Skip to main content
Biblical Hermeneutics

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Required fields*

5
  • Thanks, Ray, but my interest is not in anything "supernatural." I'm curious to know why sometimes the word 'qeber' is translated as hell (a place of torment), sometimes it is translated as a tomb or sepulchre, or a burial ground/grave site, and other times as 'sheol'. We know a dead body goes into the ground (or into a tomb) and there it disintigrates, a totally normal physical result of death. So why is the word qeber sometimes translated as hell? Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 16:31
  • 2
    @Lesley, "a place of torment" for the dead is supernatural. The attachment of such attributes to the word "hell" and assuming the Biblical authors intended that meaning is religious doctrine. For the original derivation of the word "hell", Online Etymology Dictionary says: "Literally 'concealed place' (compare Old Norse hellir 'cave, cavern'), from PIE root kel- (1) 'to cover, conceal, save.'". Storing potatoes in a cellar over winter was known as "helling potatoes". Translators can let personal beliefs affect them. In general consider "sheol" as "grave" and "qeber" as the visible "tomb". Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 17:07
  • @RayButterworth the reply to Lesley in comments would be a nice edit for your answer Commented Nov 4, 2020 at 22:03
  • @RayButterworth - I agree with you that a dead body goes into qe'ber and that it can be exhumed before it completely disintegrates. How then can Sheol contain dead bodies? You can't exhume a dead body from Sheol so what does it contain? Commented Nov 5, 2020 at 8:42
  • @Lesley, this is getting into denominational doctrine now. My personal interpretation ignores all the supernatural associations, which crept into Judaism, and even more so into Christianity, from pagan mythology. I consider sheol simply as a literal physical grave, where the body lies and eventually disintegrates, and is forgotten by all men unless there is a "qeber" to mark the spot. Even the KJV translates "sheol" as "grave" or "pit" more than it does as "hell", and most or all of those "hell"s could, or should, have been translated that way too. Commented Nov 5, 2020 at 13:34