Sheol, grave, and depths imagery uses descent, the grave, Sheol, Hades, and death-domain language to describe mortality, sorrow, judgment, confinement, divine deliverance, and Christ’s authority over death.
Sheol, grave, and depths imagery uses descent, the grave, Sheol, Hades, and death-domain language to describe mortality, sorrow, judgment, confinement, divine deliverance, and Christ’s authority over death.
A death-domain motif in which downward place-language signifies human mortality, lament, judgment, the apparent power of death, or the LORD’s sovereign ability to rescue, raise, and hold the keys over death and Hades.
These examples show how Sheol, Grave, and Depths Imagery functions in biblical language, rhetoric, poetry, prophecy, narrative, or theological imagery.
I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning
The grave is pictured as the downward destination of grief-stricken mortality.
the grave is mine house
The grave imagery expresses Job’s expectation of death as dwelling.
thou wilt not leave my soul in hell
Sheol language becomes the ground of confidence in divine preservation.
thou hast brought up my soul from the grave
Deliverance is pictured as being brought up from the death-domain.
laid me in the lowest pit
Depth imagery intensifies the experience of abandonment and nearness to death.
her guests are in the depths of hell
The foolish woman’s house is exposed as the path to death’s depths.
Hell from beneath is moved for thee
Sheol is personified as receiving the fallen tyrant.
out of the belly of hell cried I
Jonah’s descent imagery presents the fish and sea as a deathlike prison from which God hears.
the gates of hell shall not prevail
Hades imagery presents death’s power as unable to overcome Christ’s church.
the keys of hell and of death
Christ’s authority is expressed as sovereign possession of the keys over death and Hades.
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