ŠĒ'ÖL. — A term (feminine) which in Israel (but not among the other Semites) designated the subterrestrial region where the dead dwell.
The etymology is uncertain: perhaps from the common Semitic s'l, “to ask, inquire” (W. Gesenius), or as an insatiable abyss demanding continual new additions (“orcus rapax,” Catullus), or as the place of inquiry or judgment (E. König). Very probable is the etymology proposed by L. Koehler: šā'āh (“to be desolate, desert-like”), considering the final l non-radical (as in 'āri'el, harmel, etc.); thus the feminine, related to šā'ōn (Ps. 39:3, “he brought me up from the pit of destruction, bōr šā'ōn”) and šē'ijāh (“desolation, ruin”), would mean “desert territory.” W. Baumgartner, following W. F. Albright and others, refers to the Babylonian Šū'āra (or Šubāra: A. Ugnad), the subterranean dwelling of Tammūz and Nergal. The word occurs 66 times in the Hebrew Bible (the Septuagint translates šēns 59 times), as well as several times in the recovered text of Eccli. (14:12; 51:2, 6, 9). The Vulgate translates it as infernus, inferna, inferi (“subterranean place, -s”).
This world of the dead is in the subterranean cavity, opposed to the height of heaven (Job 11:8); into this depth (Ps. 48:15; 62:12; Is. 5:14; Eccli. 17:19) one “goes down” or “plunges” (Is. 14:9-15; 57:9; Ez. 31:15-17; 32:21; Am. 9:2; Ps. 85:13; 138:8; Prov. 15:24). The deep f. is synonymous with the “death” that overwhelms (Job 24:19; Eccli. 14:12; 51:2-9; cf. Apoc. 1:18 and 20:13-14), and “to descend there” is equivalent to “to die” (Job 14:13; 17:13, 16); it is synonymous with “tomb,” “pit,” “darkness,” and the “dust” of the grave. No one can escape it by a “covenant” (Is. 28:15, 18). The sorrows of the f. are those of death (II Sam. 22:6; Ps. 17:6; 115:3). With one foot in the abyss, the faithful person “cries out from the depths” to God to be delivered (Ps. 129:1; Eccli. 51:9). The f., personified as death (Job 28:22; Is. 5:14; Eccli. 14:12-19), is poetically represented as an insatiable monster with enormous jaws (Is. 5:14; Hab. 2:5; Ps. 141:7; Prov. 1:12; 27:20; 30:16), with an immense belly (Ios. 2:3; Eccli. 51:5). The fruit of the power of f.-death is destruction (Os. 13:14 = I Cor. 15:54): V. ABADDON. At their death all human beings descend to the f. (Gen. 37:35; 42:38; 44:29, 31; Num. 16:30, 33; etc.), where they are “gathered to” their fathers (Gen. 25:8, 17; 35:29; 49:29, 33). All the dead are under the dominion of the f. (Os. 13:14; Ps. 15:10; 48:16; 88:49; Prov. 5:5; 23:14), which lies beneath the ocean (Job 26:5) and swallows everyone without distinction (Ps. 88:49). The “gates of the f.” (Is. 38:10; Job 38:17; Eccli. 51:9; Sap. 16:13; Ps. Sal. 16:2; III Mach. 5:51; cf. God has “the keys” thereof, Apoc. 1:18) express the invisible power of the empire of death (Mt. 16:18: portae inferi has a moral coloring). On the whole, this representation of the underworld coincides with the Babylonian one: semi-conscious, deprived of activity as well as enjoyment, a shadow (edimmu), the dead person is in the Arallā, a dark, dusty, horrifying cavern in the depths of the earth, beneath subterranean waters, situated in the far West, a prison-city (with streets and districts) surrounded by seven walls equipped with seven double gates (corresponding to the seven spheres of the planets: F. Hommel); it is the “land from which there is no return” (ersit lā tari), cf. Job 7:9-10 and 10:21; its master is Nergal (cf. II Reg. 17:30; Ier. 39:3, 13) and his wife Ereskigal, in an underground palace (cf. “the king of terrors”: Job 18:14); there Tammūz disappears (“descends”), and in order to revive him 'ātar seeks the source of life; Gilgameš (tablet XII), after Nergal opens for him “the hole of the earth,” reaches the dwelling of the dead, where his deceased friend Eabani reveals to him “the law of the land.” In the mythical poems of Ugarit, Baal and Alijan descend to the underworld, the realm of the god Mot (“death”), followed by the goddesses 'Anat and Sapas.
