The Biblical Articles: Sheol -- Where God Is Not Present

The Bible takes it for granted that we have been created by God for fellowship with him. At first it is thought that we can enter into this fellowship during our lifetimes. But as the Old Testament writers wrestle with the problem they gradually come to see that this God, since he is beyond mere time and space, must open up the possibility for a relationship with his children that goes beyond mere time and space. The eternal God, in other words, must open up the possibility for us to enter into eternal relationship with him.

The Bible also takes it for granted that something has gone wrong. Our sin, that is, our persistent desire to place ourselves rather than God at the center of life, has disrupted the relationship and seriously hampered its fulfillment both as a present reality and as a future possibility. It is for this reason that the Biblical writers stress a notion that is difficult for us to understand -- the connection between sin and death. Sin is a way of talking about the fact that our relationship with God has broken to pieces. Death is a way of talking about the fact that life itself has broken to pieces, life which was God-given. Both sin and death thus stand as threats to the relationship between man and God. There is a real connection between sin, a separation from God, and death as a further separation from God. Let us see how these notions develop in the Bible.

The Old Testament writers felt at first that death brought total separation from God. Man cut himself off from God by his sin, and death completed the cutting-off process. Thus they took the fact of death very seriously, and did not try to avoid thinking about it; as a result, early Old Testament writers did not have a particularly pleasant view of the afterlife. They conceived of the dead person as going to Sheol (incorrectly translated as "hell"), a place called "the pit." Sheol was a sort of shadowy, underground cave, where people continued to live a vague and undesirable kind of existence. The significant thing about Sheol was that God was not there. This is what made it so vague and undesirable. Not only was God not there, but he took no account of those who were -- they had passed beyond his concern. When the psalmist wants to describe a situation in which God is not present, he likens it to the experience of being in Sheol:

For my soul is full of troubles,

and my life draws near to Sheol.

I am reckoned among those who go down to the Pit;

I am a man who has no strength,

like one forsaken among the dead,

like the slain that lie in the grave,

like those whom thou dost remember no more,

for they are cut off from thy hand.

( Ps. 88: 3-5,)