Job 7:9

As the aloud is consumed and vanisheth away . In mountainous countries one sees clouds clinging to a mountain-side, which do not float away, but gradually shrink, and at last wholly disappear. They are "consumed" in the strictest sense of the word—the hot rays of the sun drink them up. So he that goeth down to the grave; rather, to Sheol ; i.e. to the lower world, the abode of the departed. What exactly was Job's idea of this world it is impossible to say, or whether it involved the continued separate identity of individual souls and their continued consciousness. In Isaiah's conception both seem certainly to have been involved ( Isaiah 14:9-18 ), and perhaps in Jacob's ( Genesis 37:35 ); but Job s creed on the subject can only be conjectured. It is certain, however, that both the Egyptians and the early Babylonians held the continuance after death of individual souls, their separate existence, and their consciousness. Shall come up no more. The Egyptian belief was that the soul would ultimately return to the body from which death separated it, and rein-habit it. But this belief was certainly not general among the nations of antiquity.