What Do You Want? (2) Rewind

All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning.” Thus his father wept. Genesis 37:35 ESV

Sheol – Do you find it astounding and insightful that the word she’ol is derived from the verb sha’al? Sha’al is the verb that means “to ask, to inquire, to beg, to borrow.” It is the root of mish’alah, the word used in Psalm 37 for the “desires” that God will give us. But in this verse, the root word sha’al becomes the word she’ol, the word for the pit, the underworld, the place of the dead. Doesn’t it seem incredible that the word for desires from God has the same root as the place none of us want to go? How can these two ideas be derived from the same base?

It seems to me that this is another example of the nexus of what it means to be human. Sha’al is the crossroads between what I ask and desire of God and what I ask and desire of the world. I choose which direction. I do not choose the desires. Either God plants His desires in me so that I might choose His direction or the world (what Paul calls the flesh) puts those desires before me and begs me to choose that direction. She’ol is simply choosing a direction other than God’s.

C. S. Lewis once observed that hell is nothing more than the result of allowing men to choose what they truly desire. No man in hell can complain that he was sent there as punishment. He chose the route that took him there. Such a man would be punished to be in heaven where others constantly and consistently choose God’s way. The man in hell is choosing his way and hell is the only place where entirely fleshly desires are achieved. I didn’t say that an entirely fleshly desire is fulfilling or satisfying. It is not. It cannot be fulfilling because wherever there are two who can choose, one must be deprived of all that he wants if the other is to have all that he wants. So the choice of hell is the choice to be constantly and consistently deprived of all that one believes really satisfies. But it is nevertheless a choice. It is asking God to let me have my way no matter what the consequences. That’s why she’ol is derived from sha’al.

The direction of your life is determined by the choices you make. You cannot avoid these choices because choosing is part of being human. All you can do is allow the yetzer ha’tov to domesticate the yetzer ha’ra and go in God’s direction. It is a long and treacherous process, but God promises that it will be worth it, not because you will be rewarded (although you might be) but because through this process you will become human. What does this imply? That consistently choosing for myself ultimately makes me something other than human; something other than conformed to the image of His Son. Hell is not for human beings. It is for those who are no longer human beings.

Topical Index: she’ol, hell, choosing, sha’al, human being, Genesis 37:35

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Laurita Hayes

Hey, I like this! Sin is being convinced to participate in the cutting off of my nose to spite my face. Sin makes no sense! People naturally think that what they desire is good and right for them. First lie we fall for! But not the last! We fall for all the rest to support that one. All sin is about self, which is the essence of fracturing that self off from all the interconnectedness that completes that self. An isolated human is, like Skip says above, not human. I only get to be me when I am fully plugged in to all that is not me. Self wishes to absorb all other, but my uniqueness depends upon me releasing all other to the sovereignty of its right to exist.

The largest benefit of obeying Yeshua’s requirement to let the universe off the hook (forgive it) is that because I put myself on the same hook at the same time that I put everybody else on, the only way to get myself back off is to let them off, too. All sin is about denying life by seeking to live at the expense of all other life. A study of psychopaths reveals that we have to devalue the worth of others down below what we consider our worth to be, as human, before we can hurt them. We accomplish this by choosing to believe accusations that tell us we do not have to respect others’ right to choose (much less trust them). This allows us to overwrite their choices by forcing our own. We rationalize this by choosing to believe that we are more human (worthy to choose) than they are.

We fear all that we think is not fully human, and we choose to believe that all we fear is out to get us. This is what I have to forgive; believing that all others are against me (less than human). When I do that, I lay down my arms of self, too. The fight for survival is over. I find when I do that the truth becomes apparent that all the trouble started with me. When I give others room to love me (vulnerability) I also give God room to protect and provide. How does He do that? By His original design, which is that interconnectedness that I have allowed by that forgiveness. At that point, He promises to make even my enemies “to be at peace” with me. Halleluah!

Michael Stanley

But bless YHWH we who in our ignorance choose to become less than human by giving in continually to our animal nature and becoming animal like; far less than that for which we were created to be -in the image of He who is Most High -Yeshua- we can by His chesed do tushuva (repentance and turning back) to Him and gain life and truly become human through the giver of life…the One who tasted death and was raised from the grave (sheol?). I am grateful and will eternally be so disposed. Thank You YHWH. Michael, the human being.

Sandy Smail

“That consistently choosing for myself ultimately makes me something other than human; something other than conformed to the image of His Son.” Sigh…I find my selfishness and my lack of discipline interchangeable. It’s like playing whack-a-mole…I zero in on a particular area to practice discipline and soon I find my selfish desires cropping up in a different area…seems to be a never ending cycle.

Roy W Ludlow

The interesting thing for me it that the choices I am making to not look bad or like hell. So I cannot trust what something looks like. I just need to know that in make a choice, I am standing on a very slippery slope.

Bob Jones

“Sheol – Do you find it astounding and insightful that the word she’ol is derived from the verb sha’al? Sha’al is the verb that means “to ask, to inquire, to beg, to borrow.” ”

As mentioned earlier, The atomic level of meaning is not the three-letter root. Each stroke within a letter has metaphoric meaning. These build into the meaning of the letters, which form 2-letter gates, and then roots and words from there.