Life in the f. is death’s pale continuation. It would have been contradictory to say that the dead live, all the more so because the idea of the soul surviving alone, separated from the body, was not explicit. The deceased, called (Is. 14:9; 26:14, 19; Ps. 87:11; Prov. 2:18; 9:18; 21:16; Job 26:5) rēphā'im (“weak, limp, evanescent”; Vulg. gigantes), as among the Canaanites-Phoenicians (Ugarit, inscriptions of Ešmun'azar and Tabnit), lead there, in an amorphous throng (Prov. 26:16), a diminished, inert, and sorrowful life, silent like that of shadows. The “sleepers awaiting” (Manzoni) are inactive, and forever so, as poets in moments of discouragement affirmed (Job 7:9 ff.; 16:22; Eccle. 12:5). Yet their spiritual life endured, with their qualities and merits acquired in earthly life standing out. King Saul obtains the response of the deceased prophet Samuel (I Sam. 28:7-20) through a necromancer (ba'alath 'ōbh, “mistress of a spirit”: 'ōbh is the spirit of a dead person); Samuel appears as “a god (spirit) rising from the earth.” Saul reveres him while prostrate, and Samuel rebukes him: “Why have you disturbed me, bringing me up?”; and he concludes: “Tomorrow you and your sons will be with me” in the f., with no escape. The evocation of the spirits ('ōbhōbh) of the dead, although forbidden by the Law (Lev. 19:31; 20:6, 27; Deut. 18:11), was practiced in Israel up to the Talmudic period; it is mentioned in the Manual of Discipline (ca. 100 B.C.) of Hirbet Qumrān.
paradise (v.) had been closed because of sin, for which death is the punishment, the f. always appeared as a place of punishment, and the righteous prayed to be delivered from II. In that dark afterlife, silence reigns inexorably: the praise of God does not resound there, nor is his worship conducted (Is. 38:18; Ps. 6:6; 113:17-18); the living God is absent from it, but he scrutinizes and governs “the f. and the abyss” (Job 16:5-6; Prov. 15,
11). Although it is the “end of working and thinking” (Eccle. 9, 10), the wicked have far more reason to fear it (Ps. 48, 15) than the righteous. There is also mention of the devouring fire (Deut. 32, 22; Is. 50, 11; Eccl. 51, 4); for the wicked, “the worm shall not die and the fire shall not be quenched” (Is. 66, 24; Eccl. 7, 17; Iud. 16, 21; Mc. 9, 23), an allusion to bodily corruption Gehenna (v.). Like death, the f. is connected with sin. Already in Num. 16, 30-33 it is associated with the idea of divine punishment: the rebels of Korah “go down alive” into it; in Ps. 54, 24 it is the “pit of destruction” into which God “makes” the wicked “go down.” The wicked are on their way there (Ps. 9, 18; 30, 18; 54, 16), as are the shameless woman and her accomplices (Prov. 2, 18; 7, 27); there are piled up those who forget God, sinners (ibid. 9, 18; 21, 16), and despisers of the Law (Eccl. 41, 11). It appears increasingly as the “wage” of sin (cf. Rom. 2, 7; 5, 12, 21; 6, 23), in opposition to the “life” reserved for the good (Prov. 3, 18; 8, 35; 9, 6; 12, 2; 16, 21); opposed to the f. below is “the way of life” that leads upward (Prov. 15, 24). Even after the Exile, the two conceptions coexist, in part interpenetrating one another: the f. as the receptacle of all the dead and as the punishment of the wicked. The prospect of death, the grave, the universal f., caused Job anguish: although the f. is a repose (“sleep”) in comparison with earthly agitations and abolishes social inequalities (Iob. 3, 13-26), whoever falls into that place of darkness (ibid. 10, 21 ff.) does not return from it, “he will lie down and not rise, he will not awake from his sleep” (ibid. 14, 7-22). This pessimism is moral in nature; it coincides with the faith, later reaffirmed in the Gospel, that every human being is in himself a sinner, “unclean” (ibid. 14, 4). Yet Job’s pathetic description, like the topography of the f. (a “channel” leading to the pit: ibid. 33, 18; the “chambers of death,” Prov. 7, 27), is hyperbolic-allegorical and does not correspond to the general conception of it held in Israel. The f. was regarded as an impenetrable, inviolable secret, except to God (Iob. 11, 8; 38, 17). In Eccl. (ca. 200 B.C.), the f. is the abode of the departed (9, 12), both sinners (21, 9-10) and the righteous (41, 4); it is a place of rest (22, 9; 30, 17; 38, 23; 46, 19), a peaceful sleep in which the dead exist without activity (9, 10), without light (22, 9), joy (14, 16), or praise of God (17, 26-27); man can hope for nothing but worms (7, 17 Heb.).
