The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.
The wicked shall be turned into Sheol, the grave or state of the dead below that receives all the dead and is the same as Hades, and Sheol itself is not the place of torment but points forward to final punishment in the lake of fire. At Christ's coming the living wicked are cut off into Sheol with the wicked dead, remain there for one thousand years until the resurrection of the unjust, and then are brought up to be cast into the lake of fire and destroyed, perishing forever and becoming as though they had not been. By itself the text proves that hell is real and that the wicked will not enter heaven anyhow, but it does not settle its locality, mode, or duration, which must be learned from other texts. To forget God is not to know Him, shown in worshiping what hands have made instead of the living God, in transgressing His law and especially the fourth commandment that makes known the Creator, and in rejecting light, refusing to repent and seek salvation through Jesus. Nations as well as individuals are under God's rule, so whole nations that once had gospel light and then forgot God, rejecting righteousness and mercy, are turned back to Sheol and destroyed with no second probation.
Meaning of Hell
In this verse hell is Sheol, the common place or state or receptacle of the dead that receives both the righteous and the wicked alike, and Sheol itself is not the place where the wicked are punished. The wicked are threatened with being turned there because, in the setting when the righteous are delivered to immortal life and come forth from Sheol, the living wicked are cut off at Christ's coming and join the wicked dead in Sheol. There the wicked remain for one thousand years until the resurrection of the unjust, so that at that later time no righteous person remains there and every wicked person is there. At the end of the thousand years Sheol and Death give up their dead, the wicked are brought up to judgment and cast alive into the lake of fire and destroyed, and then Death and Sheol cease to exist. Their being brought up from death to judgment and punishment and then returning to death again is perishing forever and becoming as though they had not been, a final doom of death and cessation of existence rather than endless life in misery, entered through this silent abode at death.
Sheol means the grave, the sepulchre, the pit, the underworld, or the state of the dead in general, and it is the same word elsewhere translated grave and pit. It has the same meaning as Hades in the New Testament, and both are spoken of as down or below, with the wicked going down into it. In English it is sometimes translated hell and sometimes grave. In this verse it identifies Sheol as the fate threatened to the wicked, not a promise, supporting future judgment in which final destiny depends on actions.
The verse proves a real place of punishment and does not mean merely that the wicked are left to themselves to suffer inwardly. By itself it is cited as evidence that hell exists, presented alongside the lake of fire and descriptions of the wicked being burned up and consumed, but it does not settle hell's locality, mode, or duration. It does not say how long the wicked remain there or teach that their torment is eternal, and the duration must be learned from other texts. Beside this, those who held the other understanding taught that hell here does not mean the grave, since burial makes no such distinction between the righteous and the wicked, but is evidence of a real future punishment awaiting those who reject warning, showing God's warnings are not false or unmerciful alarms.
In line with the weight of the passages, Sheol here does not mean a place of woe but is symbolic of future punishment in the lake of fire. The sinner's final doom presented for the wicked and the nations that forget God is death and cessation of existence, not endless life in a world of misery.
Timing and Final Punishment
The turning takes place when the righteous are delivered to immortal life and come forth from Sheol, while the living wicked are cut off and consigned to Sheol with the wicked dead. Sheol in this use is the common abode of the dead shared by righteous and wicked, not itself the place where the wicked are punished. In that setting the psalm describes the living wicked joining the dead in Sheol at the time the righteous leave it for immortal life.
At Christ's coming the living wicked are turned into Sheol, the common state or receptacle of the dead. There the wicked remain for one thousand years until the resurrection of the unjust. At that later time no righteous person remains in Sheol, and every wicked person is there.
At the end of the thousand years Sheol and Death give up their dead, and the wicked are cast alive into the lake of fire and destroyed, after which Death and Sheol cease to exist. The wicked brought up from death to judgment and punishment then return to death again, which is perishing forever and becoming as though they had not been. Their final doom is death and cessation of existence rather than endless life in misery, and Sheol here does not mean a place of woe but is symbolic of that future punishment in the lake of fire.
