It is also transcribed “sheol” and it was the name given among the Jews (Gen. 50.10; Is. 5.14; Hab. 2.5) to the afterlife, to the place where the dead went, to the dark place or state in which they descended to the To die. It was thus an indeterminate and inexplicable concept: mysterious, dark, unapproachable, sad, silent. It is used in the Old Testament up to 65 times to describe the realm of the dead. And in the New the term “hell” is transmitted 11 times in the sense of abyss or underground (infernus in Latin; aidou in Greek)
The interpretations that have been given are many, but none pertinent. It was always related to the mystery of the afterlife, with the inexplicable.
Pedro Chico González, Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy, Editorial Bruño, Lima, Peru 2006
Source: Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy
(-> fire, hell). It is the name most used in the Hebrew Bible to indicate the lower world, as the abode of the dead and as the personification of death itself* (cf. Prov 27,20; 30,16; Ps 18,6; etc.). It is equivalent to the Greek Hades, but with a difference: the Greeks have been able to personify Hades, presenting it as God, alongside Zeus (God of the sky) and Demeter (goddess of the earth). The Hebrews, on the other hand, at least according to the testimony of the Bible, have not personified Sheol, nor have they made it a God, nor an enemy of Yahweh, nor a reality subject to God. Sheol is, rather, the poetic and symbolic personification of the power of death. In the Spanish versions of the Bible it is sometimes left untranslated, other times it is translated as death (abyss, hell). Sheol is not a place of condemnation (it is not a hell of punishment, as opposed to a heaven of reward), but rather the abode or universal state of the dead. Only late Judaism or the New Testament will be able to distinguish between a heaven and a hell understood as an expression of salvation or damnation.
PIKAZA, Javier, Dictionary of the Bible. History and Word, Divine Word, Navarra 2007
Source: Dictionary of Bible History and Word
It is the most usual Hebrew word in the Old Testament to designate the “beyond”; means “kingdom of the dead” or “hell”, Its original meaning, despite the studies carried out so far, is still obscure. It appears 66 times in the Old Testament, especially in the book of Psalms, in Job and in Proverbs.
Sheol is imagined as a prison, as a dark underground place, where there will be nothing but ruins, destruction and death. Darkness reigns there, silence, An eloquent passage from the book of Job describes it this way: “region of darkness and the shadows of death, land of darkness and chaos, where the same brightness is dark night” (Job 10,21-22). In sheol there is no God (Sal 139,812), El Qohélet affirms: “there is no work, nor reason, nor science, nor wisdom in sheol, where you are going” (Ecl 9,10). In sheol the dead are “those whom you (God) do not remember and do not want rejected with your hands” (Ps 88,6).
The dead no longer have any vital relationship with God, they cannot even adore him: “The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do those who go down into silence” (Ps l ]5, 17). Indeed, death means lack of relationship, either with God or with others.
“To be brought out of sheol” is a common expression in the psalms to indicate not so much the hope in a happy life after death, but rather the confidence that the fellowship of life with the Lord cannot end with death (cf. Ps 49,16: “God will save my life; he will snatch me from the power of sheol)”) The idea of a “rapture” by God is based on the hope of a union with the Lord that not even physical death you can interrupt. “Even when my flesh and my heart are consumed, God will remain forever part of my inheritance” (Ps 73,26). In this way, step by step, the faith in blessed immortality and in the resurrection opens its way, which is clearly affirmed in 2 Mac 7 14; 12,38-46 and Dan 12,1-3. Finally, in the middle of the 1st century BC, the Book of Wisdom expressly proclaims faith in the blessed life after death, reserved for the just.
A, Bonora
Bibl.: Sheol, in DB, 1828-1830: A, Marchadour, Death and life in the Bible, Verbo Divino, Estella 51993: R. Criado, The popular belief of the Old Testament in the hereafter: the “sheol”, in xv Spanish Bible Week, Madrid 1955, 21-56.
PACOMIO, Luciano, Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary, Divine Word, Navarra, 1995
Source: Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary