Job 7:21

21. But I shall not be He fain conceives that God will relent from his apparent purpose of ill, and diligently seek him, in order to bestow favour upon him, but fears that it will be too late, as he will soon be asleep in the dust, (Psalms 22:15, “dust of death,”) and no more be found among men.

EXCURSUS No. III.

SHEOL.

Sheol, שׁאול , is the word employed in the Old Testament to represent the abode of the dead. This word occurs sixty-five times, and is rendered in the authorized version thirty-one times by grave, as many more by hell, and three times by pit; in the Septuagint sixty-one times by hades, twice by death, θανατος , while twice (Job 24:19, Ezekiel 32:21) the Greek translators omit it altogether. The more ancient lexicographers derived the word from שׁאל , to ask or crave; the more recent make the word cognate with שׁעל , to make hollow, (Gesenius,) or go down deep, (Furst,) a meaning which radically belongs to the German holle, and the same word in our own language, hell, ( hollow;) Greek, κοιλου , Latin, coelum. So that the etymological result is reached, that the hollow beneath corresponds to the concave above. The sense of insatiableness and inexorable demand, that some of the more recent Hebrew writers (Proverbs 27:20; Proverbs 30:15-16; Isaiah 5:14; Habakkuk 2:5) attach to this word, tends to confirm the root idea to be that of “asking” or “seeking.” This craving they must have attributed to sheol objectively, as a place demanding to be filled, in keeping with the classical ideas, (“the rapacious Orcus” of Catullus, and “the robber,” αρπακτηρ , in Callimachus,) and not subjectively, as Dr. Tayler Lewis, following Horsley eloquently urges, to anxious inquirers into the mysteries of the unseen world.

1 . The grave was evidently associated with all their conceptions of the gathering place of their conscious dead; so that sheol may be regarded as an ideal enlargement of the sepulchre. The gloom of the grave so intermingled itself with the dim light of a primeval revelation as to darken and confuse their conceptions of the place, and condition of the dead. Thus the popular mind regarded sheol as the nether region of the universe, corresponding in depth to the height of the heavens, (Deuteronomy 32:22; Job 11:8; Psalms 139:8; Ezekiel 31:14; Amos 9:2,) having depths of various gradations, (Psalms 86:13; Proverbs 9:18,) fastened with bars (Job 17:16) and gates, (Isaiah 38:10,) yet open and naked to God (Job 26:6). It also conceived sheol to be located somewhere within the bowels of the earth. Numbers 16:30; Numbers 16:33; 1 Samuel 28:13; Job 26:5; Job 38:16-17; Psalms 63:9; Ezekiel 26:20; Ezekiel 32:18. With respect to a conception so foreign to our ordinary ideas, Ruloff profoundly suggests that the “kingdom of death cannot, as a region of immaterial and therefore of spiritual being, be subjected to the laws of locality of material beings in the degree in which the things of the visible world are so. There are spiritual localities of which we can have no idea, very probably extending themselves throughout the whole dimension of visibility and beyond it.” Such are some of the local features of this underworld of the dead. See page 166. On hades, and the New Testament idea of the under world, see notes on Ephesians 4:9-10.

2 . Notwithstanding, in the popular conception sheol was entirely distinct from the grave. The term sheol is used under circumstances where it is plain that the grave, in its ordinary meaning, cannot be intended. For instance, in Genesis 37:35, where the word first appears, Jacob says he will go down to sheol, שׁאלה , unto his son, mourning. But in a preceding verse (the 33d) he had expressed his convictions that an evil beast had devoured him.

Lucifer, the Babylonian monarch, is, according to Isaiah 14:15, brought down to sheol, “to the sides of the pit;” while the 19th verse represents him as denied the honour of a grave, קבד . In powerful figure sheol is moved from beneath to meet him at his coming, and to stir up the dead for him. Job 7:9.

The various etymological forms, in marked contradistinction to sheol, in which the older word ( קבד ) for sepulchre appears, show that sheol, in its primary sense, did not mean the grave, but from the beginning was used in the more general and abstract meaning of abode or state of the dead. See Methodist Quar. Revelation, 1856, 7:281-287.

It is also to be remarked, that while קבר , the grave, appears perhaps a hundred times in the Scriptures, it is never used in connexion with nephesh, soul, as is sheol. The reason is, that the Hebrews employed the one for the receptacle of the body, the other for that of the soul.

3 . Sheol was a state or place which the righteous expected to enter. Jacob, as we have seen, declared that he “will go down in mourning to sheol,” שׁאולה , toward sheol, or on the way to sheol, this being the terminus of his sad pilgrimage (also Job 42:38). Job felt that if he wait, it is for “sheol, his house,” Job 17:13; see also Job 14:13. David triumphantly predicts that he (or the Greater than he) “shall not be left to, or in, sheol,” לשׁאול , Psalms 16:10, also Acts 2:27, which St. Peter cites from the Septuagint, where it is rendered hades, whose meaning he could have hardly been ignorant of; (compare Psalms 139:8;) and Hezekiah assumes that had he died, sheol would have been his destination. Isaiah 38:17-18. See also Psalms 30:3; Psalms 49:15; Psalms 86:13; Isaiah 38:10; Hosea 13:14. The Hebrew mind, front the most ancient times, held fast the idea of a gathering place of the conscious dead, as is evinced in the oft-recurring expression “gathered to his people.” Genesis 25:8; Genesis 25:17; Genesis 35:29; Genesis 49:33; Numbers 20:24. Compare Job 7:28. That this cannot mean the burial together of their dead, may be shown not only from the burial of Aaron, but from the application of the same phrase to Moses, (Numbers 27:13,) whom God buried apart from all others. Even Warburton admits that “the phrase originally arose (whatever people first employed it) from the notion of some common receptacle of souls.” Divine Legation, vi, section iii, p. 4.

