The Sorrow of Sheol

Introduction

Imagine someone who has died (known or unknown). Imagine that person’s current state of existence. What’s the setting in which they exist? What are they doing? What do they look like? Who else perhaps is there?

Two things about this imaginative exercise: I didn’t ask you to imagine someone you knew (though you probably did). And I didn’t ask you to imagine their specific state or place of existence (in a good or bad place, in heaven or hell)—however, more than likely, you imagined the person in heaven.

Now let me give those specifics regarding place, and whether you imagine someone you know (or knew) is up to you (that can be too painful an exercise for some).

First imagine that the person is in a positive place—heaven if you want to call it that; a place of bliss. What do they see? What are they doing? What do they look like?

Now, imagine the same person in a negative place—the place of the departed dead, a place that is not pleasant.

Finally, think about what you just imagined, both the positive and negative settings. Where did those images come from? Why did you shape those images the way you did? Why do you believe those images to reflect the way things are? What’s your source? Did those images come from:

Cultural absorption? (Every culture has a concept of life after death—even those that deny life after death are teaching something about it.)
Church teaching?
Wishful thinking? (Such hopes aren’t necessarily bad—though they may or may not be accurate.)
Some combination of the above—perhaps added with the rock solid argumentation of “that’s just what I’ve always believed”?

The last bullet—the combination—is the most likely answer for most of us.

In our current study series on resurrection from the dead, we’ve discussed how common it is for Christians to be mistaken about this chief doctrine (resurrection); the flip side of that coin is that Christians are also often mistaken about the current state of the dead.

Why are they (we) often mistaken? Put another way, why are Christians’ common beliefs (particularly regarding death and life after death) unsupported by Scripture? The answer is probably because of an incomplete look at the Scriptures.

Christians are … often mistaken about the current state of the dead … because of an incomplete look at the Scriptures.

As we continue to contemplate the mystery of the intermediary state¹—that time between death and resurrection—in this sermon we will look at the negative side of that state.

As a refresher, no one in human history other than Jesus Christ Himself has been resurrected. Therefore, we can ask the following questions:

Where are all the dead people right now?
Is there a difference between the place of the dead prior to Christ’s victory over death and after His victory? (In other words, did people who died go somewhere different before Jesus went to the cross compared to after He went to the cross?)

In this sermon, we look at a place—kind of. I say “kind of” because the term used for this place is a term that is also used to mean a thing, and it’s also used to refer to a person. It’s a versatile noun—a person, place, or thing. It’s the place called “Sheol.” The New Testament equivalent is “Hades.” But this sermon will talk about it with an Old Testament emphasis, so I’ll refer to it as “Sheol.”

[Sheol is] a versatile noun—[it can be] a person, place, or thing.

If your imagination about the place of the dead is built upon what you learned from Scripture or what someone told you Scripture says, how would those who only had the Old Testament imagine the realm of the dead?

First Reference to Sheol

Sheol is first referenced in the Bible in Genesis 37, from the mouth of Jacob, who uses the term when he thought his son Joseph had been torn to pieces by a wild beast. Jacob believes this because Joseph’s brothers, in their treachery, sold Joseph down the road after making the “virtuous” decision not to kill him; they tell their father that Joseph must be dead because they covered his coat in blood. The text says:

Then all his [Jacob’s] sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. And he said, “Surely I will go down to Sheol in mourning for my son.” So his father wept for him. (Genesis 37:35, italics mine)

It’s a short verse, but there is much about the theology of Sheol we can build from Jacob’s statement:

There is a preexisting belief about the state of the dead prior to the revelation of the written Scriptures. Jacob existed before the recorded Old Testament existed. He hadn’t picked up a book and said, “Oh, God says there’s a place for the dead.” It was an idea he got apart from the Scriptures.
Death is certain.
Sheol is “down.” (Even if you’re on the other side of the world, it’s still down.)
Sheol is a destination even for the followers of God. (Jacob’s a patriarch of the faith—he follows God. But even he says he’s going down to Sheol.)
Perhaps most importantly, we see in this verse a representation of all of the reasons why we need to be careful about assigning too much specificity and certainty about this word.

