StrongerBible

she'ol

שְׁאוֹל

HebrewH7585“hell, the grave, ...”

Appears 66 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Gen 37:35Gen 42:38Gen 44:29Gen 44:31Num 16:30Num 16:33Deu 32:221Sa 2:62Sa 22:61Ki 2:61Ki 2:9Job 7:9Job 11:8Job 14:13Job 17:13Job 17:16Job 21:13Job 24:19Job 26:6Psa 6:5(6)Psa 9:17(18)Psa 16:10Psa 18:5(6)Psa 86:13Psa 139:8Pro 15:24Pro 23:14Isa 5:14Isa 7:11Ezk 31:15Ezk 31:16Ezk 31:17
Word studyResearch-gradesheh-OLEnoun

What she'ol means

the realm of the dead: the dark world beneath the earth where everyone who dies goes down.

TranslatabilityUntranslatableCertaintyStrong

This is Israel's inherited name for the underworld, the shadowy place below the ground where the dead are gathered. The Bible pictures it as dark, dusty, silent, and deep, reached by going down and shut behind gates and bars, the opposite of the highest heaven. It is not the same as a single grave, for which Hebrew has its own word (קבר); it is the one great realm that lies under all the graves. Nor is it yet hell in the later Christian sense of a place of fiery punishment for the wicked. It is simply the land of the dead, and in its earliest uses everyone goes there alike, the famous and the forgotten, the upright and the wicked.

The word is rare, used about sixty-six times, and almost never in law or plain narrative. It surfaces in poetry, in personal prayers of distress, and in the warnings of the wise and the prophets. That is why a single word can take on such different colors.

  • Sometimes it names the actual destination of the dead.
  • Sometimes it is pictured as a hungry monster that swallows people whole.
  • Sometimes it stands in poetry simply as another word for death.
  • And very often a living person in deep trouble cries that he is already sinking into it, meaning he feels as good as dead.

What holds these uses together is the same bleak place: cut off from the daily praise of God, a land from which, the older texts insist, no one climbs back out. Israel's distinctive note is that even this realm is not beyond God's reach. He can bring a person down to it and raise them up again, and his presence is not shut out by its gates. Only in the latest parts of the Hebrew Bible does the gloom begin to lift, as hope of being rescued from death deepens into hope of resurrection out of it.

Nuances

1athe underworld as the place one goes down to at death; the common destination of the dead.
Gen 37:35Gen 42:38Gen 44:29Gen 44:31Num 16:30Num 16:33Deu 32:221Ki 2:61Ki 2:9Job 7:9Job 17:13Job 17:16
1bthe silent, gloomy place cut off from the praise and remembrance of God.
Job 11:8Job 14:13Psa 6:5(6)Isa 38:18
1cpictured as a ravenous monster that opens its mouth and swallows the living, never satisfied.
Pro 1:12Pro 27:20Pro 30:16Isa 5:14Isa 14:9Hab 2:5
1din poetry, paired with death almost as another word for it.
2Sa 22:6Psa 18:5(6)Pro 5:5Pro 7:27Pro 9:18Sng 8:6Isa 28:15Isa 28:18Hos 13:14
1ethe brink of death felt by a living sufferer who cries that he is already sinking into it.
Psa 30:3Psa 86:13Psa 88:3Psa 116:3Pro 15:24Pro 23:14Jon 2:2
1fthe realm God still rules, from which he can deliver and into which his reach extends.
1Sa 2:6Job 26:6Psa 16:10Psa 49:15Psa 139:8Pro 15:11Amo 9:2

What scholars say about she'ol

The critical lexicons and theological dictionaries (BDB; HALOT 1368-69; TDOT 15:239-48, L. Wachter; TLOT, G. Gerleman; NIDOTTE, R. L. Harris) and the field's standard monograph, N. J. Tromp, Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nether World in the Old Testament (1969), agree on a broad picture: this word names the dark, dusty, silent underworld of the dead beneath the earth, reached by descent and fenced with gates, set in a word-cluster with the pit, destruction, dust, and the shades who dwell there. Three large debates run beneath that consensus. The first is its origin: the etymology is genuinely unresolved, with proposals tying it to a verb meaning "to ask" (Gesenius, Jastrow, Albright), to a word for a hollow or cavity, to a root for desolation, to a discredited Akkadian loanword, and most recently to a Hurrian-Syrian underworld goddess (Lipinski; tentatively Hess), none commanding agreement (so Kohler, who called it unexplained; Hays, who calls it highly disputed). The second is its coverage: the dominant view since Pedersen, refined by Tromp, Lewis, Spronk, and Schmidt, is that every dead person descends to the same realm; Johnston (Shades of Sheol, 2002), anticipated by Rosenberg and developed differently by Levenson, argues it is largely the fate of the wicked or of the unfortunate, untimely dead, a reading McLaughlin rebuts from texts like Jacob's descent and Job 14:13. A minority (R. L. Harris) reduces it to "the grave," which most reject because Hebrew already has a word for the grave and because the old Greek translation deliberately kept the two terms apart. The third is development: whether the concept stayed a neutral, universal gloom until resurrection hope erupted late in Isaiah 26 and Daniel 12 (Nickelsburg, Collins), or whether that hope grew organically from Israel's faith all along (Levenson, Barr). The Septuagint's near-mechanical rendering by the Greek word for the underworld became the channel through which the concept passed into Second Temple Judaism and the New Testament.

