Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
sheol
The realm of the dead. Not hell, and not nothing.
Genesis 37:35, in every translation this tool compares.
One word rendered three ways in one Bible produces three different ideas, and nothing on the page tells you they were ever one word.
Because the King James renders it hell, grave and pit in different places from one word, and every modern argument about the afterlife in the Old Testament runs through that inconsistency.
The King James reads hell, grave or pit. Modern versions usually transliterate Sheol or read the realm of the dead.
שְׁאוֹל sheol · H7585
Sheol is where the dead go, righteous and wicked alike. Jacob expects to go there mourning. It is not a place of punishment in the Old Testament and it is not annihilation either.
English hell carries a fully developed later doctrine, and grave carries none of the realm sense. Neither fits.
When modern versions transliterate a word the King James translated, the transliteration is usually an admission that no English word works.
Modern versions mostly transliterate Sheol; the King James reads hell, grave and pit.
- Jacob at Genesis 37:35
- Sheol of the righteous: Psalm 16:10
- KJV renders sheol as hell 31 times, grave 31 times, pit 3 times
