Psalm6:4-5    Sheol
                                  So David pleads on the basis of God’s unfailing love, he begs that salvation will come or else he will die! In v5 we have the first mention in the Psalms of the place of the departed, in Hebrew this is Sheol, in Greek – Hades and David is anxious to avoid going there!  This is perhaps, a good time to discover more about this place.  Sheol is mentioned 16 times in the Psalms and the meaning moves between ideas of the grave, the underworld and the state of death.  What do we know about this Sheol?
·      Whilst heaven is always above, Sheol is always below the earth.
·      Sheol is spoken of as a land divided into compartments with far corners.
·      All the dead meet there regardless of their status on earth;- the good and bad, the rich and poor, the old and young, the ruler and the slave. 
·      Sheol is a place of silence and limited emotions.
·      Souls usually sleep in Sheol and there is darkness.
·      Men tried to contact spirits in Sheol as did King Saul via a witch - that is why we are told to have nothing to do with divination, mediums, witchcraft, soothsayers, spiritists etc.
·      God is not worshipped in Sheol but He has control of it.
·      The righteous are at peace there, there are suggestions that the righteous and the wicked are separated.


Now there are two Old Testament passages that tell us a little bit more about this place.  Firstly a description of the descent into Sheol of one of the world’s most powerful rulers- the King of Babylon whose sinful pride was soon to be judged by God.  Isaiah 14:4-15. [There are reasons to believe that this may also be a description of the fall of the Satan from heaven or the time when he is bound for 1,000 years.]  The second passage is Psalm:49:10-20 which describes the foolishness of  trusting in this world’s riches when Sheol beckons all.  However the Psalmist believes that righteous men will be delivered from Sheol.  We need to remember that these are the Hebrew Scriptures, Christ has not yet come and has not been resurrected so there was not the hope that Christians enjoy today; however righteous men and women believed that one day their souls would be liberated from Sheol.  Job 19:25-27. “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes – I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”

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