CHAPTER XII.

THE SCRIPTURAL DOCTRINE CONCERNING HELL.

There are three words, or substantive forms, in the Hebrew and Greek, rendered into English by the word Hell. The expression in 2 Pet. ii. 4, “cast them down to hell," is the translation of one Greek word in a participal form. Of these words one, Sheol, is pure Hebrew, and, of course, is found only In the Old Testament; one, Hades, is pure Greek, and found only in the New Testament; and the third 8 Hebrew-Greek, and occurs in its Hebrew form Gee Hinnom in the Old Testament, and in its Greek dress, Gehenna, in the New Testament.

SECTION I.

SHEOL-ITS SCRIPTURAL MEANING AND USAGE-" THE WICKED SHALL BE TURNED INTO HELL."

Bi-Sheol, occurs sixty-four times in the Bible, and is translated Hell thirty-one times, Grave thirty times and Pit three times. A careful examination of the passages establishes the fact that it bears one meaning throughout the Old Testament, viz:

The Grave; the Place of the Dead; the Realm

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of Death; supposed to be far down below the earth, a kind of under-world.

In the following passages, the original of "the grave is Sheol. "I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning." Gen. xxxvii. 35. "If mischief befall him (Benjamin,) by the way in which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave." xlii. 38. "But his hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood." 1 Kings ii. 6, 9. "O, that thou wouldst hide me in the grave." Job. xiv. 13. "For my soul is full of troubles, and my soul draweth nigh to the grave." Ps. lxxxviii. 3. Of Korah and his company, it is said, “They and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit (Sheol,) and the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the congregation." Num, xvi. 33.

These passages are sufficient to establish the above definition of Sheol, and to illustrate the Scriptural usage in this sense. It is plain that the word signifies the grave; or the underworld of the dead, to which the grave is the gate of entrance. And it is equally plain that all go down to this realm of the dead, Sheol, grave, hell, or by whatever name it is

'Several passages commonly regarded as figurative, will be found literal, if closely studied. For example: Psalm cxvi. 3. "The pains of hell gat hold on me,' ," is a reference to the grave, or the painful experience of coming to it through death; and is explained by the parallelism, "the sorrows of death compassed me. So Psalm lxxxvi. 13, "Thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell"-my life from the grave, or the realm of death. Isa. lvii. 9, "Thou didst debase thyself even unto hell," is a comparison; as low morally as Sheol is naturally, or topographically. Jonah ii. 2, "Out of the belly of hell cried I;" or as we say, "out of the jaws of death."

called; Jacob and Korah, David and Nebuchadnezzar, the faithful servant of God and the guilty transgressor, Israelite and Heathen. It is not a place of punishment nor of reward. It has nothing in its meaning or use touching the misery or the happiness of those who go there. It is simply the realm of death, the place where the dead are, all the dead, whatever their moral character; and it would have been just as correct and exegetical to have translated it "heaven" as "hell." Indeed a learned writer, with great frankness, confesses that Sheol "far more often signifieth the place of the blessed, whither the saints and patriarchs went when they died, than the place whither sinners went.'

And this is the witness of scholars and theologians of all creeds. Dr. Fairbairn, the learned professor of Divinity in the College of Glasgow, says: "Beyond doubt, Sheol, like Hades, was regarded as the abode, after death, alike of the good and the bad.” Dr. Whitby says: "Sheol throughout the Old Testament, signifies not the place of punishment, or of the souls of bad men only, but the grave only, or the place of death." "It is the place to which the good as well as the bad go." Dr. Campbell says, it "signifies the state of the dead, without regard to the goodness or badness of the persons, their happiness or misery." Dr. Muenscher says, Sheol is "the realm or kingdom of death, an abode deep under the earth. Thither go all men, without distinction. There all pain and anguish cease, and unbroken silence reigns; all is powerless and still." Le Clerc, Grotius, Ainsworth, and others, give the

'Poole's Continuators, on the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

same meaning, "the grave only, or the state of the dead" tantum sepulchrum, aut statum mor

tuorum.

And the passages where Sheol is rendered by the English word hell, confirm and illustrate this point. For example: "For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." Psalm xvi. 10. Of course "hell” here is the grave, which is parallel with "corruption' in the corresponding half verse, according to the structure of Hebrew poetry. The soul of God's Holy One could not certainly have been in a place of endless torment. "For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains." Deut. xxxii. 22-26. "Though they dig into hell, thence shall my hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down." Amos ix. 2. "If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." Ps. cxxxix. 8. "It is high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know." Job xi. 8. In these passages, the heights of heaven, or the firmament, are set in contrast with the depths of Sheol, or the deep underworld of the dead. Men would not be represented as digging into a place of endless torment, or as climbing to a place of heavenly blessedness, to escape the wrath of God; but it is common to speak of the grave as a place of rest and refuge. Hence Job says, "O, that thou wouldst hide me in the grave (Sheol, hell,) that thou wouldst keep me secret until thy wrath be past." xiv. 13.

Professor Stuart very properly says, "There can be no reasonable doubt that Sheol does most generally mean the underworld, the grave or sepulchre, the world of the dead. It is very clear that there are many passages where no other meaning can reasonably be assigned to it. Accordingly, our English translators have rendered the word Sheol grave, in thirty instances out of the whole sixty-four instances in which it occurs."

He thinks, however, that there are five texts, in which Sheol seems to indicate a place of future punishment: Job xxi. 13, Prov. v. 5, ix. 18, xxiii. 14, Psalms ix. 17. It is difficult to see what there is in these five texts, more than in the other fifty-nine, to indicate this doctrine; and this is so evident, that he scarcely names them, before he admits that three of them may "designate a death, violent and premature, inflicted by the hand of heaven." He farther says, that it is "a sound rule in philology, never to depart from the ordinary sense of a word, unless the context imperiously demands it." And what is there

To show conspicuously the absurdity of giving to Sheol the meaning of hell as now understood, it is only necessary to state the fact that it was the name of the first king of Israel, Saul. The words Sheol and Saul are the same in Hebrew, the difference in the sound arising from a difference in pointing. See Cruden's Concordance - Definition of Proper Names. Think of baptizing a child now with the name Hell! Does not this simple fact show that the Hebrews could not possibly have associated with Sheol the revolting ideas which some Christians attach to our word hell?

* He confesses that "the probability that Sheol in these texts designates the future punishment of the wicked, depends perhaps in a great measure on the state of knowledge among the Hebrews with regard to future rewards and punishments." This is a curious remark for a critic. In other words: Sheol means future punishment, if the Hebrews be lieved in it and the Hebrews believed in it, if Sheol means it!