11 Facts About Sheol

Sheol in the Hebrew Bible is a place of still darkness which lies after death.

In some texts, Sheol is considered to be the home of both the righteous and the wicked, separated into respective compartments; in others, it was considered a place of punishment, meant for the wicked dead alone, and is equated with Gehenna in the Talmud.

Sheol is mentioned 66 times throughout the Hebrew Bible, first appearing in the Book of Genesis.

Sheol makes its next appearance during the episode of Korah in the Book of Numbers.

Sheol is mentioned in several Psalms, again, as the grave of humanity.

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Those in Sheol remember nothing, not even Yahweh, yet elsewhere its inhabitants possess an otherwise impossible perception of earthly events, even those which occur after their demise.

Furthermore, despite the evidently abstract nature of Sheol, there is some physicality to it: it was clearly understood to be subterranean, which is further supported by its association with the term bor, found in Isaiah 14:15,24:22, and Ezekiel 26:20.

The idea that both the righteous and unrighteous eventually descend to Sheol appears to be an unspoken assumption in the Hebrew Bible - thus Jacob and David have no reservation in acknowledging their eventual residency, even as the later prophets spoke of Sheol lying in wait for the wicked.

The general characteristics of an afterlife such as Sheol were not unique to the ancient Israelites, the Babylonians had a similar underworld called Aralu, and the Greeks had one known as Hades.

Some scholars argue that Sheol understood anthropomorphically fits the semantic complex of the other ancient Near Eastern death deities such as Nergal, Ereshkigal or Mot.

The idea of Sheol underwent extensive modification and became widely diversified, with a newfound plethora of interpretations.