Whether you’re aware of it or not, you’ve read a lot of presuppositions into this verse in Genesis 37 that cause you to make snap judgments or have some perplexity. I want to neutralize the term a bit.

Although Sheol might very well mean some sort of holding place for the conscious dead (this is, in fact, what most people imagine when they hear it), it can also have a more general sense. It can simply mean “grave.” That’s the sense in which it is a thing—it’s “the grave” or “death.”

If we take that meaning and apply it to Genesis 37:35, Jacob might be saying, “I loved Joseph so much that, now that he is gone, I say without a doubt, that I shall mourn my son until the day I die.” Or he might be saying, “I loved Joseph so much that his death will be the death of me” (i.e., “Now that he’s died, I am going to go to my grave”).

What Is Stated and What the Bible States

If I can neutralize this term even further, let’s draw a distinction between that which is stated in the Bible and that which the Bible states. Consider, for example, the book of Job, in which Job’s wife states, “Curse God and die!” (2:9). We can say that “Curse God and die” is stated in the Bible, but it is not something that the Bible states—in terms of stating some authoritative command. You shouldn’t curse God and die, but there is a woman mentioned in the Bible who says you should.

So, when we see these words in the mouth of Jacob—“Surely I will go down to Sheol in mourning for my son”—we can conclude that these are Jacob’s thoughts on the matter, but to conclude more than that would demand more contextual validation. All we should say at first is, “This is what Jacob said about dying.”

Now, this doesn’t render these sorts of statements worthless; Jacob’s words do give us insight into what he and others at his time believed. And what is the value of that? The value is multiple, but at the very least, we can say God wanted us to know what they said, and to some extent what they thought, because He recorded it in the Scriptures for us. This verse is an insight into the cultural mindset of that time. We have the blessing of both what the Bible states and what is stated in the Bible.

We have the blessing of both what the Bible states and what is stated in the Bible.

In light of this discussion, let’s examine: What does the Bible state about the place of the dead, and what is stated about the place of the dead in Scripture?

Scriptural Characteristics of the Place of the Dead

Let’s examine the Scriptural characteristics of this place called Sheol. Here are three main questions to ask:

Is there conscious existence (in the place of the dead)?
Who goes there?
What is it like?

It’s hard to answer those three questions separately when we consider the verses of the Old Testament. If you could definitely say, “There is no conscious existence in Sheol,” then the second and third questions (“Who is there?” and “What are they doing there?”) are pointless. Assuming conscious existence, we’ll see that the activity of the place is determined by the kind of beings who populate it.

So first we’ll answer the question about consciousness,² and then we’ll speak of activity.

Conscious Existence

Early on in the Old Testament, conscious existence in the place of he dead is somewhat in doubt—or at least not confirmed. We first see physical death (the separation of body and soul) in Scripture in the story of two of Adam and Eve’s offspring—Cain and Abel. When Cain kills his brother Abel, God is aware of Abel’s death, but the texts says that God declares that the sound of Abel’s blood is “crying to [Him] from the ground” (see Genesis 4:10).

We have our assumptions and presuppositions about what happens to the dead. Most of us imagine that someone dies and they go to either a place with God or a place away from God. But at this time, there are only a few people in the world; when one of them dies, God doesn’t say, “Hey, why is Abel’s spirit dwelling with me now? What did you do, Cain?” No, instead, Scripture gives us this idea that Abel’s life has now been committed to the ground.