The f. is an ogre that does not release its prey (Prov. 1, 12) without ransom: wealth is of no avail (cf. Mt. 16, 26; Lc. 12, 20), but with Yahweh there remains “the bundle of the living” (I Sam. 25, 29), and God delivers his faithful one from the f. (Ps. 48, 15-18; I Sam. 2, 6); he will not abandon him to the f., but will show him “the way of life” (Ps. 15, 8-11) and “take him into glory” (ibid. 72, 23 ff.). The two categories of the eternally damned and glorified are described in Dan. 12, 2-3, at least from the time of the resurrection onward. This distinction between the rejected and the rewarded is presented as current in the oldest part of Enoch (ca. 170 B.C. onward): Enoch 22 divides the f. into four compartments, the first two for the righteous “beside the spring of living water, light,” and the other two for sinners, whose punishment is definitive; in Enoch 54, 2 the king and the mighty are punished in the “deep valley,” while the righteous are in the “garden of life,” or paradise (60, 8, 23; 61, 12; 70, 3-4); in the final part of Enoch the righteous appear in the f. together with the wicked, but at the final judgment the righteous will be rewarded and the wicked, cast into the f., tormented forever in darkness and fire (102, 4-8; 103, 1-4; 104, 1-6): the f. is here a place of torment reserved for the wicked. In Enoch 51, 1-2 “the Š. will restore what it has received”: the righteous will rise and, guided by the Chosen One, reach the Fathers in paradise. Sinners will be punished by not rising again (Enoch 22, 10-13; Ps. Sal. 3, 16 and 14, 2; cf. Ps. 1, 5), thus remaining in the f., which becomes the hell of the damned; conversely, it is affirmed that the righteous are or will be gathered in paradise (Gan'édhen: Strack-Billerbeck [V. BIBLICA.], pp. 1118-65). Like the apocalyptists, the Pharisees advocated the resurrection of the dead, but only for the good (Fl. Josephus, Antiq. Iud., XVIII, 14).
This concept had already been hinted at in the biblical texts that oppose the f. to life for sinners (Prov. 2, 18; 10, 18; 15, 24; 23, 18; 24, 14; Ps. 48, 15-20). Perhaps Eccle. 3, 21 asks in this sense whether the human breath “rises upward,” instead of descending into the f. Indeed, Adam’s spirit rises to God in Apoc. Mos. 32, 4; 35, 2; and the Essenes held that “the immortal soul... freed from the flesh flies upward” (Fl. Josephus, Bell. Iud., II, 8, 11; VII, 8, 7). Sap. 1, 12-4, 20 insists on future retribution: glorious immortality for the righteous and punishment for the wicked in the afterlife, which will be confirmed by divine judgment (ibid. 5, 1-25). In the martyrdom of the seven brothers, the hope of glory in the afterlife shines forth, “in the bosom of divine mercy” (II Mach. 7, 9-29); the deceased saints follow what takes place on earth and intercede for Israel (ibid. 15, 12-16: the high priest Onias, Jeremiah); the f. is also conceived as a place of purification (ibid. 12, 43). Even before Jesus, f. or ᾱᾱᾱ bore the two meanings. It was the world of all the dead (at least until the resurrection: so the Pharisees) in II Mach. 6, 23; Enoch 22, 1-14; 51, 1; 102, 5; 103, 7; IV Esd. 4, 41; 7, 32; Bar. syr. 11, 6; 21, 23. It was the prison of the wicked and sinners alone in Sap. 2, 1; 17, 14 (21); Enoch 63, 10; Iubil. 7, 29; 22, 22; Philo, Som. I, 151; Bar. gr. 4. The two conceptions alternate within the same book: Ps. Sal. understands Hades as the receptacle of all souls (4, 15) and as the hell of the damned (14, 6; 15, 11; 16, 2); in Enoch 3, they seem to merge (10; 40, 12-42, 1). The manuscripts from H. Qumrān display the same oscillation: in the 3rd Psalm (ca. 100 B.C.) the f. is the world of all the dead, and its deepest part is Abaddon; in the Commentary on Habakkuk, the wicked man is in the “house of condemnation,” a prison in the f., and at the final judgment he will be cast into the fire of sulfur. Among the post-Christian rabbis, the f. (“never filled,” Eccle. R. 1, 19) came to be identified with Gehenna, itself also regarded as the receptacle of all the dead (Šabbāth 104 a; Ērābhīn 101 a: the righteous trample the nations there; Bābhā' mēṣī'ā' 58 b; Pēsiqā' R. 109 b). Šammaj in Tōsephtā' Sanhedrīn XIII, 3 (11th century) distinguished three categories of the dead: the glorified, the eternally damned, and those who purify themselves by passing through the fire of Gehenna.
