SHEOL
(Sheʹol).
Sheol does not refer to an individual burial place or grave (Hebrew: qeʹver, as in Judges 16:31; qevu·rahʹ, as in Genesis 35:20), nor an individual tomb (Hebrew: ga·dhishʹ, as in Job 21:32), but to the common grave of all mankind.
In this regard the Encyclopædia Britannica (1965 ed., Vol. 11, p. 276) comments: “Throughout most of the Old Testament period . . . the Israelites thought of Sheol as the great democracy of all the dead. Sheol was located somewhere ‘under’ the earth. When ‘the breath of life’ had gone out of a man and returned to Yahweh from whom it originally came, and when his buried body had decomposed, the residue of his individuality slept in Sheol. The state of the dead was one of neither pain nor pleasure. Neither reward for the righteous nor punishment for the wicked was associated with Sheol. The good and the bad alike, tyrants and saints, kings and orphans, Israelites and Gentiles—all slept together without awareness of one another.”
While the Greek teaching of the immortality of the human soul infiltrated Jewish religious thinking in later centuries, the Bible record shows that Sheol refers to a place of unconsciousness in mankind’s common grave. (Eccl. 9:4-6, 10) Those in Sheol neither praise nor mention God. (Ps. 6:4, 5; Isa. 38:17-19) Yet it cannot be said that it simply represents ‘a condition of being separated from God,’ since the Scriptures render such a teaching untenable by showing that Sheol is “in front of” him, and that God is in effect “there.” (Prov. 15:11; Ps. 139:7, 8; Amos 9:1, 2) For this reason Job, longing to be relieved of his suffering, prayed that he might go to Sheol and later be remembered by Jehovah and be called out from Sheol.—Job 14:12-15.
Throughout the inspired Scriptures Sheol is continually associated with death and not life. (1 Sam. 2:6; 2 Sam. 22:6; Pss. 18:4, 5; 49:7-10, 14, 15; 88:2-6; 89:48; Isa. 28:15-18; also compare Psalm 116:3, 7-10 with 2 Corinthians 4:13, 14, and Jonah 2:1, 2, 6 with Matthew 12:40.) Abel appears to have been the first one to go to Sheol, and since then countless millions of human dead have joined him in the dust of the ground. It is spoken of as a “land of darkness” (Job 10:21) and a place of “silence.”—Ps. 115:17.
On the day of Pentecost, 33 C.E., the apostle Peter quoted from Psalm 16:10 and applied it to Christ Jesus. Luke, in quoting Peter’s words, used the Greek word haiʹdes, thereby showing that Sheol and Hades refer to the same thing, mankind’s common grave.—Acts 2:25-27, 29-32.
The Hebrew word sheʼohlʹ occurs sixty-five times in the Bible and in the Authorized Version has been translated thirty-one times “hell,” thirty-one times “grave,” and three times “pit.” The Catholic Douay translation renders the word sixty-three times as “hell,” once as “pit,” and once as “death.” Commenting on such use of the word “hell” in Bible translation, Collier’s Encyclopedia (1962 ed., Vol. 12, p. 27) says: “Since Sheol in Old Testament times referred simply to the abode of the dead and suggested no moral distinctions, the word ‘hell,’ as understood today, is not a happy translation.” Fortunately, more recent translations generally transliterate the word into English simply as “Sheol.” (See RS, AT, NW, and others.) There is no present English word that conveys the precise sense of the Hebrew term sheʼohlʹ. The generally accepted root meaning of the word is “to inquire, request or demand”, and, according to the Hebrew authority Gesenius, it basically means “the hollow place” that asks for or demands all without distinction, as it receives all the dead of mankind within it. More recently, Hebrew scholar L. Koehler would connect sheʼohlʹ with a root meaning “to crash into ruins.” (Journal of Semitic Studies, January, 1956, pp. 19, 20) During Jesus Christ’s thousand-year reign it is emptied and destroyed.—Revelation 20:13, 14, where Sheol is called “Hades”; see GRAVE; HADES; HELL.