Sheol: A Redemption Story | Ep 13 Book of Enoch Bible Study

Sheol, Tartarus, Hades & Gehenna explained, our prophesied redemption from Sheol, and how Enoch’s description of Sheol aligns with YASHUA’s parable of Lazarus and the rich man.

This is part 13 of our in-depth study of the Book of Enoch (also known as 1 Enoch). In this series, we’re reading through the entire Book of Enoch, providing commentary on each chapter, and discussing parallel Scriptures from the Bible. This episode covers Enoch chapter 22.

Thanks for watching, and hope you enjoy.

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Timestamps:

0:00 Meaning of the word Sheol
2:59 Sheol and Hades
3:48 Tartarus and Abbadon
4:55 Gehenna, Hell, and the Valley of Hinnom
7:45 Promised redemption from Sheol
10:45 Sheol goes to hell
12:11 Enoch’s description of Sheol
17:44 Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man
21:20 Places for the wicked in Sheol
25:05 THE LORD our righteousness

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Transcript:

If you look up the word Sheol in a Bible dictionary, it says that they’re not sure where this word came from, but there is a pretty big hint if you take a look at it in Hebrew. This is the original Hebrew spelling of the word Sheol. It’s the letter shin, the letter alef, and the letter lamed, Sheol.

Sheol is a place that’s mentioned all throughout the Old Testament as being the place that people descend to when they die. And this exact same spelling is how you spell the Hebrew word “sha’al,” which means to ask, to inquire, and to make a request. A word that is related to asking is the word “she’elah,” which means petition.

I think the reason that people don’t make the connection between Sheol and petitioning is because they haven’t read the book of Enoch. In Enoch, he describes Sheol as a place where certain souls make their she’elah to God. That is, they make their petition to Him.

From the time that Yashua died for us, anyone who believes in Him and who is His goes straight to heaven to be with Him when we die. Like Paul says, to die is to be present with the Lord. But before Yashua died for us, the Old Testament teaches us that everyone, whether they were righteous or wicked, went to this place called Sheol.

Sheol is one of many terms used in the Bible to describe some sort of underworld and afterlife. There are also the abyss, Abaddon, Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna. In this episode, we’re going to do a few things.

One is we’re going to explain all of this afterlife terminology. And I’m also going to show you that there’s a prophecy in the Old Testament about Yashua taking the righteous out of Sheol. We’re also going to read Enoch’s description of this place, Sheol, and we’ll talk about how his description matches one of Yashua’s parables about the afterlife

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We find the word Sheol in the Book of Enoch and in the Old Testament. And in the Old Testament, you will often see it translated into English as the grave. And when it’s speaking about the wicked in particular, then sometimes it’ll be translated as hell. But in Hebrew, the word is just Sheol. The New Testament equivalent for Sheol is Hades. And we know this because Peter quotes the Old Testament, where David says, “God will not abandon me to Sheol.”

And when Peter quotes David, he uses the word Hades for Sheol. So Sheol equals Hades. There’s another place in the New Testament called Tartarus. And Peter describes Tartarus as the prison for the fallen angels. Last time around, we read Enoch’s description of that prison, and he described it as an abyss. So, Tartarus equals an abyss.

I believe that the Old Testament equivalent for this place Tartarus that Peter and Enoch talked about is Abaddon. Abaddon is from a Hebrew word which means destruction. And it’s a place that is mentioned in the Old Testament as being alongside Sheol, but separate from it.

The place is called Abaddon, and its king is called Abaddon. In the New Testament, we read that the king of the pit of the abyss is named Abaddon. So, Tartarus equals an abyss equals Abaddon.

There’s one more place in the Bible having to do with the afterlife, and that is Gehenna. You will find Gehenna mentioned in the New Testament, and it’s translated as hell. So, Gehenna equals hell.

Yashua describes Gehenna as the place of unquenchable fire, where body and soul are destroyed. He said, “Don’t fear someone just because they can kill your body. Fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.”

He’s saying fear God, because God is the only one who has the authority to put a soul in Gehenna. Don’t fear man, don’t fear Satan, fear your God. So, this place Gehenna, which is the same thing as hell, it’s a place of fire, unquenchable fire.

The origin of the name Gehenna is from the Hebrew term Ge’Hinnom, which means Valley of Hinnom. And the Valley of Hinnom was a place in ancient Israel. And in this place, there were people from Israel who would go and they would burn their children in the fire as sacrifices to false gods.

That is a horrible practice, which our Father hates with a passion. And He hasn’t forgotten those who did that in those days and who didn’t repent of it. And so, the spirits of those people who burn their kids in the fire and who didn’t repent, and the spirits of all of the sinners are eventually going to end up in the Valley of Hinnom when He turns it into the Lake of Fire.

This Valley of Hinnom, Gehenna, and hell, the fiery place, this is the place that those who are in Yashua are blessed to be able to avoid. And we avoid it through His blood. Now, getting back to Sheol, as I mentioned before, whether people were sinners and wicked or they were righteous, before Yashua came, everybody went to Sheol.

