Isaiah 14:9

9. While it is all quiet on the earth, it is all excitement in the regions below. The bold personification goes on, but in the world invisible, and a good reading of this verse is as follows:

Hell from beneath Or, The kingdom of the dead below, is all in an uproar on account of thee, to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the shades for thee, all the he-goats of the earth; it raiseth up from their throne-seats all the kings of the nations.”

Hell On this word see notes on Isaiah 5:14. There is something awfully grand and fearful in the sheol, the underworld of the Hebrews, the hades of the New Testament, and the “hell” of the English Old Testament: an immense subterranean kingdom, (Isaiah 14:9; Jeremiah 5:14; Job 26:6,) thickly dark, (Job 10:21-22,) deeply gullied, (Proverbs 9:19,) closed with strong gates, (Isaiah 38:10,) and a place whence there is no escape, (Job 7:9-10; Luke 16:26;) all which passages, too, describe the popular conceptions of the Hebrews and Jews poetically embellished, as well as express what to the Hebrews contained an indisputable doctrine, namely, that of life after death.

Stirreth up the dead The “dead” Hebrew, רפאים , rephaim rendered, in Isaiah 26:14, “deceased;” in Deuteronomy 2:11; Deuteronomy 3:11, giants; ( so the Septuagint and Vulgate;) either from being long time dead, or because shades or spectres may be conceived as actually larger than living men.

Chief ones of the earth Literally, he-goats; bellwethers, leaders. Isaiah 3:6; Zechariah 10:3.

Their thrones The personification retains for the shadowy souls of the great, their relative positions, even in the underworld.