If we wanted to make an argument for consciousness, we might appeal to the many prohibitions in the Old Testament about contacting the dead. But most of the prohibitions are not about seeking out the dead directly but about seeking out mediums, spiritists, necromancers, and the like. In other words, don’t seek out those who claim to be able to contact the dead. One of the reasons you should stay away from those people is because they’re involved in demonic powers (that’s a good enough reason!). Whether the spirits of the dead can even be called up is a different question entirely, and the most definitive answer we can give is the odd occurrence of King Saul going to a medium (some older translations say it’s a witch) to contact the prophet Samuel after Samuel dies. If I ever do a sermon series on “weird stuff in the Bible,” this passage would make it—1 Samuel 28:7–15a:

Then [King] Saul said to his servants, “Seek for me a woman who is a medium,³ that I may go to her and inquire of her.” And his servants said to him, “Behold, there is a woman who is a medium at En-dor.”

Then Saul disguised himself by putting on other clothes,⁴ and went, he and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night; and he said, “Conjure up for me, please, and bring up for me whom I shall name to you.” But the woman said to him, “Behold, you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off those who are mediums and spiritists from the land. Why are you then laying a snare for my life to bring about my death?” Saul vowed to her by the Lord, saying, “As the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.” Then the woman said, “Whom shall I bring up for you?” And he said, “Bring up Samuel for me.” When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice; and the woman spoke to Saul, saying, “Why have you deceived me? For you are Saul.” The king said to her, “Do not be afraid; but what do you see?” And the woman said to Saul, “I see a divine being coming up out of the earth.” He said to her, “What is his form?” And she said, “An old man is coming up, and he is wrapped with a robe.” And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground and did homage.

Then Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?”

Some will say, well it only appears to be Samuel, but as best I can tell, there’s not much reason to read it another way. Scripture records Saul and the dead Samuel as having a conversation.

But there are so many oddities in this story that we don’t learn much about the regular state of the dead. Here are just a few of those oddities:

The woman can see Samuel, but Saul can’t (maybe she has some conjuring pit, and he’s at the edge and she’s looking in?); however, Saul can hear Samuel.
This is really not a story about what Samuel is doing in the afterlife; it’s a story about Samuel interacting with Saul on earth. The only thing we get from the story comes in 1 Samuel 28:15, where Samuel says, in essence, “Me appearing to you is a disturbance.” In other words, I don’t like this, I don’t want to be here, and why have you disturbed me?
From this story, we could say that Samuel is conscious for this moment, but that doesn’t really answer the question about other moments. Someone who wants to argue that the dead aren’t conscious could say, “Well, that’s why Samuel was bothered—he was asleep; let him be, let him rest!”

Here’s what I want to put before you: Declaring that the dead continue into a conscious existence is, in some ways, an assumption. I’m not saying it’s a wrong assumption. I do believe in the conscious existence of the currently dead. But I also believe that making that argument from the Old Testament is hard. And there’s something to be learned in that fact. It’s a reminder that (1) Death isn’t good, and (2) this whole taking a bite from the tree of knowledge left us in a place of unknowing. But what we do know is that death isn’t good; it’s an intrusion of evil. And so the state of death is in no way glorified in the Old Testament.

A passage in Isaiah 14 is the closest we get to a description of the conscious dead in the Old Testament:

And it will be in the day when the Lord gives you rest from your pain and turmoil and harsh service in which you have been enslaved,⁵ that you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon, and say,

How the oppressor has ceased,
And how fury has ceased!
The Lord has broken the staff of the wicked,
The scepter of rulers
Which used to strike the peoples in fury with unceasing strokes,
Which subdued the nations in anger with unrestrained persecution.
The whole earth is at rest and is quiet;
They break forth into shouts of joy.
Even the cypress trees rejoice over you, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying,
“Since you were laid low, no tree cutter comes up against us.”
Sheol from beneath is excited over you to meet you when you come;
It arouses for you the spirits of the dead, all the leaders of the earth;
It raises all the kings of the nations from their thrones.
They will all respond and say to you,
“Even you have been made weak as we,
You have become like us.
“Your pomp and the music of your harps
Have been brought down to Sheol;
Maggots are spread out as your bed beneath you
And worms are your covering.”
How you have fallen from heaven,
O star of the morning, son of the dawn!
You have been cut down to the earth,
You who have weakened the nations!
But you said in your heart,
“I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God,
And I will sit on the mount of assembly
In the recesses of the north.
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.”
Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol,
To the recesses of the pit. (Isaiah 14:3–15, bold added)

