DOES SHEOL MEAN THE GRAVE?
By Uriah Smith
This question would be completed by adding: Or does it mean the place of departed, disembodied spirits, in a conscious state of joy or misery, as many believe? The terms by which the Bible designates the place, or describes the condition, into which human beings pass in the event of death, become a subject of absorbing interest to every thoughtful mind; but whether we think of the place to which man goes in death, or of the condition he is then in, the Bible, by the terms it uses respecting those subjects, must make known to us how much of the man goes there, and what his condition is when there. In the terminology of the Scriptures, we have been wont to believe that there are two terms,—sheol, in the Hebrew, and hades, in the Greek,—which are identical in meaning, and both of which, in the conditions revealed concerning them, determine the condition of man in death. But the place and conditions made known in the Bible respecting those who go into sheol or hades, as the sacred writers use these terms, does not harmonize with the ideas that have grown up in the religious world, through long ages of theological evolution; hence a resort to the expedients of addition, where some new device is wanted; subtraction, where there is more than can be used; or a denial altogether, when it would seem more convenient to the new theology to have the Scriptures out of the way entirely; or any other imaginable device, to make apparent harmony with the Scriptures, under which the new adjustment can conceal itself. Our views of man in death must be governed by what the Bible says on the points in question; hence the importance of having the true understanding of its testimony. For if the grave is a place of intelligence and activity, and the dead have life and consciousness when they are said to be in the grave, then Spiritualism has a divine backing, and the hero worship of paganism, the Mariolatry of Catholicism, purgatory, masses for the dead, prayers to saints, and a thousand other forms of error and superstition, deadly in their spiritual and physical influences, can clear themselves from all the adverse criticisms of their opponents. But if there is no part of man, which, in a conscious and intelligent condition, survives the death of the body, then all these theological dogmas stand forth in their true colors, as the working of the mystery of iniquity, by which mankind have been led away into the darkness of an apostate world, and as a last-day deception, by which the great enemy of God and man seeks to complete his work of ruin. And it becomes us to shield ourselves against the danger, by earnestly searching to discover the nature of these deceptions, and rejecting their presumptuous claims. <q>Beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness.</q> 2 Peter 3:17. A brother has sent us a portion of a recent pamphlet, in which an effort is made to sustain what is called the orthodox view of the state of man in death, on which he desires a word of comment. In behalf of his contention, the author of the book puts forth the claim that the word <q>sheol,</q> though thirty-one times translated <q>grave,</q> never once means grave, but <q>always the place of departed spirits,</q> sometimes the <q>place of torment,</q> and sometimes the <q>place of comfort.</q> The reason, he says, why the translators rendered it <q>grave</q> was that <q>they did not apprehend that it was a place of two apartments; and so when the Old Testament saints spoke of going to sheol, they thought it could not mean ‘hell,’ and so they translated it ‘grave.’</q> As stated above, this assertion must be tested by the definition of the word, and its use by the sacred writers. In Bagster’s Analytical Hebrew Lexicon, the first definition given to the word <q>sheol</q> is <q>grave.</q> Then a second definition is added: <q>2. The abode of departed souls. It is so called, either from its devouring and ever-craving character, or the root may be, in signification, the same as shoal, hollow.</q> When we consider that there is no such thing as a disembodied, <q>departed spirit,</q> in the theological sense of the term, we can judge how far the definition is influenced by early theological training. Such definitions will not influence those who study the Bible for themselves. By common acknowledgment the Hebrew word <q>sheol</q> is the same as the Greek word <q>hades,</q> the first definition of which, in Greenfield’s Lexicon, is, <q>The invisible abode or mansion of the dead, . . . the grave.</q> These words denote, as their use in the Scriptures proves, a place of <q>silence, secrecy, sleep, darkness, corruption, and worms.</q> They are names for the common receptacle of the dead, both the righteous and the wicked. The righteous dead are there; for at the resurrection they raise the victorious shout, <q>O death, where is thy sting? O grave [hades], where is thy victory!</q> 1 Cor. 15:55. And the wicked dead are there; for at the resurrection to damnation, it is said that <q>death and hell [hades] delivered up the dead which were in them.</q> Rev. 20:13. That the hades of the New Testament is the same as the sheol of the Old Testament, is proved by Ps. 16:10 compared with Acts 2:29. Thus Ps. 16:10 reads: <q>For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [sheol]; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption;</q> and the New Testament makes a direct quotation of this passage, in Acts 2:27: <q>Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell [hades], neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.</q> This passage Peter applies, in verse 31, to the resurrection of Christ; and in both these passages the word <q>hades</q> takes the place of the word <q>sheol</q> in the Old Testament. All members of the human family alike go into sheol. Thus Jacob says, <q>I will go down into the grave [sheol] unto my son mourning.</q> Gen. 37:35. This utterly disproves the assertion that sheol contains two apartments, one of misery, and one of comfort, which the tract in question designates <q>paradise.</q> For Jacob would go into the apartment of comfort, if any one would go there, but to whatever apartment he went, he went in suffering—<q>to my son mourning.