These reasons have led learned men, who have espe- cially examined the subject, to exclude the grave (spe- citically understood as a made or artificial one) from the proper meaning of Sheol. We cannot but accept their view in critical exactness. But there is an inexact and generic sense of Sheol in which the word grave well ex- presses the meaning of the Scripture passages just men- tioned, and (in justice to the A.V. it may be admitted) of most of the others, which oiu- translators rendered by this word. (The passages in which the A.V. renders PIX'iJ by grave are these — Gen. xxxvii, 35; xlii, 38; xliv,'29, 31; 1 Sam. ii, 6 ; 1 Kings ii, 0, 9; Job vii, 9; xiv, 13; xvii, 13; xxi, 13; xxiv, 19; Psa. vi, 5 [Hebr. 6]; XXX, 3 [4]; xxxi, 17 [18]; xlix, 14 [15], twice; xlix, 15 [16]; Ixxxviii, 3 [4]; Ixxxix, 48 [49]; cxli, • 7; Prov. i, 12; xxx, 16; Eccles. ix, 10; Cant, viii, 6; Isa. xiv, 11 [marg. of v, 9 has grave']; xxxviii, 10, 18; Ezck. xxxi, 15; Hos. xiii, 14, twice; and in Jonah ii, 2 [3] the margin has " grave.") Of this more vague sense Usher {Works, iii, 324) says— "When Sheol is said to signify the grave, the term grave must be taken in as large a sense as it is in our Saviour's speech (John v, 28), and in Isa. xxvi, 19, according to the Sept. read- ing; upon which passage writes Origen thus — 'Here and in many other places the graves of the dead are to be understood, not such only as we see are builded for the receivuig of men's bodies — either cut out iu stones,
or digged down in the earth ; but every jjlace u-herein a man's body lieth either entire or in, part . , . otherwise they which arc not committed to burial, nor laid in graves, but have ended their life in shipwrecks, dtserts, and such like ways, shoidd not seem to be reckoned among those which arc said to be raised from the grave' {In Esai. lib. 28 citatus a Pamphilo, in Apol.y We have here, then, the first meaning of the Hebrew ^IX^, largely applied, as we have seen, in our A. V. to " the grave," considered in a universal sense (see the passages in the last note), commensurate with death itself as to the extent of its signification. (Comp. " the grave and gate of deatV of the English Liturgy, Collect for Eas- ter Even.) Though we carefully exclude the artificial grave, or ISp, from this category, there is no doubt, as bishop Lowth has well shown {De Sacra Poesi Hebr. Prael. vii [ed. Oxon. with notes of Michaelis and Rosen- miiUer, 1821], p. 65-69), that the Hebrew poets drew all the imagery with which they describe the state ami condition of the dead from the funeral rites and pomp, and from the vaulted sepulchres of their great men. The bishop's whole treatment of the subject is quite worth perusal. We can only quote his final remarks : "You will see this transcendent imagery better and more completely displayed in that noble triumphal song which Avas composed by Isaiah (xiv, 4-27) . . . pre- vious to the death of the king of Babykn. Ezekid haa also grandly illustrated the same scene, with similar machinery, in the last prophecy concerning the fall of Pharaoh (xxxii, 18-32)." For an excellent vindication of the A.V. in many of its translations of the grave, we refer"thc reader to the treatise of archbishop LTsher {Anstccr to the Jesuit's Challenge, Works [ed. Ehington], iii, 319-324 and 332-340). We doubt not that, \t grave is an admissible sense of PIN^, our translators have, on the whole, made a judicious selection of the passages that will best bear the sense : their purpose was a popular one, and they accomplished it, in the instance of uncertain words and phrases, by giving them the most intelligible turn they would bear, as in the case before us. We midertake not to decide whether it woidd be better to leave the broad and generic word Sheol, as the great versions of antiquity did, everywhere ; whether, e. g., Jacob's lament ((Jen. xxxvii, 35 ; xlii, 38) and like pas- sages would be more suitably, if not correctly, rendered by the simple retention of the original word, or the equally indefinite hades. There is some force in the observation often made (see Corn, a Lapide, on Gen, xxxvii, 35 ; Bellarminc and others, adduced by Leigh, Crit. Sacra, i, 239) that " it was not the grave of Joseph which Jacob meant, for he thought indeed that his son was devoured of wild beasts, and not buried." Sec more on this passage in Pearson, Creed [ed. Chevallier], p. 437 ; Fidke, Translations, etc., p. 314 ; both which writ- ers defend the version of grave. Ainsworth ad loc. Camong the older commentators) and Knobel (among the moderns) contend for the general word hdl [Knobel, Schattenreich]. Rosenmiillcr learnedly states both views, and leans in favor of " locum, ubi mortui umbrarum in- star degunt" {Scholia, i, 576).
(2.) The other meaning of V'H.'Q, "Hell," so rendered in thirty-one passages of A.V., according to the more ancient and, as it seems to us, preferable opinion, makes it local, i. e. the place of disembodied spirits. ('Aicijc li TUTTOQ I'ljAv andijQ, iiyovv a(pavi]Q Kai dyvwarog, u rnc •ipvxcic Vfiwy tvTiiiBiv tKSiJixovaac Sexofuvoc, Andr. CiEsaricus in Apocul. c. 63.) A later opinion supposes the word to indicate "not the place where soids depart- ed are, but the state and condition of the dead, or their permansion in death," as bishop Pearson caEs it {Creed [ed. ChevaUier], p. 439). On this opinion, which that great divine "cannot admit as a full or proper exposi- tion," M-e shall say nothing more than that it is at best only a deduction from the foregoing loccd definition. That definition we have stated in the broadest t«rms, because, in reference to Dr. Barrow's enumeration {Scrm,