Now, be careful of building a concrete idea of what the underworld looks like from a passage like this. Why? Well, you could say that there are people speaking here. And there are. But notice that there are also trees singing. So, I don’t believe that the literal is the focus here. And if we insist on the literal, we have to recognize that the spirits seem to be awakened (v. 9). If you insist on that, then you might argue that these spirits have been out of it this whole time until this “big shot” gets sent down to them to say, “Hey, guys, wake up—check this out!”

Note, too, this passage pictures dead kings still on their thrones. Is that what we think happens? An earthly king goes to the place of the dead and is now a king of the dead? I suppose it’s possible in a mocking sense.

But here’s what we do get from this passage: We get an idea of how people in the place of the dead are characterized. Even if you were a king in this life, in that place, you (along with everyone else) are weak: “You have been made weak … like us” (Isaiah 14:10). The word for departed spirits in this text is Rephaim, which is the idea of shades, shadows, a ghost, a weak existence.

The word for departed spirits in this text is Rephaim, which is the idea of … a weak existence.

There is, then, this weakness in their existence; it’s wispy. Isaiah poetically points to the idea of “Is it even worth being awake for this weak existence?” The answer, it seems, is “probably not … but there’s just enough of you that is conscious to keep you in a stupor.”

Who Goes to the Place of the Dead?

In Isaiah 14, we saw kings in the place of the dead. To get a fuller picture and an answer about who goes there, look at Job 3. In this chapter, Job will speak of the kings dwelling in the place of the dead, but he’ll show that both ends of the spectrum of humanity end in the same place: those who have reached the height of human glory (kings) and those who never had a chance to do anything.

Who goes to the place of the dead? Everybody—the greatest and the least.

Who goes to the place of the dead? Everybody—the greatest and the least.

Why did I not die at birth,
Come forth from the womb and expire?
Why did the knees receive me,
And why the breasts, that I should feed?
For now I would have lain down and been quiet;
I would have slept then, I would have been at rest,
With kings and with counselors of the earth,
Who rebuilt ruins for themselves;
Or with princes who had gold,
Who were filling their houses with silver.
Or like a miscarriage which is discarded, I would not be,
As infants that never saw light.
There the wicked cease from raging,
And there the weary are at rest.
The prisoners are at ease together;
They do not hear the voice of the taskmaster.
The small and the great are there,
And the slave is free from his master. (Job 3:11–19)

Those are the words of the most righteous man in his day speaking. He pictures the place of dead as a place of rest, but it’s anything but idyllic repose; he’s at rest because he’s not bothered anymore by pain on earth. At best, it’s neutral—it’s a rest of inactivity.

But again, this could be just a poetic way of speaking about the grave, so to speak. (“I’m suffering; just let me die—let me be in the dirt.”)

What about the verses that talk more about the wicked being cast down to Sheol, and therefore Sheol being a place of judgement for the wicked? There are several verses about the wicked going there. But if those verses are using “Sheol” to mean “the grave,” they’re saying little more than “I hope the wicked die.”

What’s the Place of the Dead Like?

Maybe we can answer the question “What is the place of the dead like?” As we already saw in the passage of Job 3 that we just read, there are three characteristics often repeated throughout Scripture about the place of the dead:

It’s below ground.
It’s dark.
It’s silent.

The grave is all three of these things too.