The turning into final Gehenna does not happen one by one at death, but at the end of the world after judgment. God has appointed a future day to judge the world, and no one is consigned to final punishment before being judged. The punishment is carried out when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God. It comes at Christ's second coming when judgment is executed, when Christ rewards His disciples with everlasting life in His heavenly kingdom and the wicked receive everlasting punishment.
When probation closes the unsaved suffer the seven last plagues and the woe of the lost. In the swiftly approaching day of God's wrath there is no hiding place to escape the face of Him on the throne and the wrath of the Lamb. The verse means utter destruction by fire, when snares, fire and brimstone and a horrible tempest are rained upon them and the earth and its works are burned up. It is the destruction of the last day, the day of the Lord in which the heavens pass away with a great noise and the earth and the works in it are burned up. Then the whole earth will lie desolate until the New Jerusalem descends from God out of heaven to become the capital of a renewed, re-created earth where the curse is wiped away.
The hell and lake of fire into which the wicked are cast is the earth itself when melted with fervent heat, where the punishment of the kings of the earth and the recompense of the wicked takes place. This fire is unquenched because it is not put out until it consumes everything combustible except original indestructible composition, then ceases for lack of fuel. Afterward the same place is transformed into the new heavens and new earth wherein dwells righteousness, the everlasting inheritance where the righteous tread down the ashes of the wicked under their feet.
On an opposing application held by those who teach natural immortality, the verse is invoked to describe the wicked being turned into hell again after judgment, where they are said to live eternally. That application is made to include the multitudes who die outside Christ, including heathen with only nature's dim light and children who die after reaching accountability.
What Forgetting God Means
Forgetting God is not knowing God, and the nations that forget God are the heathen who are unmindful of the Creator. Their doom is carried out when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God. Those who forget God in this way cannot be saved, for forgetting cuts off hope and makes trust like a spider's web. It brings chastening and correction, sinking in their own pit, reproof, and being torn in pieces with none to deliver unless the reproof is considered.
Forgetting is shown in idolatrous worship and in failing to retain God in knowledge. It is worshiping what human hands have made, worshiping anything instead of the living and true God, abandoning His knowledge and worship, and placing anything before Him to the point of separation from Him and eternal loss. Those who are unmindful of the Creator have turned away from what is holy to the Lord and have dedicated the first day of the week to the sun.
Forgetting God is sin and is transgression of the law, namely of the fourth commandment which makes known the Creator and His claim to obedience. It is trampling His law, turning from His law to serve self, and failing to recognize His moral law in national affairs, and this rejection of divine law is the root of lawlessness whose crimes that follow are its fruit. Those who teach disobedience to God's law are accountable to God's judgment, while those who instead yield to God and obey His Word will dwell forever in the renewed land where the curse is wiped away.
Forgetting also means abandoning the simple temperate life for luxury and gratification of appetite, giving the nation to dissipation unto perishing, as Egypt, Greece, and Rome illustrate by growing wealthy, rejecting temperance, and falling. It is neglecting the family altar morning and evening, refusing to repent and seek salvation through Jesus, rejecting light and truth, and turning from God in religious practice. Mere sincerity and merely doing the best one knows give no excuse, for without seeking God with all the heart, asking for His promises and wisdom, and knocking for entrance into heaven, ignorance, forgetfulness, and lack of knowledge will not save.
Being turned into hell is not a flaring up of vengeful passion but fruit, slow, sure, incorrigible and horrible, growing from root filament to groaning bough unto harvest in a nation that forgets God. It does not require planting an outright crime, since even a planting from the noblest stock can reap a curse. Even a nation that daily and hourly proclaims God as sovereign Lord from sea to land's end meets this harvest when at its time of choice profession issues into opposite action, and in that decision even the church can choose hell.
Judgment of the Nations
Nations as well as individuals stand under divine rule and come under judgment when they forget God and reject righteousness and mercy. Lasting national stability rests on following those gospel principles, and nations that turn away from God are turned back to Sheol. The wicked who are turned into hell include the nations that forget God, and the history of such nations displays this outcome.
