Today we are encouraged to have a more positive view of death than our forefathers often did. People talk about the appropriateness of death, emphasising that it part of the natural cycle and doctors and therapists dealing with people at the end of life seek to help the dying find what they call a 'good death'. All of this is true and very healthy and where we are able to think in this way and have the resources to plan and arrange our dying it may well help face what is nevertheless a terrifying reality. But it is also true that for millions in our world still death comes as a negation of life, often coming in brutal, painful and úntimely ways. However much we try to accommodate death within our modern culture we are still aware that death represents the antithesis of life, that in death possibilities, ambitions plans and relationships come to an end. In the Hebrew bible there is a similar tension. For some, the 'good death' came at the end of a long and fulfilled life, surrounded by family, followed by burial in the ancestral home. But other traditions, recognising the violence and injustice prevalent within Israelite national life, speak of death as the enemy of life, indeed as God's enemy. Death is pictured as a prison with gates, as a monster with a voracious appetite and terrifying jaws, and as a subterranean menace pulling the unwitting down into its belly with cords and chains. The promise of God's victory over death through the resurrection of the dead therefore depends on God's victory over death. In this post I examine this imagery of death as a life-denying power and reflect on the importance of this imagery for the New Testament understanding of Death as a power opposed to God. "So, when when we read in Isaiah, 'And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death for ever' we realise that Isaiah is playing with the concept of death as the monster with the voracious appetite. On that great Day, when everything is "shaken up" and where everything is twisted out of shape so that nothing is as it was, the tables are turned even on death itself. Instead of it swallowing us, God will do the swallowing, eating up devouring the monster which has bought such distress and misery on the earth. And so with the monster of death/Sheol swallowed up, those trapped in the cords and snares of death, those imprisoned by its gates, can walk free, no longer entangled, no longer held in death's vice-like grip. Now, with the defeat of death, resurrection, i.e. whole, complete restoration of embodied life in all its fullness becomes a possibility, in fact it becomes the hope of the people of God."
In the previous post I suggested that when Isaiah predicts that the dead shall be raised to life like this; O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! this promise only makes sense because it supposes a cosmos in which God has already done away with death. It is the removal of death that makes it possible to think of those who sleep in the dust being raised to life by God's life-giving, resurrecting dew. God has done away with death, and now those held in the power of death can rise to life. So, we read in chapter 25 that death itself will be 'swallowed up' He will swallow up on this mountain the veil that is veiling all peoples, In other words, the proof that death is abolished is that those who sleep in the dust can now rise to life, they are no longer held in the power of death. Now that death is 'swallowed up' they can be watered back into life by God's resurrecting, life-giving dew. The reason that it is now possible for the dead to be raised is because death has no longer any power to hold them in its grip. The cords of deathThat might seem a strange thing to say. Why must death be defeated before the dead can rise? Surely God can do whatever God wants. As God gave life to Adam surely God could raise the dead without worrying too much about death as an institution! But to understand the connection between death itself and those who have died, we have to remember that in the Hebrew bible death was seen not just as a fact of life (or death!) but as a power, an active force, ensnaring and imprisoning those who die. The dead are not just life-less. They are trapped, imprisoned in the dreadful gloomy darkness of Sheol/Death. So in Psalm 18 we read The cords of death encompassed me; Here, death, Sheol and perdition (it's nice to get a mention of perdition at last, considering the title of the blog!) are equivalent terms for the same thing - the ending of life. The Psalmist has not actually died but he has felt his life beginning to end as he faces the hostility of his enemies. It feels as if he has been trapped by the snares of death and is now being pulled down both by cords of death/Sheol helped and aided by the "torrents" from the deep (death, Sheol and the watery deep were linked). It was as if the cords and ropes of the underworld were entangling him and dragging him down. So, in some parts of the Hebrew bible the "underworld" is seen almost as a living entity, which is is eager to trap the living and with its "cords" and "torrents" pull them down into its shady, gloomy depths. 'Death' and 'salvation' in Psalm 107In one sense the whole of Psalm 107 is a reflection on the power of God to deliver people from death. In each of the sections of the psalm, "death" is pictured in different ways. Firstly the psalmist describes the fate of some who wander in desert wastes where they can find no food or water. The are starving and dying of thirst and exposure. Their life is close to being extinguished when God intervenes on their behalf Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, Next, the psalmist speaks of those trapped in some kind of prison, chained, forced into hard labour, dwelling in darkness and gloom