Where scholars disagree about she'ol

Whether this word means the underworld of the dead or simply "the grave."

  • majorityIt is the underworld, the shadowy realm of the dead beneath the earth, described in cosmic terms no single grave fits.; N. J. Tromp, Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nether World in the Old Testament (1969); T. J. Lewis, "Dead, Abode of the," Anchor Bible Dictionary 2:101-105; HALOT, s.v. שאול, 1368-69
  • minorityIt means simply "the grave," with no underworld referent, since the Old Testament would not teach that the godly went to a realm cut off from God.; R. L. Harris, "The Meaning of the Word Sheol," JETS 4 (1961); carried into TWOT and NIDOTTE

Who goes to this realm: every dead person alike, or chiefly the wicked and those who die badly.

  • majorityEveryone who dies goes down to the same realm, patriarch, king, and fool alike; it is universal and undifferentiated in the older texts.; J. Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, I-II (1926); N. J. Tromp, Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nether World (1969); T. J. Lewis, "Dead, Abode of the," ABD 2:101-105
  • minorityIt is predominantly the destiny of the ungodly, with the righteous fearing it only at an unhappy or untimely death they read as punishment.; P. S. Johnston, Shades of Sheol (2002), 81-82; R. Rosenberg, "The Concept of Biblical Sheol" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard, 1981)
  • minorityThe line falls not between righteous and wicked but between a good, contented, full-aged death and an unfortunate, violent, or premature one; the latter is where this realm is invoked.; J. D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel (2006), chs. 3-4

Whether the realm is morally neutral or carries the weight of punishment.

  • majorityIt is morally neutral but undesirable: gloomy and cut off from the praise of God, not a place of torment or judgment.; T. J. Lewis, "Dead, Abode of the," ABD 2:101-105; J. D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel (2006); N. J. Tromp, Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nether World (1969)
  • minorityIt carries a moral or even punitive significance, the fate especially of the wicked.; P. R. Williamson, Death and the Afterlife (2018); K. C. Dunham, "Ransomed from the Hand of Sheol," DBSJ 26 (2021): 3-33

Whether the idea develops across the Hebrew Bible toward resurrection hope, and how.

  • contestedIt stayed the neutral, universal, dreary underworld until resurrection hope erupted late and decisively under the Maccabean crisis (Isaiah 26:19; Daniel 12:2).; G. W. E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism (exp. ed. 2006); J. J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia (1993)
  • contestedResurrection hope is not a late or borrowed implant but grows organically from Israel's faith in a God who kills and makes alive; the late texts crystallize what was always implicit.; J. D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel (2006); J. Barr, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (1992)

Where the word comes from; its etymology.

  • majorityThe etymology is unresolved; proposals (a verb "to ask," a word for a hollow, a root for desolation, an Akkadian loanword, a Hurrian-Syrian underworld goddess) are all uncertain and none commands agreement.; L. Kohler, "Alttestamentliche Wortforschung: Scheol," Theologische Zeitschrift 2 (1946): 71-74; C. B. Hays, A Covenant with Death (2015), 176-79; HALOT, s.v. שאול, 1368-69
In-depth research

This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.

Sources

  • N. J. Tromp, Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nether World in the Old Testament, Biblica et Orientalia 21 (1969)monograph
  • P. S. Johnston, Shades of Sheol: Death and Afterlife in the Old Testament (2002)monograph
  • T. J. Lewis, "Dead, Abode of the," Anchor Bible Dictionary 2 (1992): 101-105dictionary
  • J. D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel (2006)monograph
  • C. B. Hays, A Covenant with Death: Death in the Iron Age II and Its Rhetorical Uses in Proto-Isaiah (2015)monograph
  • HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner-Stamm), s.v. שאול, 1368-69lexicon
  • BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. שאולlexicon
  • L. Wachter, "שאול," Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT) 15:239-248dictionary
  • G. W. E. Nickelsburg, Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity, exp. ed. (2006)monograph
  • J. J. Collins, Daniel, Hermeneia (1993)commentary
  • R. L. Harris, "The Meaning of the Word Sheol as Shown by Parallels in Poetic Passages," JETS 4 (1961)article
  • J. Jeremias, "ᾅδης," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) 1:146-149dictionary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of שְׁאוֹל

c s absolute

שְׁאוֹל, שְּׁאוֹל, שְׁאוֹלָ, שְׁאֹלָ, שְׁאֹל, שְׁאָלָה

Deu 32:22, 1Sa 2:6, 2Sa 22:6, 1Ki 2:9, Job 7:9, Job 14:13, Job 17:13, Job 21:13

c s construct

שְׁאוֹל

Job 24:19