Whole nations that once possessed the light of the gospel and afterward forgot God will be destroyed together with the wicked. The gospel light rose in the East and is now setting in the West, leaving behind nations that received it as a witness and then forgot, and upon those forgetful nations the threatened judgment falls.
Destruction remains decreed for the nations that forget God, and it is the destruction of the last day, the day of the Lord in which the heavens pass away with great noise and the earth and its works are burned up. Then the whole earth will lie as desolate as Carthage and Nineveh until the New Jerusalem descends from God out of heaven to become the capital of a renewed and re-created earth where the curse is wiped away and the ruins of sin are seen no more. Forgetting God is trampling His law, while those who yield to God and obey His Word will dwell in that land forever. The overthrow of Babylon includes the destruction of all nations and peoples that have forgotten God and accepted Babylon's principles.
Nations that forget God and give themselves to dissipation are doomed to perish, for forgetting God here means abandoning the simple temperate life for luxury and gratification of appetite. Egypt, Greece, and Rome illustrate the fate, since they grew wealthy, rejected temperance, and fell. America with its power and prosperity stands in the same danger of forgetting God, and its might does not guarantee its future, as the falls of Greece and Rome show. Turkey likewise is destined to come to an untimely end, for though upheld for a time by political intrigue and jealousy it will at last be left alone and defenseless, and its removal from Europe and transfer of its seat of rule to Jerusalem will not prevent its end. Social decay brings the same peril to nations that forget God, placing society itself in danger of judgment and destruction. The warning applies alike to individuals and nations, its consequences are certain when laws are broken, and they cannot be escaped by prayer or national pride.
Wicked nations that forget God are like chaff in the Lord's sight, are turned back to Sheol and perish, and receive no second probation.
Psalm Setting and Covenant
Psalm 9 belongs among the prayers and assurances of David as a tried soul. It stands as the Sabbath closing reading after study of God's special providences over Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It follows the lesson drawn from the checkered experiences of Esau and Jacob that divine providence, though seeming slow, brings retribution sooner or later. The execution of judgment by which the wicked and all forgetful nations are turned into hell, as the penalty of the law, belongs to the New Covenant arrangement as well as to its Sinaitic type. The text proclaims the sanctions of the law upon the wicked and upon all the nations that forget God. It is not the gospel in itself, for the gospel apart from its foundation has no such sanctions, but it declares the law that is the foundation on which the gospel rests.
Warning and Application
Not all will enter heaven in any case, for the wicked and all nations that forget God will be turned into hell instead. The warning falls on those who reject Christ and remain careless about their souls, who meet death without pardon, judgment without mercy, and the punishment of divine wrath. At Christ's second coming, when judgment is executed, the wicked receive everlasting punishment while He rewards His disciples with everlasting life in His heavenly kingdom.
Forgetting God is especially easy where attention is drawn away from Him, as in the theater, and such places lead toward destruction. In the swiftly approaching day of wrath there will be no hiding place from the face of Him on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, but utter destruction by fire when snares, fire and brimstone and horrible tempest are rained upon the wicked and the earth and its works are burned up, to the unspeakable consternation of those who rejected light and truth. The impenitent must therefore flee for refuge now by laying hold on hope, keeping the commandments of God and striving for the faith of Jesus, so as to be counted worthy to escape what is coming upon the earth and to stand before the Son of man at His appearing.
The warning applies alike to individuals and nations, and the consequences of breaking the laws cannot be avoided by prayer or national pride. Nations that forget God and give themselves to dissipation are doomed to perish, having abandoned the simple temperate life for luxury and gratification of appetite, as Egypt, Greece, and Rome illustrate by growing wealthy, rejecting temperance, and falling. Nations that forget God turn away from His law to serve self, and this rejection of divine law is the root of lawlessness whose crimes are its fruit, so that those who teach disobedience to God's law are accountable to God's judgment for what follows.