The hope of emerging from the “region of the shadow of death” (Is. 9, 1) and from confinement without return remained profound. In Is. 26, 19 there is the oldest explicit testimony to the resurrection (= “ascending” from the f.: Iob. 7, 9). The divine promises of redemption and spiritual restoration appear as liberation from the f. (Os. 13, 14 = I Cor. 15, 55; Is. 25, 8; 26, 19, etc.; Ez. 37, 1 ff.; Iob. 19, 15 ff.; Dan. 12, 2), as “resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 11, 15); rising from the abyss-necropolis (“from the dead”) is the supreme messianic hope (cf. I Cor. 15, 54-58; Apoc. 20-21).
Al tempo di Gesù si distingue bene tra f. per i peccatori e « seno d'Abramo » (v. LIMBO): un abisso invalicabile separa i giusti dai peccatori (Lc. 16, 22-26), benché tutti siano sotto terra. Ma prevale, per il soggiorno dei giusti, l'immagine di « tende eterne » e paradiso celeste (Lc. 16, 9; 23, 43; « mondo celeste »: Fl. Giuseppe, Bell. Iud., III, 8, 5). Nel Nuovo Testamento la f. è detta ᾱᾱᾱ, il cui dominio non è sulla terra (cf. Sap. 1, 14), ma sotto (Mt. 11, 23 = Lc. 10, 15; Apoc. 9, 1). Dio ha inabissato nel Tartaro (ἐταρτάρωσα) gli angeli ribelli, chiudendoli in quelle cavità tenebrose (II Pt. 2, 4); così anche Enoch 10, 12; 18, 11-19, 1; 88, 1; ivi è imprigionato Satana per 1000 anni (Apoc. 20, 7). INFERNO (v.) gehenna (v.); Gesù insiste sull'eterno supplizio dei reprobi nelle « tenebre extraterrestri » (Mt. 8, 12; 22, 13; 25, 30) ove è « pianto e stridore di denti » (Mt. 13, 42, 50; 24, 51) perché essi sono esclusi dal Regno di Dio (Lc. 13, 28) per avere respinto l'invito di Dio (Mt. 24, 13; 24, 51; 25, 30; Lc. 14, 24) e del prossimo (Mt. 25, 41-45); cf. II Thess. 1, 9. Nell'orco tenebroso (ὁ ἕδρος τοῦ ἀκόνους, II Pt. 2, 17; Iud. 13) salirà il fumo dei tormenti degli empi (Apoc. 14, 10-11). L'ade-morte per tutti si trasformerà, dopo la risurrezione e il giudizio di tutti sulle loro opere, in ade-morte « seconda » (definitiva) per i soli dannati (Apoc. 20, 13-15). Presso i Padri, rimarrà a lungo plurivalente il termine ᾱᾱᾱ o inferi. In Tertulliano inferi ha senso largo e comprende il purgatorio (A. d'Alès, La théologie de Tertullien, Parigi
1905, pp. 131-34); s. Ippolito, Adv. Graec., I, 2, divide l'ade in due sezioni: a sinistra i dannati, a destra il « seno d'Abramo » con i buoni. Fino a s. Giovanni Damasceno (PG 96, 28) perduta la misteriosa indeterminatezza biblica. Solo al tempo della specializzazione scolastica si distinsero esplicitamente, con vocaboli ben distinti, i vari luoghi sotterranei dei defunti: l'inferno dei dannati, il purgatorio, i limbi.