The righteous entered sheol with dread. It was an existence shrouded in mystery, one of indescribable darkness, (see note on Job 10:21-22,) “without any order;” the realm, not only for vague and flitting spirits, but for fears and dark forebodings. The very name its inhabitants bore, רפאים , rephaim, (“the weak,” “the powerless,” from rapha, to be weak, see note on Job 26:5, like Homer’s οι καμοντες , the wearied, for the dead,) was in keeping with the popular idea that death, even for the good, meant loss, not to say descent in being: a descent from the knowledge, the religious privileges, the prerogatives of life. Psalms 6:5; Psalms 30:3; Psalms 30:9; Isaiah 38:18. There were evidently fluctuations, both of faith and knowledge, as to the state of the dead, during the long centuries embraced by the patriarchal and Mosaical dispensations twilights not only of light but of darkness alternating periods of rational faith and doubt, if not despair. Such, Job embodied in himself. Yet it is plain under every dispensation that “the righteous had hope in his death.” He took with him into the darkness faith in his God, a child-like faith that the man of deliverance should come.

4 . Into a world bearing the same name (sheol) the wicked were cast for purposes of punishment at the close of life. “They went down alive into sheol.” Numbers 16:33. “Sheol violently takes those who have sinned.”

Job 24:19, (margin:) “The wicked shall be turned into sheol.” Psalms 9:17: “Let them be silent,” or, “cut off,” (margin,) in or to sheol. Psalms 31:17. See also Deuteronomy 32:22; Proverbs 5:5; Proverbs 9:18; Isaiah 57:9. Since the abodes of both good and bad were called sheol, we may be justified in inferring that the Hebrews believed themselves to enter, at death, either into one common receptacle, and to be separated from each other by laws of affiliation apparently implied in the frequent expression, “slept with his fathers;” or, as is more probable, into compartments or separate dwellings of the one great under world determined and fixed by God himself. See Peter’s Critical Diss. on Job, part iii, sec. 8. But the condition of the two vast classes was not at all similar. There were grades of punishment even in sheol. Moses spoke of a fire that burned unto the lowest sheol. Deuteronomy 32:22. Compare Job 31:12; Psalms 86:13. Moreover, the ancient Scriptures gave indications of depths, or a world of retribution, that lay beneath or beyond sheol, to which they gave the name of abaddon. This was total perdition. Our translators have accordingly rendered it destruction. Job 26:6; Job 28:22; Job 31:12; Psalms 88:11; Proverbs 15:11; Proverbs 27:20.

5 . There are intimations in the Scriptures that the Hebrews regarded sheol as a temporary abode for the righteous. We have seen how they shuddered to enter it, and yet we are told that they looked for “a better” (country), even “a heavenly,” and that they endured, “that they might obtain a better resurrection.” Hebrews 11:16; Hebrews 11:35. Faith plainly overleaped the dismal sojourn in sheol, and planted itself within the region of hope beyond. The later Hebrews descried a time when the dead should arise and sing. Isaiah 26:19. This was meridian light, preceded by a long-protracted dawn.

A dying Jacob strangely interrupts his predictions with the ejaculation, “I wait ( piel form) for thy salvation, O Jehovah!” Genesis 49:18. Job compares his sojourn in sheol to the lot of a sentinel patiently waiting to be relieved, Job 14:14-15; see note. The psalmist declares God shall not leave his soul in, or to, sheol, Psalms 16:10; but He shall ransom it from the hand, that is, the grasp, of sheol, Psalms 49:15; (comp. Hosea 13:14,) and that he himself shall awake in the likeness of God, Psalms 17:15. God shall swallow up death forever, לנצח , exclaims Isaiah, (Isaiah 25:8, a passage which the apostle refers to the resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15:54,) and “the earth shall cast out the rephaim,” the dwellers in sheol. Isaiah 26:19.

With these views agrees the remarkable language of Josephus: “They [the Pharisees] also believe that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and that the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again.” Antiquities, xviii, chap. Job 1:3. About four centuries previously Plato had spoken of “an ancient saying which we,” he says, “now call to mind, that souls departing hence exist there, [in hades,] and return hither again, and are produced from the dead.” Phaedo, sec.

40 . The ancient Egyptians, too, according to Plutarch, gave the name amenthes to “that subterraneous region whither they imagine the souls of those who die go to after their decease; a name,” he says, “which expressly signifies the receiver and GIVER.” De Iside, ch. 29.

The word shaal, the root of sheol, has among its significations, to demand or crave as A LOAN. 1 Samuel 1:28; 2 Kings 6:5. See also Furst, s.v. Thus the very word itself, like amenthes, may imply that the prey of sheol is to be rendered back.