Underground: We often see the phrase “down to Sheol” in Scripture—for example, in Psalm 88. This psalm’s title says it’s “a Psalm of the sons of Korah.” In the book of Numbers, there was a rebellion of Korah and the sons of Korah—a rebellion against the Lord, against his chosen servant Moses. Numbers 16 says, “As [Moses] finished speaking all these words, the ground that was under them split open; and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, and their households, and all the men who belonged to Korah with their possessions” (vv. 31–32.

Now, the words of Psalm 88:

O Lord, the God of my salvation,
I have cried out by day and in the night before You.
Let my prayer come before You;
Incline Your ear to my cry!
For my soul has had enough troubles,
And my life has drawn near to Sheol.
I am reckoned among those who go down to the pit;
I have become like a man without strength,

Forsaken among the dead,
Like the slain who lie in the grave,
Whom You remember no more,
And they are cut off from Your hand.
You have put me in the lowest pit,
In dark places, in the depths.
Your wrath has rested upon me,
And You have afflicted me with all Your waves. Selah.
You have removed my acquaintances far from me;
You have made me an object of loathing to them;
I am shut up and cannot go out.
My eye has wasted away because of affliction;
I have called upon You every day, O Lord;
I have spread out my hands to You.

Will You perform wonders for the dead?
Will the departed spirits rise and praise You? Selah. (Psalm 88:1–10)

The answer to the question at the end of the passage is “no”—the praises of God aren’t heard from the dead because Sheol is silent (as we’ll look at more in a moment).

Dark: Because Sheol is underground, it’s dark. In Job 10, he describes the darkness in a passage where he is lamenting again (as in Job 3) that he ever existed:

Why then have You brought me out of the womb?
Would that I had died and no eye had seen me!
I should have been as though I had not been,
Carried from womb to tomb.
Would He not let my few days alone?
Withdraw from me that I may have a little cheer
Before I go—and I shall not return—
To the land of darkness and deep shadow,
The land of utter gloom as darkness itself,
Of deep shadow without order,
And which shines as the darkness. (Job 10:18–22)

Silent: The praises of God aren’t heard from the dead. The psalmist of Psalm 115 makes that clear: “The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence” (v. 17).

Summary

Underground, dark, silent. Theologian and scholar N.T. Wright, who’s done a lot of work on the resurrection, writes:

Sheol, Abaddon, the Pit, the grave. The dark, deep regions, the land of forgetfulness. These almost interchangeable terms denote a place of gloom and despair, a place where one can no longer enjoy life, and where the presence of YHWH himself is withdrawn. It is a wilderness: a place of dust to which creatures made of dust have returned. Those who have gone there are “the dead”; they are “shades”, rephaim, and they are “asleep”. As in Homer, there is no suggestion that they are enjoying themselves; it is a dark and gloomy world. Nothing much happens there. It is not another form of real life, an alternative world where things continue as normal. … If there are different degrees of Sheol, they are degrees of misery and degradation.⁶

Wright references Homer—specifically, his work, The Odyssey. I mentioned this work when preaching from Athens about Greek/pagan views of death.⁷ Here are the words of Achilles in The Odyssey; while saying these words, Achilles is dead and he’s talk to Odysseus:

Never try to reconcile me to death, glorious Odysseus. I should choose, so I might live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, some landless man with hardly enough to live on, rather than to be lord over all the dead that have perished.⁸

In other words, he’s saying, make me a slave on earth before you make me a king of the dead.

Before you react with a thought like “Wow, what a pagan—what a horrible view!” consider these two verses of Ecclesiastes:

Whoever is joined with all the living, there is hope; surely a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten. (9:4–5)

The similarity between views of people/writers of the Old Testament and pagan views is quite astonishing. It’s not really until we begin to approach New Testament times that we see in historical writing the concept of good and bad sides of the underworld. It was in the intertestamental period that theology of the intermediary state—the time between death and the resurrection of the dead—began to develop more fully.

