Topical Studies
Sheol
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Genesis 2:7 (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up)
We must briefly consider whether man has an immortal soul. Our understanding of the Scriptures compels us to maintain that he does not for several reasons: u Job recognized that man has a spirit (Job 32:8), which Paul shows in I Corinthians 2:11 endows humanity with intellect. This spirit in man comes from God (Zechariah 12:1) and returns to Him when we die (Ecclesiastes 12:7; Acts 7:59). It records our experiences, character, and personality, which God stores until the resurrection of the dead. However, the Bible never describes this spirit as immortal or eternal; in fact, I Corinthians 2:6-16 explains that man needs yet another Spirit, God's, to be complete and discern godly things.
u The Bible flatly asserts that all people die: "It is appointed for men to die once" (Hebrews 9:27). Ezekiel says clearly that souls die: "The soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4, 20; see Romans 6:23). Jesus warns in Matthew 10:28 that God can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.
u In death, life and consciousness are gone. "The dead know nothing," says Solomon in Ecclesiastes 9:5, and he later adds, "There is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going" (verse 10). In Psalm 146:4, the psalmist writes about a man's death, "His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; in that very day his plans perish" (see Genesis 3:19).
u Scripture also confutes the idea that people go to heaven or hell after death. Peter says to the crowd on the day of Pentecost, "Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. . . . For David did not ascend into the heavens" (Acts 2:29, 34). Our Savior confirms this in John 3:13: "No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven." The biblical usage of Sheol and Hades simply means "the grave."
u Men cannot have immortality unless God gives it to them. Paul writes, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 6:23). In I Corinthians 15:53 he tells the saints, "This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." At the first resurrection God will give "eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality" (Romans 2:7). If we already had immortality, why should we put it on or seek it?
u Only God has immortality. He is, Paul writes to Timothy, ". . . the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality" (I Timothy 6:15-16). John says of the Word, "In Him was life" (John 1:4), meaning as Creator of all things (verse 3), He had life inherent. Jesus affirms this in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Men must go through Him to receive eternal life. With such overwhelming proof, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul proves false. Man is not immortal, nor does he possess any "spark of God" unless God has given it to him through the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:11). A Christian's hope of life after death rests in the resurrection of the dead (I Corinthians 15:12-23). Conversely, the wicked only await eternal death as recompense for their evil lives, not eternal life in torment.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Eternal Torment?
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Psalms 55:15 (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up)
Notice what A Dictionary of the Bible, edited by James Hastings, says about the use of the word "hell" in the Old and New Testaments. Keep in mind, as you read this, that the Old Testament was originally written in the Hebrew language, and that the New Testament was originally written in the Greek language. In our Authorized Version the word "hell" is unfortunately used as the rendering of three distinct words, with different ideas [or meanings]. It represents, 1) the sheol of the Hebrew Old Testament, and the hades in the New Testament. . . . It is now an entirely misleading rendering, especially in the New Testament passages. The English revisers, therefore, have substituted hades [going back to the original Greek word] for "hell" in the New Testament. . . . In the American revision the word "hell" is entirely discarded in this connection. . . . The word "hell" is used 2) as equivalent to [the Greek word] tartaros (II Peter 2:4) . . . and, 3) . . . as the equivalent of [the Greek word] gehenna. . . . So we see that the real meanings of three different Greek words—hades (equivalent to the Hebrew sheol of the Old Testament), tartaros, and gehenna—have been confused with each other because translators have attempted to make the one English word "hell" cover the definitions of all three words! No wonder confusion has reigned in the minds of millions. What do these words really mean? The original Old Testament Hebrew word sheol and the New Testament Greek word hades mean the same thing—simply the grave. These original words have been translated "grave" in many places in the Bible. "Hell" is an old English word, and over 350 years ago when the Authorized Version was translated, the people of England commonly talked of "putting their potatoes in hell for the winter"—a good way of preserving potatoes—for the word then meant merely a hole in the ground which was covered up—a dark and silent place—a grave! But pagan teachings gaining popular acceptance have caused people to misapply the old English word "hell" to the lurid imaginations of Dante. The second Greek word, tartaros, which has also been translated into the English word "hell," occurs only once in the New Testament (II Peter 2:4), and does not refer to humans, but to the restrained condition of fallen angels. Its meaning, translated into English, is "darkness of the material universe," or "dark abyss," or "prison." But what about gehenna? This Greek word, as all authorities admit, is derived from the name of the narrow, rocky Valley of Hinnom which lay just outside Jerusalem. It was the place where refuse was constantly burned up. Trash, filth, and the dead bodies of animals and despised criminals were thrown into the fires of gehenna, or the Valley of Hinnom. Ordinarily, everything thrown into this valley was destroyed by fire—completely burned up. Therefore, Christ used gehenna to picture the terrible fate of unrepentant sinners!
What Is Hell?
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Revelation 6:8 (Go to this verse :: Verse pop-up)
The final descriptive item regarding the fourth seal is "Hades followed with him." Obviously, "Hades" has been left untranslated in the New King James; it is "Hell" in the Authorized Version. Strong's Concordance defines this simply as "the place (state) of departed souls," although this is in itself an interpretive definition. A more complete definition would include that it is a proper name of the Greek god of the lower regions, known as Pluto by the Romans, who gave his name to the realm of the dead (Thayer's Greek Lexicon). However, this barely scratches the surface of the subject. The Complete Word Study New Testament adds, "In Homer and Hesiod the word is spelled Haïdês meaning obscure, dark, invisible," suggesting that it is a place or condition about which mortal man understands little. The same reference work mentions that it equates to the Hebrew word Sheol, and that in all the New Testament passages in which it occurs, Hades is associated with death (with the possible exceptions of Matthew 11:23 and Luke 10:15). Cutting through all the scholarly speculation, much of which is based on either Jewish or Greek—not necessarily biblical—conceptions of Sheol or Hades, the basic idea is the grave, the place where the dead go after death. As Solomon writes so plainly, "But the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward. . . . [F]or there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going" (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10). Many scriptures show that God will resurrect or redeem us from the grave, not from some shadowy netherworld of spirits. For instance, the psalmist writes, "But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave" (Psalm 49:15; see 30:3), and God prophesies through Ezekiel, "Then you shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up from your graves" (Ezekiel 37:13). Jesus Himself says, "Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation" (John 5:28-29). The Old Testament instruction, carried into the New, is that death and the grave are parallel if not synonymous ideas. Notice these passages which use parallelisms: » For in death there is no remembrance of You; in the grave who will give You thanks? (Psalm 6:5) » Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them. . . . (Psalm 49:14) » [I am] adrift among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom You remember no more, and who are cut off from Your hand. (Psalm 88:5) » What man can live and not see death? Can he deliver his life from the power of the grave? (Psalm 89:48) » For love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave. . . . (Song of Songs 8:6) » I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. O Death, I will be your plagues! O Grave, I will be your destruction! (Hosea 13:14; see I Corinthians 15:55) » And they made His grave with the wicked—but with the rich at His death. . . . (Isaiah 53:9) These verses accent the common-sense truth of Revelation 6:8: "And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades [the grave] followed with him." Death, in this case by pestilence, and the grave—Hades or Sheol, the abode of the dead—are inseparable companions; where one goes the other must follow because they are essentially the same. One can argue that they are technically different—that death is the cessation of life, and the grave is the repository of a person's earthly remains—but the difference is purely semantic. In the end, they both describe a state of lifelessness and corruption, of being cut off from the living and from God.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
The Four Horsemen (Part Five): The Pale Horse
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