And as we’re about to read, part of Sheol was a good place. And the part that was a good place was the place that was for the righteous. But nevertheless, Father promised through His prophet, Hosea, that he would take the righteous out of Sheol.

It says in Hosea chapter 13, from the hand of Sheol, I will ransom them. From death, I will redeem them. The word for ransom in Hebrew is “padah,” and it is a beautiful word picture that Father gave to us.

It’s spelled peh, dalet, he. The first letter, peh, is a picture of the mouth. And as your mouth is something that you open and close, the letter peh is used in Hebrew words a lot of times to mean open.

The letter dalet is a picture of a tent door. And the word “dalet” in Hebrew, it means door. The letter hey is a picture of a man with his arms raised.

And this letter is used all throughout Hebrew words to mean life. If you put it all together, this word “padah,” which means ransom, is a picture of Father opening the door to life. So, what Hosea is talking about here is our Father is going to open the door to eternal life for His righteous people who are in Sheol.

Psalm 49 has the same prophecy as Hosea, but it adds a key detail. It literally says, “Elohim will padah, will redeem, my soul from the hand of Sheol, for He shall take me.” The root word for “take me” is lakach, which means to take. Literally, He’s going to grab His righteous, pull them out of Sheol, and take them to Him.

There are a few scriptures in the New Testament that seem to indicate that that is part of what Yashua did in between the time that He died and was resurrected. And we don’t know the exact timing of when that happened, but we know that it did indeed happen, as Hosea talks about, as the Psalms talk about, and as King David talked about when he said to the Lord, “You will not abandon me to Sheol.”

Now, if Sheol wasn’t a bad place, if it was a paradise for the righteous, then why did Father want to take his people out of there is the question. And there are two reasons for this. One is that He wants all of His children to be with Him. And number two is, it’s prophesied that all of Sheol is one day going to be thrown into Gehenna.

Revelation 20 tells us that at the final judgment, death and Hades will be cast into the lake of fire. Hades, as we showed, is Sheol. So, one day, Sheol is literally going to hell. That hasn’t happened yet. Sheol is going to exist, it sounds like, through the end of Millennium. But as of the days of Yashua, Sheol is only for the sinners.

[Music]

Let’s read in Enoch what he has to say about this place, Sheol. And just keep in mind that when Enoch was writing this, this was before the days of Yashua, and so there was still a place for the righteous in Sheol.

Chapter 22, verse 1, “And thence I went to another place, and he showed me in the west another great and high mountain and of hard rock. And there was in it four hollow places, deep and wide and very smooth. How smooth are the hollow places, and deep and dark to look at.”

In one of the newer translations, they have a line added here, which is from a manuscript that was discovered after this version that we’re reading here together was put together. And that line says, talking about the four hollow places that Enoch saw, three of them were dark, and one illuminated, and a fountain of water was in the middle of it. So, we’ve got one place that’s bright, and three places that are dark.

Enoch talks here about these places being very deep, and that’s a match for what Isaiah says in Isaiah chapter 7, verse 11. He uses the words “as deep as Sheol,” and “as high as heaven”. So, using those two things as a contrast. Heaven is high, Sheol is deep.

In Habakkuk chapter 2, verse 5, he mentions that Sheol is very wide, and that’s what Enoch saw as well, as we just read. Very deep, very wide, very smooth.

Verse 3, “Then Raphael answered one of the holy angels who was with me, and said unto me, these hollow places have been created for this very purpose, that the spirits of the souls of the dead should assemble therein, yea, that all the souls of the children of men should assemble here. And these places have been made to receive them till the day of their judgment, until their appointed period, till the period appointed, till the great judgment comes upon them. I saw the spirits of the children of men who were dead, and their voice went forth to heaven, and made suit.”

Now to make suit, one way of saying that would be to petition. And that’s why I mentioned earlier that it’s very likely that the origin of the word “Sheol” is from the Hebrew word sha’al, which means to ask, and she’elah, which means petition. So, he sees spirits who are making suit, who are making petition to heaven.

Verse 6, “Then I asked Raphael, the angel who was with me, and I said unto him, ‘This spirit, whose is it whose voice goeth forth and maketh suit?’ And he answered me, saying, ‘This is the spirit which went forth from Abel, whom his brother Cain slew, and he makes his suit against him till his seed is destroyed from the face of the earth, and his seed is annihilated from amongst the seed of men.’”

Abel, as you know, was the son of Adam and Eve, and he was killed by his brother Cain. Enoch is seeing him petitioning heaven, petitioning Father, to basically destroy all of Cain’s descendants. And Abel we know is righteous, because Yashua describes him, I believe, as a prophet in the New Testament. So, this is a righteous request. It’s not coming from a vengeance standpoint.

If Abel is making this petition, it’s because he’s full of the Holy Spirit, and because Father wanted him to. And so, what do we see happen? We see all of the descendants of Cain are indeed annihilated from amongst the seed of men. Not a single one of them made it through the flood.

Verse 8, “Then I asked regarding it, and regarding all the hollow places, why is one separated from the other? And he answered me, and said unto me, “These three have been made, that the spirits of the dead might be separated.’”

