Some special passages occurring in these latter chapters of Genesis should receive attention.
Jacob going down into Sheol to his son Joseph.
In Gen. 37: 35 Jacob, supposing Joseph to be dead, says—“I will go down into the grave (Sheol) to my son mourning.” The reader of the Hebrew text of Genesis has not met with this word before, and may reasonably expect to see its meaning discussed here.
In the outset it should be observed that these words can not possibly mean—My dead body shall go down into the grave proper, the sepulcher—there to lie by the side of Joseph’s dead body. He could not have meant this because the place of Joseph’s supposed dead body was entirely unknown to him. He had seen his bloody coat and inferred that Joseph was no doubt torn in pieces; where, he knew not; and whether devoured by flesh-eating animals he could not know. We must therefore reject this construction of his words.——Plainly the Joseph he thought of was the undying soul. He expected at his own death to meet Joseph in that state or place which the Hebrews indicated by the word “Sheol.”
What is the primary significance of this word? What were the views of the ancient Hebrews in regard to its location and the state of its occupants?
The noun “Sheol” is made from the verb Shaal[25] having the sense, to ask, to demand; and conceives of the place as evermore demanding, insatiable; that which is never full; never has enough. The current Hebrew conceptions of the word may be seen in Prov. 30: 15, 16, and Isa. 5: 14, and Hab. 2: 5. “There are three things that are never satisfied; yea four say not, It is enough: the grave” [Sheol], etc.——“Therefore hell [Sheol] hath enlarged herself and opened her mouth without measure; and their glory, and their multitude and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth shall descendinto it.” “Who enlargeth his desire as hell” [Sheol] “and is as Death, and can not be satisfied,” etc.
As to the location of Sheol it seems clear that they thought of it as an under-world, as somehow beneath the surface of the earth. We see this in the case of Korah and his company (Num. 16: 28–34), of whom Moses said:—“If the earth open her mouth and swallow them up with all that appertain to them, and they go down alive into Sheol [Eng. ‘the pit’], then shall ye understand that these men have provoked the Lord” ... “As he had made an end of speaking these words, the ground clave asunder that was under them and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up,” etc.——We find the same view in Deut. 32: 22. “For a fire is kindled in mine anger and shall burn unto the lowest hell [Sheol], and shall consume the earth with her increase and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.”
In regard to their conceptions of Sheol as a state of being for the righteous and the wicked dead, it is easy to see that holy men of the oldest time lacked the clear light of the gospel age. Then it had not yet been said—“In my father’s house are many mansions”; “I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am, there ye may be also” (Jno. 14: 2, 3). They had not heard these words of Jesus—“This day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23: 43); those of Paul: “Having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better” (Phil. 1: 23).——But the patriarchs did expect to “be gathered to their people”—the good men who had gone on before. This is said of Abraham (Gen. 25: 8); of Ishmael (25: 17); of Isaac (35: 29); and of Jacob (49: 29, 33). David said of his deceased infant child: “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.” Job said of that little known world—“There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest” (Job 3: 17), and yet he sometimes thought of it as intensely dark, for gospel light had not then fallen upon it:—“Before I go whence I shall not return, even to a land of darkness and the shadow of death; a land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness” (Job 10: 21, 22). Conceptions of this state as well illustrating the falland doom of wicked kings and kingdoms, tinged, it would seem, with the spirit of poetry, may be seen in Isaiah 14, and Ezek. 31: 15–18.
How far these notions as to the locality of Sheol are to be ascribed to direct inspiration, and how far to a merely human speculation, following the leading thought that the body goes down and back to dust at death, it seems by no means easy to determine positively. We may be allowed to doubt whether the Lord intended to reveal definitely the location of human souls after death. It was a point of the least conceivable importance; and moreover our knowledge of celestial geography may be yet quite too limited to admit of any intelligible revelation on this point.