Accordingly, these texts must be read in connection with, and interpreted
by, that large clas of texts in the Old Testament which represent God as a
judge, and assert a future judgment, and a future resurrection for this
purpose. “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right.” (Genesis 18:25).
“To me belongeth vengeance, and recompense; their feet shall slide
in due time” (Deuteronomy 32:35).
“Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied of these, saying,
Behold the Lord cometh ‘with ten thousand of his saints to execute
judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them
of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed”
(Jude 14:15).
“The wicked is reserved to the day of destruction. They shall be
brought forth to the day of wrath” (Job 21:30).
“The ungodly shall not stand in the judgment;
the way of the ungodly shall perish” (Psalm 1:5-6).
“Verily, he is a God that judgeth in the earth” (Psalm 58:11).
“Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy
fear, so is thy wrath” (Psalm 90:11).
“O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself. Lift up
thyself, thou Judge of the earth: render a reward to the proud”
(Psalm 94:1-2).
“There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof
are the ways of death” (Proverbs 16:25).
“God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time
for every purpose, and every work” (Ecclesiastes 3:17).
“Walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes; but
know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into
judgment” (Ecclesiastes 11:9).
“God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing,
whether it be good, or whether it be evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14).
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“The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the
hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with devouring fire? who
among us shall dwell with devouring burnings” (Isaiah 33:14).
Of “the men that have transgressed against God,” it is said that
their “worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched”
(Isaiah 66:24).
“I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days
did sit. His throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels like
burning fire; thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten
thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was
set, and the books were opened” (Daniel 7:9-10).
“Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting
contempt” (Daniel 12:2).
“The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob,
Surely I never will forget any of their works” (Amos 8:7).
“They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in the day when I
make up my jewels” (Malachi 3:17).
A final judgment, unquestionably, supposes a place where the sentence is
executed. Consequently, these Old Testament passages respecting the final
judgment throw a strong light upon the meaning of Sheol, and make it
certain, in the highest degree, that it denotes the world where the penalty
resulting from the verdict of the Supreme Judge is to be experienced by the
transgressor. The “wicked,” when sentenced at the last judgment, are
“turned into sheol,” as “idolaters and all liars,” when sentenced, “have
their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone” (Revelation
21:8).
(2) A second proof that Sheol is the proper name for Hell, in the Old
Testament, is the fact that there is no other proper name for it in the whole
volume — or Topher is metaphorical, and rarely employed. If Sheol is not
the place where the wrath of God falls upon the transgressor, there is no
place mentioned in the Old Testament where it does. But it is utterly
improbable that the final judgment would be announced so clearly as it is
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under the Old Dispensation, and yet the place of retributive suffering be
undesignated. In modern theology, the Judgment and Hell are correlates;
each implying the other, each standing or falling with the other. In the Old
Testament theology, the Judgment and Sheol sustain the same relations.
The proof that Sheol does not signify hell would, virtually, be the proof
that the doctrine of Hell is not contained in the Old Testament; and this
would imperil the doctrine of the final judgment. Universalism receives
strong support from all versions and commentaries which take the idea of
retribution out of the term Sheol. No texts that contain the word can be
cited to prove either a future sentence or a future suffering. They only
prove that there is a world of disembodied spirits, whose moral character
and condition cannot be inferred from anything in the signification of
Sheol; because the good are in Sheol, and the wicked are in Sheol.
J.