Sheol and Gehenna: The Afterlife before Jesus

In modern times, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is assumed that after we die, there is an individual judgment, and a soul is sent to either Heaven or Hell. But in Bible times, this was not so. The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament reveal a different set of beliefs, in which souls went to the shadowy realm of Sheol or the fires of Gehenna.

What was the nature of Sheol? Scattered Bible passages give us details, piecing together a description of the underworld. Sheol was the dark domain of the dead, and it was located beneath the Earth (Numbers 16:30). To go there was to go “down” to it (Job 7:9) and it was known as the “Pit” (Psalm 16:10). It was personified as having a mouth and a hungry belly, which was never satisfied (Proverbs 30:15-16; Jonah 2:2; Isaiah 5:14).

After death, everyone went to Sheol, and that meant everyone, period. Ezekiel 32:18-32 describes how people from every nation went there, from Egypt to Assyria. Even the mighty Pharaoh of Egypt went there, along with other kings and princes. The circumcised Israelites went there with the uncircumcised foreigners. Soldiers went there with those they killed. Job 3:17-19 says, “There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners are at ease together; they do not hear the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slaves are free from their masters.”

Ecclesiastes 9:10 describes Sheol as a place of ghostly shades who can do nothing anymore. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.” In Sheol, souls do not remember God or praise him (Psalm 6:5; 30:9), although God’s presence still exists there (Psalm 139:7-8). God has the power to deliver souls from Sheol (Psalm 86:13), to spare someone from going there at all (Acts 2:27-31), or to lift someone to Heaven instead (like Enoch or Elijah).

When the Bible was translated into Greek, Sheol was translated as “Hades” (e.g. in Matthew 11:23), because it was so similar to the Greek myth of the underworld. In Hellenistic times, Sheol took on some of the characteristics of Hades, such as having a being named “Hades” who ruled over it. Furthermore, Hades was thought to have different sections such as a paradise for the virtuous and a place of punishment for the wicked. By the second century BCE, this idea was also incorporated into Sheol. Sheol was divided into two parts, a place where the virtuous rested in peace until judgment and resurrection, and a place of torment for the wicked.

The virtuous went to a comfortable part of Sheol called the “Bosom of Abraham” where they waited with the Patriarch. Jesus referred to this place in one of his parables (Luke 16:22-26). “The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.”

As for the place of torment, it was called Gehenna. The name comes from a valley near Jerusalem where children were burned as a sacrifice to Canaanite gods such as Baal or Molech. It was called the valley of the son of Hinnom – “Ge (ben) Hinnom”, which became “Gehenna” (Jeremiah 7:31, 19:2-6, 32:35; 2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chronicles 28:3). Even after that abominable practice of child sacrifice was halted, bodies of executed criminals were thrown there, along with animal carcasses and refuse to be burned. Thus the name was fitting to give to the place of torment in Sheol. In the Bible, Gehenna is usually translated as “Hell”.

Gehenna is a place where both body and soul are destroyed (Matthew 10:28). It is a “furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13:49-50) If Sheol was darkness, Gehenna was the outer darkness (Matthew 8:12), “where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.” (Mark 9:48) “This is the second death, the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:14).

Western Christians still believe in Gehenna, calling it Hell. But how do we account for the fact that Sheol is not generally believed in today? In the Apostle’s Creed, it states that Jesus “was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead.” What did Jesus do in Hell? One work of Christian Apocrypha called the “Acts of Pilate / Gospel of Nicodemus” includes the story of Christ’s descent into Hell. In this account, we see what supposedly happened to Sheol. Jesus, in fact, went there to close it down. The story goes like this:

Satan tells the ruler of Sheol, Hades, that Jesus, King of Glory, is coming down to him. Hades becomes afraid, remembering how Jesus’ power took Lazarus away from Sheol. Hades orders the gates shut, but Jesus breaks them down, and defeats Satan and Hades. Holy people like Abraham, David, Adam, and Isaiah are there to meet him. Jesus empties Sheol, the section known as the Bosom of Abraham which contains the virtuous, and leads a long procession from Sheol to Heaven, where Enoch and Elijah greet them.

In the centuries up to the present, specific beliefs about Heaven and Hell have been varied, and particular to various branches of Christianity. Western Christianity generally holds that souls are sent to Heaven to be with the Lord after death, ever since Jesus’ redemptive work. But there is still a universal judgment day to come, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:6-10: “...we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord [...] and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.”