The wicked shall be turned into Sheol, the grave or state of the dead below that receives all the dead and is the same as Hades, and Sheol itself is not the place of torment but points forward to final punishment in the lake of fire. At Christ's coming the living wicked are cut off into Sheol with the wicked dead, remain there for one thousand years until the resurrection of the unjust, and then are brought up to be cast into the lake of fire and destroyed, perishing forever and becoming as though they had not been. By itself the text proves that hell is real and that the wicked will not enter heaven anyhow, but it does not settle its locality, mode, or duration, which must be learned from other texts. To forget God is not to know Him, shown in worshiping what hands have made instead of the living God, in transgressing His law and especially the fourth commandment that makes known the Creator, and in rejecting light, refusing to repent and seek salvation through Jesus. Nations as well as individuals are under God's rule, so whole nations that once had gospel light and then forgot God, rejecting righteousness and mercy, are turned back to Sheol and destroyed with no second probation.
Meaning of Hell
In this verse hell is Sheol, the common place or state or receptacle of the dead that receives both the righteous and the wicked alike, and Sheol itself is not the place where the wicked are punished. The wicked are threatened with being turned there because, in the setting when the righteous are delivered to immortal life and come forth from Sheol, the living wicked are cut off at Christ's coming and join the wicked dead in Sheol. There the wicked remain for one thousand years until the resurrection of the unjust, so that at that later time no righteous person remains there and every wicked person is there. At the end of the thousand years Sheol and Death give up their dead, the wicked are brought up to judgment and cast alive into the lake of fire and destroyed, and then Death and Sheol cease to exist. Their being brought up from death to judgment and punishment and then returning to death again is perishing forever and becoming as though they had not been, a final doom of death and cessation of existence rather than endless life in misery, entered through this silent abode at death.
Sheol means the grave, the sepulchre, the pit, the underworld, or the state of the dead in general, and it is the same word elsewhere translated grave and pit. It has the same meaning as Hades in the New Testament, and both are spoken of as down or below, with the wicked going down into it. In English it is sometimes translated hell and sometimes grave. In this verse it identifies Sheol as the fate threatened to the wicked, not a promise, supporting future judgment in which final destiny depends on actions.
The verse proves a real place of punishment and does not mean merely that the wicked are left to themselves to suffer inwardly. By itself it is cited as evidence that hell exists, presented alongside the lake of fire and descriptions of the wicked being burned up and consumed, but it does not settle hell's locality, mode, or duration. It does not say how long the wicked remain there or teach that their torment is eternal, and the duration must be learned from other texts. Beside this, those who held the other understanding taught that hell here does not mean the grave, since burial makes no such distinction between the righteous and the wicked, but is evidence of a real future punishment awaiting those who reject warning, showing God's warnings are not false or unmerciful alarms.
In line with the weight of the passages, Sheol here does not mean a place of woe but is symbolic of future punishment in the lake of fire. The sinner's final doom presented for the wicked and the nations that forget God is death and cessation of existence, not endless life in a world of misery.
Timing and Final Punishment
The turning takes place when the righteous are delivered to immortal life and come forth from Sheol, while the living wicked are cut off and consigned to Sheol with the wicked dead. Sheol in this use is the common abode of the dead shared by righteous and wicked, not itself the place where the wicked are punished. In that setting the psalm describes the living wicked joining the dead in Sheol at the time the righteous leave it for immortal life.
At Christ's coming the living wicked are turned into Sheol, the common state or receptacle of the dead. There the wicked remain for one thousand years until the resurrection of the unjust. At that later time no righteous person remains in Sheol, and every wicked person is there.
At the end of the thousand years Sheol and Death give up their dead, and the wicked are cast alive into the lake of fire and destroyed, after which Death and Sheol cease to exist. The wicked brought up from death to judgment and punishment then return to death again, which is perishing forever and becoming as though they had not been. Their final doom is death and cessation of existence rather than endless life in misery, and Sheol here does not mean a place of woe but is symbolic of that future punishment in the lake of fire.
The turning into final Gehenna does not happen one by one at death, but at the end of the world after judgment. God has appointed a future day to judge the world, and no one is consigned to final punishment before being judged. The punishment is carried out when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God. It comes at Christ's second coming when judgment is executed, when Christ rewards His disciples with everlasting life in His heavenly kingdom and the wicked receive everlasting punishment.
When probation closes the unsaved suffer the seven last plagues and the woe of the lost. In the swiftly approaching day of God's wrath there is no hiding place to escape the face of Him on the throne and the wrath of the Lamb. The verse means utter destruction by fire, when snares, fire and brimstone and a horrible tempest are rained upon them and the earth and its works are burned up. It is the destruction of the last day, the day of the Lord in which the heavens pass away with a great noise and the earth and the works in it are burned up. Then the whole earth will lie desolate until the New Jerusalem descends from God out of heaven to become the capital of a renewed, re-created earth where the curse is wiped away.
The hell and lake of fire into which the wicked are cast is the earth itself when melted with fervent heat, where the punishment of the kings of the earth and the recompense of the wicked takes place. This fire is unquenched because it is not put out until it consumes everything combustible except original indestructible composition, then ceases for lack of fuel. Afterward the same place is transformed into the new heavens and new earth wherein dwells righteousness, the everlasting inheritance where the righteous tread down the ashes of the wicked under their feet.
On an opposing application held by those who teach natural immortality, the verse is invoked to describe the wicked being turned into hell again after judgment, where they are said to live eternally. That application is made to include the multitudes who die outside Christ, including heathen with only nature's dim light and children who die after reaching accountability.
What Forgetting God Means
Forgetting God is not knowing God, and the nations that forget God are the heathen who are unmindful of the Creator. Their doom is carried out when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God. Those who forget God in this way cannot be saved, for forgetting cuts off hope and makes trust like a spider's web. It brings chastening and correction, sinking in their own pit, reproof, and being torn in pieces with none to deliver unless the reproof is considered.
Forgetting is shown in idolatrous worship and in failing to retain God in knowledge. It is worshiping what human hands have made, worshiping anything instead of the living and true God, abandoning His knowledge and worship, and placing anything before Him to the point of separation from Him and eternal loss. Those who are unmindful of the Creator have turned away from what is holy to the Lord and have dedicated the first day of the week to the sun.
Forgetting God is sin and is transgression of the law, namely of the fourth commandment which makes known the Creator and His claim to obedience. It is trampling His law, turning from His law to serve self, and failing to recognize His moral law in national affairs, and this rejection of divine law is the root of lawlessness whose crimes that follow are its fruit. Those who teach disobedience to God's law are accountable to God's judgment, while those who instead yield to God and obey His Word will dwell forever in the renewed land where the curse is wiped away.
Forgetting also means abandoning the simple temperate life for luxury and gratification of appetite, giving the nation to dissipation unto perishing, as Egypt, Greece, and Rome illustrate by growing wealthy, rejecting temperance, and falling. It is neglecting the family altar morning and evening, refusing to repent and seek salvation through Jesus, rejecting light and truth, and turning from God in religious practice. Mere sincerity and merely doing the best one knows give no excuse, for without seeking God with all the heart, asking for His promises and wisdom, and knocking for entrance into heaven, ignorance, forgetfulness, and lack of knowledge will not save.
Being turned into hell is not a flaring up of vengeful passion but fruit, slow, sure, incorrigible and horrible, growing from root filament to groaning bough unto harvest in a nation that forgets God. It does not require planting an outright crime, since even a planting from the noblest stock can reap a curse. Even a nation that daily and hourly proclaims God as sovereign Lord from sea to land's end meets this harvest when at its time of choice profession issues into opposite action, and in that decision even the church can choose hell.
Judgment of the Nations
Nations as well as individuals stand under divine rule and come under judgment when they forget God and reject righteousness and mercy. Lasting national stability rests on following those gospel principles, and nations that turn away from God are turned back to Sheol. The wicked who are turned into hell include the nations that forget God, and the history of such nations displays this outcome.