In case we wonder what kind of doors he shatters, and whose bars of iron they are which he cuts in two, the next section helps to explain Some were sick through their sinful ways, Famine and homelessness, slavery and imprisonment, sickness and affliction - these are all real experiences but they are also all ways of imagining death. Remember that in the Hebrew bible the boundary between life and death was not as clearly defined as it is in our world. Those who were very ill, who had no children, who were sold into slavery or who went into exile from the land could all thought of as in some sense "dead". Death could then be thought of as imprisonment in a place of gloom and darkness. The gates of deathIt is for that reason that death is said to have "gates" - 'they drew near to the gates of death'. We hear about those gates again in Psalm 9.13. Have mercy on me, Lord! Here the gates of deep darkness and death's gates are linked to the depths of the sea, or the chamber of the deep. The sea was another version of death - after all, the creation had involved God separating the waters to make room for the life-producing earth. The Hebrews believed that there was a vast subterranean ocean which (presumably) lay within easy reach of Sheol. It was this ocean, along with the rains from the heavens that had almost destroyed the earth during the flood (Genesis 7.10-12). These are the waters of chaos, 'the depths' that once covered everything before God started to "make room" for creation by separating the deep into the waters above and the waters below (Genesis 1.1-10). (The Hebrews apparently did not consider marine life of the same quality of status as land-based life!). 'Chamber' (chamber of the deep) has its own resonance of imprisonment! Have you gone to the sea’s sources, In the story of Job, the righteous man who suffers untold miseries and who therefore (and understandably) questions God's justice, when God finally speaks to Job at the end of the book, God asks Job if he is qualified to question God's justice, since he has only a fraction of the knowledge that God has. To make this point God asks Job (among many other things), The gates are not there for show and they are definitely not there to keep people out - they are there for only one reason - to keep people locked in. Once someone went down to death/Sheol they never came back. There was no way out of the pit of gloom. The gates were locked! So, death is not just lifelessness. Death is a prison, where the 'shades' are trapped, held, locked behind bars and gates. More than that, this prison has a mind of its own - death actively seeks to ensnare and pull people down to it. Illness, the threat of violence, persecution, famine, childlessness were all different ways of expressing that sense of death reaching out for the living, ensnaring them and pulling them away from life. The jaws of DeathIf death could be thought of as a kind of prison, with traps and cords and gates, actively seeking to add to its numbers, it was no very great leap to think of Death as a living thing, a kind of voracious monster. The imagery of entrapping and pulling with cords could easily be merged into the imagery of a hungry beast devouring its prey. So it is no surprise to read in Isaiah 5.14-15 Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite Sheol/death opens a mouth that is 'beyond measure' (i.e. huge), and devours those destined for it (as punishment). This idea probably lies behind the story of the death of Korah, in Numbers 16. Korah was one of those who had criticised Moses and challenged his leadership. Moses responds to the challenge by telling the Israelites that God will show which of the two (Moses or Korah) has divine approval: And Moses said, ‘This is how you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works; it has not been of my own accord: If these people die a natural death, or if a natural fate comes on them, then the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up, with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the Lord.’As soon as he finished speaking all these words, the ground under them was split apart. The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households—everyone who belonged to Korah and all their goods. So they with all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol; the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly. All Israel around them fled at their outcry, for they said, ‘The earth will swallow us too!’ And fire came out from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men offering the incense. In this story, Death/Sheol is thought of as a great beast lying under our feet, capable of opening its mouth and devouring (swallowing) those destined for it. Death is not merely a description of something that happens to the body when the life-breath stops, but here death is a hungry, living being, intent on devouring human lives. Sheol and the 'Whale'All these metaphors and images of death are called into service by Jonah when he prays to God from the belly of the big fish. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying, Here all the images of death are combined in Jonah's psalm (song) of praise. All God's breakers (think 'torrents of perdition') have gone over him and he has gone down to the 'deep', he has gone to the land 'whose bars closed upon me for ever', he has been trapped by weeds 'at the root of the mountain' (where some thought the underworld to lie), but it is also true that he is 'in the belly of Sheol' rather than in the belly of a big fish. Sheol has a belly! The belly of the great fish represents death, which in Jonah's words takes on all these forms. Sheol is like a hungry voracious sea monster. So, when when we read in Isaiah, And he will destroy on this mountain we realise that Isaiah is playing with the concept of death as the monster with the voracious appetite. On that great Day, when everything is "shaken up" and where everything is twisted out of shape so that nothing is as it was, the tables are turned even on death. And so with the monster of death/Sheol swallowed up, those trapped in the cords and snares of death, those imprisoned by its gates, can walk free, no longer entangled, no longer held in death's vice-like grip. Now, with the defeat of death, resurrection, i.e. whole, complete restoration of embodied life in all its fullness becomes a possibility, in fact it becomes the hope of the people of God. You might also be interested in . . .
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April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
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