Hos. xiii. 14, "I will ransom them from the power of the grave: I will redeem them from death. O death, where are thy plagues? O grave, where is thy destruction ?" In these fifteen instances the two versions agree in translating "grave": and it would be hard to find any fault with this rendering in any of these cases except upon the extreme ground that Sheol always means the place of departed spirits, and never the place for depositing dead bodies. But the absurdity of such a position as that is manifest from a passage like that in Eccl. ix. 10, which declares that there is no work, nor device, nor wisdom, nor knowledge there. This surely cannot be true in any world of spirits, good or bad. It is not possible to conceive of a spiritual being with no power of thought or knowledge or device. The very definition of a spirit as distinguished from a material substance is, that it is a somewhat that thinks, and knows, and chooses. Or from such a passage as Isa. xxxviii. 18, "The grave cannot praise thee; death cannot celebrate thee." Those who believe that Sheol is the abode of all the ineffably happy redeemed ones, between death and a resurrection. yet in the future, would not object to rendering the word, "grave," in this passage. For to declare of all the saints in Paradise that they could not praise God, would be too much for the most extreme of all extremists. This much, then, we must admit as inductively settled, namely, that Sheol sometimes means "the grave." The following two passages are those in which both versions agree in translating the word "pit":— Num. xvi. 30, "If the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swalloweth them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down alive into the pit, then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the Lord:" ver. 33, "They and all that appertain unto them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them, and they perished from among the congregation." In these two cases, referring to the same event, the idea of a physical burial is too plain to be questioned. Sheol is evidently not the place of departed spirits here. It was the earth closing over their bodies. And the word "pit" seems more appropriate than "grave," though expressing the same general idea. The following passages are those in which both versions agree in translating "hell ":— Isa. v. 14, "Hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure;" xiv. 9, "Hell from beneath is moved to meet thee at thy coming;" xiv. 15, "Thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit;" xxviii. 15, "We have made a covenant with death, and with hell we are at agreement;" xxxviii. 18, Your covenant with death shall be disannulled; and your agreement with hell shall not stand;" lvii. 9, "Thou didst debase thyself even unto hell." 66 66 Ezek. xxxi. 16, "I made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall, when I cast him down to hell," ver. 17, him;" xxxii. 21, "The strong among the mighty shall speak to him out of They also went down into hell with the midst of hell;" ver. 27, " They shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised who are gone down to hell with their weapons of war." Hab. ii. 5, "Because he transgresseth by wine, he is a proud man, keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied." neither Amos ix. 2, "Though they dig into hell, thence shall my hand take them; though they climb up into heaven, thence will I bring them down." The remaining examples are those in which the two versions differ, and we will study them more carefully, one In quoting I give generally the accepted version. Deut. xxxii. 22, "A fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell." (R. V., pit.) by one. Whichever of these versions we accept, is immaterial as to the question at issue. Sheol in neither case can be conceived of as the abode of the saints. 2 Sam. xxii. 6, "The sorrows of hell compassed me about; the snares of death prevented me." 66 Prevented me," in the old English sense of "came in my way." The Revised Version reads: "The cords of Sheol were round about me; The snares of death came upon me." I should prefer translating thus: "The cords of the grave were round about me; My reasons are that this song of David is written in Hebrew poetry; and the law of parallelism that runs through it is better sustained by making the first clause correspond closely in meaning to the second. But in no possible case is there any room left for conceiving of Sheol as a good place to live in. Job vii.9, "He that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more." The Revisers have needlessly obscured this passage by transferring the word "Sheol." It incontestably means. "grave" in many cases, and the whole connection in this passage is in favor of the accepted version. Job xi. 8, "It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?" Here again the revision gives us the Hebrew word. Why, it is not easy to say; when in a similar case of contrast in Amos they have made no change from the accepted version. But there is no suggestion of ineffable blessedness in any part of a place put into such violent contrast with heaven as Sheol is here. Job xiv. 13, "Oh that thou wouldst hide me in the grave." The Revisers transfer Sheol again. But the whole connection abundantly justifies the accepted version. Job xvii. 13, "If I wait, the grave is mine house;" ver. 16, "They shall go down to the bars of the pit." But the In both these verses the Revisers say "Sheol." law of parallelism requires, and the entire connection demands, that the reference should be understood to be to the place of deposit for the dead body, not the place to which the spirit is to go. Notice the words that intervene: "I have said to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister." These plainly refer to bodily decay. Job xxi. 13, "They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave;" xxiv. 19, "Drought and heat consume the snow-waters: so doth the grave those who have sinned." For some reason the Revisers seem very reluctant to allow Job to speak of the grave; so they say "Sheol." There is no reason for not translating the word in both these verses as the old version has done. "Grave" meets the connection entirely. My views of the main question do not at all affect my judgment in reference to these passages. For you will find that if you interpret Sheol as the place of the departed spirit, instead of the dead body, it is a place simply of retribution for those who are described as saying unto God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways; and as living unrighteous lives and doing not good to the widow. They are persons of unmitigated badness who are here spoken of as going to Sheol. Job xxvi. 6, "Hell is naked before him; and destruction hath no cov. ering." Once more Sheol must do service for the new version. But I think the reader will agree with me that to render the word "grave" is better than either. The parallelism is complete if we say:— "The grave is naked before him: Destruction hath no covering." Ps. vi. 5, "In death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?" A most manifestly correct translation; the two clauses illustrating the Hebrew parallelism most happily:— "In death there is no remembrance of thee: Sometimes the Revisers would seem to be so possessed of Sheol as to be well-nigh dispossessed of all critical sense or reason. But I am not concerned in this for the sake of my cause: because if Sheol means here the place of departed spirits and not the grave, then to say that there is nobody there to give God thanks would settle it forever that it is not the place for the redeemed saints. For if anything is taught in the Bible, and accepted by Christians generally, it is that the saved in the world to come are full of praise 70 and thanksgiving. If I could believe honestly that the word here referred to the abode of departed spirits, this passage alone would prove beyond the possibility of a doubt that none but lost spirits are there. But I think it means grave; and other passages must be relied on to prove that truth. And here is one-the very next in regular order:— Ps. ix. 17, "The wicked shall be turned into hell with all the nations that forget God." Surely the Revisers, inasmuch as they have fifteen times translated the word "hell" as the accepted version does here, will let this stand without change! But no! The Sheol craze happened to be on them, and so the Hebrew word apBut no foreign speech can disguise the pears untranslated. Let Sheol stand if you please. meaning of this passage. It only becomes another synonym for the place of punishThe wicked shall be turned into Sheol. Is it anyment. where said that the righteous shall be turned into Sheol? Never once! And yet, according to the view which I am told by my critics is the "orthodox" doctrine, it is equally the place, and always has been the place, for the righteous who are saved, and the incorrigibly wicked who are lost. None of the redeemed spirits, except Enoch and Elijah, have as yet gone anywhere else! Nor will they go anywhere else until this world is burned up! Alas, if that event should yet be a thousand millenniums off! It is agreed, most reasonably I think, that Sheol could not be here translated "grave," because the connection shows that this consignment to Sheol is punishment meted out to the wicked; and to say that the wicked should be turned into the grave with all the nations that forget God would have no force, because everybody knows that all-good and bad But do not those who reason alike die and are buried. thus, so logically and unanswerably, see that, by the same reasoning, Sheol cannot be the place of all departed spirits1 Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1891, pp. 339–346. |