heart yearns within me!

Job, a righteous man, speaks of Sheol and the resurrection of the body, but not of Heaven! It makes you wonder that if Job received knowledge of Sheol and the resurrection by revelation from God, why would God withhold information about Heaven?   Gaps like this leads the skeptic to conclude that Heaven is a theological innovation of a later time, but God has His reasons for rolling out information at appropriate times. He doesn’t need to share those reasons with us.

In Job 11:8, Job’s friend Zophar speaks of the mysteries of God. His statement is a metaphor comparing the scope of the mysterious nature of God to the height of the heavens and depth of Sheol. Often when the word heaven is plural it is referring to the universe. Sheol is repeatedly referred to as the lowest place, but does this comparison mean that it is part of this universe? Here the poetic nature of the reading would not justify such a conclusion. Nonetheless, if it were just a grave, a grave would not be considered very deep. Clearly Zophar is referring to something else.

Job 14:13 provides an interesting contrast to what Job said in 7:9. Earlier, he did not wish to die, but as his suffering continues he now begs to be hid in Sheol until God’s wrath is done.  So what is more desirable, to suffer in this world or be in Sheol? The question is pondered further in chapter 17:

If the only home I hope for is Sheol(grave), if I spread out my bed in the darkness, if I say to corruption, “You are my father” and to the worm, “My sister”, where then is my hope? Who can see any hope for me? Will it go down to the gates of Sheol (death)? Will we descend together into the dust?

Truly this is a sad passage. Job grasps for any kind of hope, because suffering stifles hope. It is easy to see why translators might choose “the grave” and “death”, because Job speaks of corruption and the worm. That makes it sound like we are talking about the condition of the body. But Jesus speaks in the terms used in this passage as well. We’ll address these passages later, but for now lets note that Jesus wasn’t speaking about the fate of the earthly body.

Job seems to have a hard time deciding whether Sheol is a desirable or undesirable place. In Job 21:13, he gripes about the injustice that exists in life. He notes that wicked people sometime have a good life, and they go to Sheol peacefully. Since Job’s life is such a horrible trial, it is understandable that he is a bit jaded. To note, he doesn’t seem to see Sheol as a place of justice. In other words, it’s not a place where the evil people get what’s coming to them. To him it is just the common fate of us all. Jesus would paint a significantly different picture. So would Job’s friends. One of his “buddies”, Bildad, describes death and Sheol as a punishment for sin in 24:19. Whether ultimately saved or damned, Sheol exists because of sin.  Bildad is at least correct about this.

The Bible doesn’t paint death as a deliverance from what is undesirable about life. Death is the direct result of sin. It is punishment, and it’s a punishment that every human being has earned through sin. What lies on the other side of death is also the consequence of sin, at least in part. This is true of whether we are talking about Sheol for the righteous or for the unrighteous, or even for that matter in one way, if we are talking about Heaven.

Humans are properly a body and a soul (call it consciousness if you like). Having those two things segregated as they are by death is undesirable, even though one might argue that having soul and body together in a life like Job’s is worse.

Next Time:  There is more to say about Sheol, but lets take a break and look at some of what the Bible says about Heaven

Is Sheol My Destiny?

We have talked about the fact that the Old Testament people did not speak about going to Heaven or Hell exactly, they spoke about going to Sheol.  Sheol was a place for the righteous (like Jacob) and the unrighteous (like Korah).  Scripture that we will cover later reveals that Sheol is a place with two parts separated by a chasm or void.  The one part was relatively pleasant, the other a hellish place of torment.  Before completing what the Bible has to say about Sheol/Hades, I want to address a common question I have heard since teaching about this topic.

Do we go to Sheol?  It is important to note that Jesus’ victory on the cross made a tremendous difference in mankind’s after death destiny.  Jesus stated in John 3:13 that no one had gone to Heaven up to that point.  That would change with Jesus’ victory on the cross.

Ultimately, after Judgment Day, the Bible says that humans will be part of a New Earth or what I would call “Hell” (the Bible uses the terms “lake of fire” or “Gehenna”).  Until Judgment Day, when we die we are either sent to Heaven or the bad neighborhood of Sheol.  This is what theologians call the “Intermediate Period” (The time after our death but before Judgment Day).  Both destinations change with Judgment Day.  The idea that we “sleep” until Judgment Day or that we defy time and immediately move to Judgment Day does not work with Revelation 6:9-10.

I found the picture above on the internet.  It does a decent job of illustrating what I am talking about. (I have a few issues with it.  What it calls Hell present is what the Bible calls Sheol or Hades.   The chasm it shows is not between Heaven and Sheol but rather is a part of Sheol)  So, back to the original question.  If you are connected to Jesus through faith and baptism, then you will not go to Sheol.  But it is good to realize that Sheol is something different than what we normally think of when we say Hell.

Next time:  What Job says about Sheol

A Word You May Not Know: Sheol

As a pastor and a Christian, I have quietly dreamt of going on a field trip to see what lies beyond death. Just think about how life changing it would be. We speak of Heaven and Hell, but we don’t usually see them before we go there. As a result they seem surreal to us at best. Some people in history have seen parts of life beyond the grave via out of body experiences. They all are profoundly affected. While my hope in Christ is to someday be with Christ in Heaven and eventually experience the resurrection of my body and live with God in a New Earth, I think I would like to see even more. While disturbing, I think I would even like to briefly see the fate of the damned. I might change my mind on that if ever given the opportunity.

Normally, we don’t get to see beyond the pall of death. Yet, I can think of no topic more important to each of us. We don’t want any rude surprises when we leave this world. We want to know what will happen, and to some extent we can know.

What I would like to do with you in this series of articles is to take a field trip of sorts. We are going to see what scripture shares about all aspects of life after death. We will give Near Death Experiences (NDE) of both heaven and its counterpart a little consideration.   For me, they don’t hold the weight of inspired scripture as a source of information. There are factors that could make a Near Death Experience imagined or even a deception, but they still need to be addressed. That is why we will be primarily discussing scripture. Using scripture, we will go on a verbal field trip, doing our best to imagine what is described. It will be interesting, but hopefully it will also be life-changing. This information was not given by God to be simply FYI.

 

First Stop: Sheol

 

Lets start at the bottom. The first life-after-death destiny mentioned in the Bible is Sheol. Sheol is the counterpart to heaven. You mean you never heard of Sheol? I wouldn’t blame you if that were true. Apparently my spell-checker hasn’t either. Sheol is a Hebrew word that is often translated away. In English, it is often translated as “the grave” or “hell” or “the pit”. I would contend that these translations are usually wrong or at least confusing. Sheol is a not the hole where we put dead bodies, nor is it a vague concept of where dead people go, nor is it what most of us think of when we hear the word, “hell”.  Sheol is a place. A place with somewhat complicated properties.

Now the conventional wisdom about the translation of the word “Sheol” is that the meaning depends on the context. When you see how it gets used in the original Hebrew, it is easy to understand why this is thought. Sometimes the word gets turned into a compound word. In this case, it expresses a closely related subject, like decay. More often, though, the appearance of slightly different meanings in various contexts is probably created by the individual’s confusion over what Sheol is like.

Confused individual ideas about Sheol need not create confusion for us, because Jesus really did clear up the nature of Sheol, as we shall see. When it comes to the nature of life after death, Jesus is the ultimate authority.

Next Time:  Sheol gets connected with the Greek word/idea:  Hades