Whole nations that once possessed the light of the gospel and afterward forgot God will be destroyed together with the wicked. The gospel light rose in the East and is now setting in the West, leaving behind nations that received it as a witness and then forgot, and upon those forgetful nations the threatened judgment falls.
Destruction remains decreed for the nations that forget God, and it is the destruction of the last day, the day of the Lord in which the heavens pass away with great noise and the earth and its works are burned up. Then the whole earth will lie as desolate as Carthage and Nineveh until the New Jerusalem descends from God out of heaven to become the capital of a renewed and re-created earth where the curse is wiped away and the ruins of sin are seen no more. Forgetting God is trampling His law, while those who yield to God and obey His Word will dwell in that land forever. The overthrow of Babylon includes the destruction of all nations and peoples that have forgotten God and accepted Babylon's principles.
Nations that forget God and give themselves to dissipation are doomed to perish, for forgetting God here means abandoning the simple temperate life for luxury and gratification of appetite. Egypt, Greece, and Rome illustrate the fate, since they grew wealthy, rejected temperance, and fell. America with its power and prosperity stands in the same danger of forgetting God, and its might does not guarantee its future, as the falls of Greece and Rome show. Turkey likewise is destined to come to an untimely end, for though upheld for a time by political intrigue and jealousy it will at last be left alone and defenseless, and its removal from Europe and transfer of its seat of rule to Jerusalem will not prevent its end. Social decay brings the same peril to nations that forget God, placing society itself in danger of judgment and destruction. The warning applies alike to individuals and nations, its consequences are certain when laws are broken, and they cannot be escaped by prayer or national pride.
Wicked nations that forget God are like chaff in the Lord's sight, are turned back to Sheol and perish, and receive no second probation.
Psalm Setting and Covenant
Psalm 9 belongs among the prayers and assurances of David as a tried soul. It stands as the Sabbath closing reading after study of God's special providences over Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It follows the lesson drawn from the checkered experiences of Esau and Jacob that divine providence, though seeming slow, brings retribution sooner or later. The execution of judgment by which the wicked and all forgetful nations are turned into hell, as the penalty of the law, belongs to the New Covenant arrangement as well as to its Sinaitic type. The text proclaims the sanctions of the law upon the wicked and upon all the nations that forget God. It is not the gospel in itself, for the gospel apart from its foundation has no such sanctions, but it declares the law that is the foundation on which the gospel rests.
Warning and Application
Not all will enter heaven in any case, for the wicked and all nations that forget God will be turned into hell instead. The warning falls on those who reject Christ and remain careless about their souls, who meet death without pardon, judgment without mercy, and the punishment of divine wrath. At Christ's second coming, when judgment is executed, the wicked receive everlasting punishment while He rewards His disciples with everlasting life in His heavenly kingdom.
Forgetting God is especially easy where attention is drawn away from Him, as in the theater, and such places lead toward destruction. In the swiftly approaching day of wrath there will be no hiding place from the face of Him on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, but utter destruction by fire when snares, fire and brimstone and horrible tempest are rained upon the wicked and the earth and its works are burned up, to the unspeakable consternation of those who rejected light and truth. The impenitent must therefore flee for refuge now by laying hold on hope, keeping the commandments of God and striving for the faith of Jesus, so as to be counted worthy to escape what is coming upon the earth and to stand before the Son of man at His appearing.
The warning applies alike to individuals and nations, and the consequences of breaking the laws cannot be avoided by prayer or national pride. Nations that forget God and give themselves to dissipation are doomed to perish, having abandoned the simple temperate life for luxury and gratification of appetite, as Egypt, Greece, and Rome illustrate by growing wealthy, rejecting temperance, and falling. Nations that forget God turn away from His law to serve self, and this rejection of divine law is the root of lawlessness whose crimes are its fruit, so that those who teach disobedience to God's law are accountable to God's judgment for what follows.