In particular, as we approach New Testament times, the Pharisees began to develop a theology regarding the dead. Historian Josephus (who might have been a Pharisee) wrote this:

[The Pharisees] believe that souls have an immortal vigor 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 the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again.⁹

Conclusion: Bleakness to Hope, Uncertainty to Surety

What should we make of this unclear, but bleak, picture created for us in the Old Testament? The views of the Old Testament offer us three things.

#1: Preparation for us as we look toward our study of eternal judgment.¹⁰ There are going to be some things we simply don’t know. There are going to be some things we disagree on regarding whether to take them literally or poetically. Pretribulation, post-tribulation, amillennial, postmillennial … in matters like these, I will try not to be wishy washy. I’ll tell you what my position is and what the church’s position is, but it’s an area we’ll give each other liberty in.

There are going to be some who say, “Hades means hell,” while others say, “No, Hades means death.” Some will say “Kingdom means an actual kingdom,” while some say, “No, it just means the rule of God over all the world.

#2: A lesson in longing. The Old Testament has created a picture in which people were longing for more than what has been presented. They’re longing for more than this low place of darkness and silence. This less-than existence of Sheol creates a longing for the soul:

Not to be brought down, but rather to be exalted.
Not to be in darkness, but to be full of light.
Not to be in silent, but to be filled with the sound of declaring the goodness of the Lord.

Humanity wasn’t meant for lowliness, darkness, or silence. The story of God’s very creation is the opposite of all those things.

Humanity wasn’t meant for lowliness, darkness, or silence.

The story begins with God who exists on high, speaking light into darkness and constantly voicing the goodness of His work. Exaltation, light, the declaration of the goodness of the Lord: this is how the story begins. But it’s man’s sin that has cast the world into the condemned confines of the silent dark. The story that began in exalted light and praise of God will, however, one day end that way. And there is even hope for those now dead, who, like us, await once again the day in which God will hover above the earth.

But we don’t get any of that hope clarified until the New Testament. There, it is declared from out of the silence that there is a Sunrise from on high who will shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death (see Luke 1:67, 78–79).

#3: We as New Testament believers have a chance to experience the exalted light of the word of God. Not lowliness, not darkness, not silence.

How?

I’ll let Scripture declare it. The backdrop of this passage in 2 Peter 1 contrasts well with what we saw from the Old Testament. In the New Testament, we begin to get some hope about those who are alive in Jesus—Jesus Himself declares that God is the god of the living, not the dead (Matthew 22:32). We have on the Mount of Transfiguration the presence of those who died, Moses and Elijah; well, with Elijah, it’s a mystery—he kind of died, but the Scripture says he was taken up.¹¹ But they’re there, they’re conscious, at the transfiguration. And that’s the backdrop of what Peter (who was present at the Transfiguration) says in 2 Peter 1:16–18:

For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory,¹² “This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased”¹³—and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.

Notice the declaration of God’s praise, the light of God, the exaltation of the human soul—all the opposite of Sheol; the opposite of silence, opposite of darkness, opposite of loneliness. The declaration of God’s praise—the light of God, the exaltation of the human soul—is not only the promise of the next life, but it is the promise of now:

So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. (2 Peter 1:19)

The declaration of God’s praise—the light of God, the exaltation of the human soul—is not only the promise of the next life, but it is the promise of now.

Your present existence, believer, does not have to be one of silence when it comes to the things of God; we have “the prophetic word made more sure”—we have the Scriptures.

Your present existence does not have to be dark, because that word shines in a dark place. That present shining is a promise toward our exalted status for when the day dawns and the morning star arises in our hearts. That means that you live in the privileged age of Scriptural revelation.

Heed the words of Peter: You do well to pay attention to the prophetic word. It gives the light of certainty, and it gives the promise of the heart united with God.

Pay attention to the prophetic word. It gives the light of certainty, and it gives the promise of the heart united with God.

If that day doesn’t dawn between now and next Sunday, we’ll look more closely at the promise of the New Testament, the promise of the presence of God, the promise of another place of the dead—a place called Paradise.

Table of Contents

Introduction