Sheol

Sheol (/ˈʃiː.oʊl, -əl/ SHEE-ohl, -⁠uhl; Hebrew: שְׁאוֹל‎ Šəʾōl, Tiberian: Šŏʾōl)^[1] in the Hebrew Bible is the underworld place of stillness and darkness which lies after death.^[2]

Within the Hebrew Bible, there are few – often brief and nondescript – mentions of Sheol, seemingly describing it as a place where both the righteous and the unrighteous dead go, regardless of their moral choices in life.^[2] The implications of Sheol within the texts are therefore somewhat unclear; it may be interpreted as either a generic metaphor describing "the grave" into which all humans invariably descend, or an actual state of afterlife within Israelite thought. Though such practices are forbidden, the inhabitants of Sheol can, under some circumstances, be summoned by the living, as when the Witch of Endor calls up the spirit of Samuel for King Saul.^[3]

While the Hebrew Bible appears to describe Sheol as the permanent place of the dead, in the Second Temple period (roughly 500 BCE – 70 CE) a more diverse set of ideas developed. 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.^[4] When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria around 200 BCE, the word "Hades" (the Greek underworld) was substituted for Sheol, owing to its similarities to the Underworld of Greek mythology.^[2] The gloss of Sheol as "Hades" is reflected in the New Testament where Hades is both the underworld of the dead and the personification of the evil it represents.^[4]