He did not expect to meet Joseph in the grave; for he supposed his body torn in pieces and scattered in the wilderness, not laid in the family tomb. The dead are said to be "gathered to their people," or to "sleep with their fathers," and this whether they are interred in the same place or in a remote region. It is written, "Abraham gave up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people," notwithstanding his body was laid in a cave in the field of Machpelah, close by Hebron, while his people were buried in Chaldea and Mesopotamia. "Isaac gave up the ghost and died, and was gathered unto his people;" and then we read, as if it were done afterwards, "His sons, Jacob and Esau, buried him." These instances might be multiplied. They prove that "to be gathered unto one's fathers" means to descend into Sheol and join there the hosts of the departed. A belief in the separate existence of the soul is also involved in the belief in necromancy, or divination, the prevalence of which is shown by the stern laws against those who engaged in its unhallowed rites, and by the history of the witch of Endor. She, it is said, by magical spells evoked the shade of old Samuel from below. It must have been the spirit of the prophet that was supposed to rise; for his body was buried at Ramah, more than sixty miles from Endor. The faith of the Hebrews in the separate existence of the soul is shown, furthermore, by the fact that the language they employed expresses, in every instance, the distinction of body and spirit. They had particular words appropriated to each. "As thy soul liveth," is a Hebrew oath. "With my spirit within me will I seek thee early." "I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body:" the figure here represents the soul in the body as a sword in a sheath. "Our bones are scattered at the mouth of the under world, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth;" that is, the soul, expelled from its case of clay by the murderer's weapon, flees into Sheol and leaves its exuvioe at the entrance. "Thy voice shall be as that of a spirit out of the ground:" the word "Lhere used signifies the shade evoked by a necromancer from the region of death, which was imagined to speak in a feeble whisper.
The term rephaim is used to denote the manes of the departed. The etymology of the word, as well as its use, makes it mean the weak, the relaxed. "I am counted as them that go down into the under world; I am as a man that hath no strength." This faint, powerless condition accords with the idea that they were destitute of flesh, blood, and animal life, mere umbroe. These ghosts are described as being nearly as destitute of sensation as they are of strength. They are called "the inhabitants of the land of stillness." They exist in an inactive, partially torpid state, with a dreamy consciousness of past and present, neither suffering nor enjoying, and seldom moving. Herder says of the Hebrews, "The sad and mournful images of their ghostly realm disturbed them, and were too much for their self possession." Respecting these images, he adds, "Their voluntary force and energy were destroyed. They were feeble as a shade, without distinction of members, as a nerveless breath. They wandered and flitted in the dark nether world." This "wandering and flitting," however, is rather the spirit of Herder's poetry than of that of the Hebrews; for the whole tenor and drift of the representations in the Old Testament show that the state of disembodied souls is deep quietude. Freed from bondage, pain, toil, and care, they repose in silence. The ghost summoned from beneath by the witch of Endor said, "Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?" It was, indeed, in a dismal abode that they took their long quiet; but then it was in a place "where the wicked ceased from troubling and the weary were at rest."
Those passages which attribute active employments to the dwellers in the under world are specimens of poetic license, as the context always shows. When Job says, "Before Jehovah the shades beneath tremble," he likewise declares, "The pillars of heaven tremble and are confounded at his rebuke." When Isaiah breaks forth in that stirring lyric to the King of Babylon,
"The under world is in commotion on account of thee, To meet thee at thy coming; It stirreth up before thee the shades, all the mighty of the earth; It arouseth from their thrones all the kings of the nations; They all accost thee, and say, Art thou too become weak as we?"
he also exclaims, in the same connection,
"Even the cypress trees exult over thee, And the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art fallen, No man cometh up to cut us down."
The activity thus vividly described is evidently a mere figure of speech: so is it in the other instances which picture the rephaim as employed and in motion. "Why," complainingly sighed the afflicted patriarch, "why died I not at my birth? For now should I lie down and be quiet; I should slumber; I should then be at rest." And the wise man says, in his preaching, "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol." What has already been said is sufficient to establish the fact that the Hebrews had an idea that the souls of men left their bodies at death and existed as dim shadows, in a state of undisturbed repose, in the bowels of the earth.
Sheol is directly derived from a Hebrew word, signifying, first, to dig or excavate. It means, therefore, a cavity, or empty subterranean place. Its derivation is usually connected, however, with the secondary meaning of the Hebrew word referred to, namely, to ask, to desire, from the notion of demanding, since rapacious Orcus lays claim unsparingly to all; or, as others have fancifully construed it, the object of universal inquiry, the unknown mansion concerning which all are anxiously inquisitive. The place is conceived on an immense scale, shrouded in accompaniments of gloomy grandeur and peculiar awe: an enormous cavern in the earth, filled with night; a stupendous hollow kingdom, to which are poetically attributed valleys and gates, and in which are congregated the slumberous and shadowy hosts of the rephaim, never able to go out of it again forever. Its awful stillness is unbroken by noise. Its thick darkness is uncheered by light. It stretches far down under the ground. It is wonderfully deep. In language that reminds one of Milton's description of hell, where was
"No light, but rather darkness visible,"
Job describes it as "the land of darkness, like the blackness of death shade, where is no order, and where the light is as darkness." The following passages, selected almost at random, will show the ideas entertained of the place, and confirm and illustrate the foregoing statements. "But he considers not that in the valleys of Sheol are her guests." "Now shall I go down into the gates of Sheol." "The ground slave asunder, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all their men, and all their goods: they and all that appertained to them went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed upon them." Its depth is contrasted with the height of the sky. "Though they dig into Sheol, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down." It is the destination of all; for, though the Hebrews believed in a world of glory above the solid ceiling of the dome of day, where Jehovah and the angels dwelt, there was no promise, hope, or hint that any man could ever go there. The dirge like burden of their poetry was literally these words: "What man is he that liveth and shall not see death? Shall he deliver his spirit from the hand of Sheol?" The old Hebrew graves were crypts, wide, deep holes, like the habitations of the troglodytes. In these subterranean caves they laid the dead down; and so the Grave became the mother of Sheol, a rendezvous of the fathers, a realm of the dead, full of eternal ghost life.