So, there’s four places in total that Enoch sees, and the first one that he sees is the first one that he’s going to describe. And he says, the angel talking to Enoch says, “And such a division has been made for the spirits of the righteous, in which there is the bright spring of water.”

So right off the bat, the first thing about Sheol that Father wants you to know, and that He had His prophet Enoch write down for us, is that even in Sheol, in death, in the grave, He distinguishes between the righteous and the unrighteous. There is a separation that is made for the righteous, and in the place of the righteous is a bright spring of water. And as we read earlier, it is illuminated, whereas the other places are dark.

This division of the righteous versus the unrighteous is mentioned by Yashua in a parable that he gives that was recorded by Luke. And I wanted to read that so that we can get a fuller picture of this first division of Sheol that we’re reading about. In Luke 16, Yashua says, “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side.”

Now, if you ever read the phrase, “gathered to their fathers” in the Old Testament as a phrase that is talking about death, you can see from Yashua’s parable that literally when you die, you are gathered to your fathers. So, when Lazarus passed away, the angels took him to his father, great-great-great-great-grandfather Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.

And in Hades, which is Sheol, and in Sheol being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off, and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.” But Abraham said, “Child, remember that you in your lifetime received good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things. But now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.”

So Sheol was designed in divisions. And between the righteous, the one place for the righteous, and the three places for the sinners, was a great chasm that Father put there and made it so that people could not – that spirits of people could not go from one place to another. Continuing in Enoch chapter 22, verse 10, we’re going to read about the first of the three parts of Sheol that are just for sinners. And so, verse 10 says about the first part, “And such has been made for sinners when they die and are buried in the earth, and judgment has not been executed on them in their lifetime. Here their spirits shall be set apart in this great pain, till the great day of judgment and punishment and torment of those who curse forever, and retribution for their spirits. There He shall bind them forever.”

One common theme that is all throughout the Old Testament, and that is also quite prevalent in the book of Enoch, especially in the last part of Enoch, is Father tells us through His prophets, don’t be disheartened when you see the wicked prevailing during their lives, if it looks like they’re on top, if it looks like they’re winning because even if judgment is not executed on them at all in their lifetime, it is coming. And so, this first part of Sheol that He established for the sinners is for those who didn’t have any sort of judgment executed on them in their lifetime. And it’s a place of great pain.

This next part of Sheol that Enoch is going to talk about is for the sinners who did have some sort of judgment executed on them in their lifetime. Verse 12 says, “And such a division has been made for the spirits of those who make their suit, who make disclosures concerning their destruction, when they were slain in the days of the sinners.” So, whereas the first group, no sort of judgment was ever executed on them, they probably didn’t have any pain in their lifetimes.

This next set, they were actually killed. And so, because of that, you can’t say that their life was super rosy, because they were murdered. The last part of Sheol for the sinners is described in verse 13, which says, “Such has been made for the spirits of men who were not righteous, but sinners, who were complete in transgression, and of the transgressors they shall be companions. But their spirits shall not be slain in the day of judgment, nor shall they be raised from thence.”

So, this is a group that Father is really mad at. And you can tell that because He’s not even going to slay their spirits in the day of judgment, meaning their torment lasts forever. And they’re not going to be raised from Sheol, which means since we know that Sheol is eventually going to be thrown into Gehenna, into the lake of fire, these spirits are still going to be alive when they’re thrown into the fire. After seeing all of these things, Enoch ends this part of his journeys with verse 14, “Then I blessed the Lord of glory and said: ‘Blessed be my Lord, the Lord of righteousness, who ruleth forever.’”

So even though some of what he saw was very dark, he still blessed the Lord because He is the Lord of righteousness. In Hebrew, the word for righteousness is actually the same as the word for justice. Our Father, He is just and He is righteous.

And when He makes judgments on people, we need to stay on His side for those judgments, even if those judgments mean certain souls and spirits go to hell.

In the very first chapter of the book of Enoch, he let us know that judgment is coming, but with the righteous, He will make peace and will protect the elect, and mercy shall be upon them, and they shall all belong to God, and we shall all be prospered, and we shall all be blessed, and He will help us all, and light shall appear unto us, and He will make peace with us.”

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[End of transcript]

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About the series:

Our Book of Enoch Bible Study series offers a down-to-earth look at this often sensationalized text. Instead of focusing mainly on fallen angels, our goal is to learn the heart of our Father and gain understanding of the Old and New Testament Scriptures that parallel Enoch’s words. Throughout this series, we’ll read together and discuss:

• Life before the Flood
• How sin and transgression caused GOD to destroy His creation,
• Enoch’s epic prophecies covering the history of humanity and Israel,
• The many passages in Enoch that point to YASHUA HA MASHIACH (JESUS CHRIST),
• The ancient calendar of Israel,
• End-times prophecies and how Father will protect us through the days to come, and
• What life will be like in Millennium.

Enoch is a remarkably full book that sheds light on everything from Genesis to Revelation, so, in our view, to understand Enoch is to better understand the entire Bible.

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Questions about Enoch?

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