</q> It simply means that he would end his life in mourning, and go into the grave, where there is no knowledge, wisdom, device, consciousness, good, or evil, till the resurrection. Korah and all his company went down into sheol. Num. 16:30, 33. In these instances the word <q>pit</q> is from sheol. As stated above, all mankind go there. Ps. 89:48: <q>From the hand of the grave</q> [sheol]. When a person goes into sheol, how much of him goes there? Does he go as a whole, or only in sections? The author under review says that the Bible does not <q>speak of the body going into sheol.</q> But when the Scriptures assure us that the whole person goes there, does not that include the body?411Thus Jacob expected to go down, with his <q>gray hairs,</q> into sheol. So with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; they went down, bodily, into sheol. But take what is supposed another part of man; the Saviour’s soul, according to the promise, was not left in sheol, but at his resurrection came from it. Acts 2:31. Where do the Scriptures locate sheol? Our friend says that they do not locate it; but let us see. Sheol is translated many times by the words <q>hell</q> and <q>pit.</q> And when these places are located, it is the location of sheol. And these places are almost always spoken of as <q>beneath, in the interior of the earth, the nethermost parts of the earth,</q> etc. See Num. 16:30, 33. Referring to the fires now preying upon the interior parts of the earth, and which shall cause it to melt at last with fervent heat, the Lord, through Moses, says: <q>For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell [sheol], and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.</q> Deut. 32:22. The dead, as we have seen, are in sheol; and the figure most commonly taken to represent death is sleep. There must be, then, some analogy between a state of sleep and the condition of death; and that analogy must pertain to that which makes sleep a peculiar condition. But one’s condition when he is asleep differs from his condition when awake, only in this: that when one is soundly asleep, he is entirely unconscious of all about him. It is in this respect, then, that death resembles sleep; that is, the dead are entirely unconscious of life and all its phenomena. When, therefore, one is in sheol, he is not a conscious, disembodied spirit, intelligent, wide awake, with power to flit about to the ends of the earth, and to come back to twitter, peep, and mutter to mortals in Spiritualistic séances. The dead in sheol have no knowledge of anything in heaven or earth. Of a dead man Job says: <q>His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them.</q> Job 14:21. Surely, if the real, intelligent man is conscious in sheol, he would follow the history of his own sons with great interest; and as it is positively asserted that he does not do this, it follows that he has no consciousness, and no intelligence as to what is occurring here upon the earth. Again: when the Lord was about to bring judgments upon Jerusalem, he told Josiah that he should go to his grave in peace, and that his eyes should not see the evil. But if he was to be as conscious and sensitive in death as he was in life, would he not be aware of it all, and feel it all?—Most assuredly. This proves, therefore, that those who are in sheol are wholly unconscious of earthly events. And these views do not rest upon deductions wholly. The positive declarations of Scripture everywhere support them. Thus in Ps. 146:4 David, speaking of princes, says: <q>Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.</q> David here refers to the weakness and inability of men to be of service to their friends, because they are subject to death. They lose the breath of life, and their bodies go back to the dust. Then, as David declares, their very thoughts perish. The word here rendered <q>thoughts</q> means more than simply their plans and purposes in life. It means the act and operation of the mind, in the process of thinking and reasoning. In the day of one’s death that power will perish, or cease to be available. If any one should be inclined to doubt that this is the intent of the passage, let him listen to David’s illustrious son, who speaks upon the same subject: <q>For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun. . . . Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave [sheol], whither thou goest.</q> Any ordinary degree of intelligence will not mistake the meaning of such language, and any ordinary degree of candor will find it impossible to evade it. It would be in vain for one to claim that it applies to the body alone, in distinction from an immortal soul; for no one holds that the thoughts (dialogismos, thoughts, reasoning; Greek of the Septuagint), which David says perish in death, ever were an attribute of the body, merely, but of the soul, which is claimed to be the knowing, intelligent part of man. But according to Solomon, that which knows when a man is alive, knows nothing when the man is dead. There is but one way to avoid the force of this testimony, and that is to deny it as inspired evidence. But that amounts to nothing, unless one can make that denial good. We have met a few persons reckless enough to undertake this, but fortunately their number is small. Bear in mind that we are learning quite definitely what the condition is of those who go into sheol. The object of this is to show the fallacy of the view that it is a place of two apartments for conscious, immortal souls, some of whom are in misery, and some in bliss. The Bible brings to view no such complex and embarrassing arrangement. The Bible system is plain and simple, not blind and tangled. It is easy to be understood, and very full of comfort. On this subject the Bible abounds with testimony of the same import; but it is unnecessary to remind those who read this paper, of the evidence that those who are in sheol are in the dust of the earth, located plainly enough. See Isa. 26:19. In sheol men praise not the Lord. Ps. 6:5. They have not ascended to heaven. Acts 2:29, 34, 35. Without a resurrection, even the dead in Christ have perished. 1 Cor. 15:18. The Bible scheme is better.