Let’s start with the letters:

Shin/Sin ש – God’s word returned with an increase. As a metaphor, one can focus on the first vav as the word which came to earth, the third vav as the word returning, or the second vav as the increase. It represents the Spirit who gives life as a result of the word, as the marriage when the Word returns with his bride, etc.

Lamed ל – the shared heart of God. It is a teaching from heaven of and through the Son of God (the embedded kaf).

The gate Sh’l של means to ease or do it gently. THe bride ש is taught ל. Adding a nun as a prefix to it makes it a plural for and in “We ease”. This is used when Moses is told to remove (ease) his sandals while on holy ground. Sandals are a metaphor for being in the world but not of it. We are more than the dust or the flesh. But when we confront God face to face, we have a gentle reminded that we are but dust before him. We have nothing to offer. It is used again when the harvested was told to ease some of the harvest to the ground so taht the wbride following could glean it. This is a gentle training of the church that God does the harvest, and we are permitted to participate in it.

Aleph א – the primary metaphor is that God created the heavens and the earth. Secondary meanings are separation, the Spirit hovering between the waters, the firmament between the waters, war between heaven and earth, etc.

Ask שאל – shows that there is a level of discontent. He bride is separated from the teaching. She is unsatisfied, and asks.

Hei ה – hear but don’t understand.

Petition שאלה – The petition is a soft asking in order to understand.

When the asking becomes inappropriate it causes a separation, so an aleph is added making ‘demand’ שאלא. It is inappropriate to demand things from God.

Vav ו – The vav is translated ‘and’ but it’s primary metaphor is God speaking into the void. The sword ofhis word divides sould and spirit. It makes a distinction between two things, just as the word ‘and’ does while keeping them associated together.

Sheol שלול – pit, hell, desire, Saul. By the metaphor, sheol is the bride who is now discontent and is made distinct or separted from the teaching. This is the sense of hell. But we also learn that God gives us teh desires of our heart and lets us wallow in the consequences. Rom 1:18 ff

Saul is an example of that. God gave him to Israel because they demanded a king. He let them suffer under him.

Ester

יפה /beautiful TW, Skip! Hebrew is such a יפה language!
“No man in hell can complain that he was sent there as punishment. He chose the route that took him there.” What an insight.
Listen, well – “The direction of your (my) life is determined by the choices you (I) make”, not “the devil made me do it”.
Don’t ever sha’al for she’ol.

Dan Kraemer

I am familiar with a couple different takes on this both stemming from the understanding of the root word being “ask”.

First, sheol and hades are equivalent in meaning, for hades was almost always used to translate sheol in the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures which was current in our Lord’s day. This is confirmed in Acts 2:27 by the quotation of Ps.16:10, where the Spirit uses one as the equivalent of the other.

Concerning the literal meaning of hades there is no doubt possible. It comes from A-, a prefix that is equivalent to our un-, and -IDEIN, to see, in other words, “un to see” or, the “unseen”.

But in the Hebrew the soul goes to the “ask”.

Thus the very idiom of the Hebrew language shows us that they, too, knowing the nature of the soul, entertained the same question, what becomes of the soul after death? And the Hebrew answers with a question mark (?). There is nothing in the English or Greek languages to correspond to this, but much the same indefinite, misty impression is conveyed to us by the Greek equivalent, “the unseen.” It is as if you ask a Hebrew where the soul goes at death and he should shrug his shoulders, and if you ask a Greek the same question, he should close his eyes and shake his head.

Most inspired words have suffered from lack of definiteness and exactitude, but hades and sheol have suffered from the opposite tendency. They deny definition. They suggest dimness and distance.

The second understanding notes that sheol is just as often translated “grave” in the Old Testament. And we know that the grave (and our sin which results in death) is never satisfied. Like our addictions, they continually “ask” for more and more and are never satisfied.

Laurita Hayes

Thank you, Dan. This one is going to occupy me for a while! Reminds me of C.S. Lewis’s account of the dream he claims he had that he wrote the book The Great Divorce about. In hell, he wrote, everyone got everything they wanted, but the only problem was, it wasn’t real. Was it Robert yesterday that said that the spiritual things are the real things? The flesh wants nothing of the spiritual, however. Not real-ly, you see, for the spirit is the connecting space in between, which physics hints is the true reality. Nope! Not going there! Rather check out Hades!

Laurita Hayes

Should I have put a tongue-in-cheek graphic after that last statement? Sure wouldn’t want to mislead any Sadducees out there!

robert lafoy

Nope, that was Pieter, I agree with him though. 🙂

Seeker

What a hell of a life. Right choices take us nowhere specific. Wrong choices put us en route to hell. Only God can decide if my right choices where perfectly right. The devil does not even decide if my wrong choices were evil enough…

Or is it rather make choices rather than just going with the flow, following a dogma just because it fits my viiew of God’s will with me on earth….