The Sides of the Pit
Asshur is there and all her company: his graves are about him: all of them slain, fallen by the sword: Whose graves are set in the sides of the pit, and her company is round about her grave: all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused terror in the land of the living.
(Ezekiel 32:22-23) KJV
Yesterday we concluded that after death all souls go to the grave. This is one of the ways in which the word sheol is translated. We’ve found that after that there are two possible outcomes:
- Those who knew the Lord during their life remain in the mantle,
- a place euphemistically called Abraham’s bosom.
- Those who rejected the Lord descend into the core.
If this was a hypothesis we would have to test it. We need to test the hypothesis that when the Bible refers to the pit, it means the core. We can do that by looking to see if all other Biblical references to the pit are consistent with this interpretation.
Testing a Hypothesis
O LORD, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.
(Psalms 30:3) KJV
The Psalmist’s soul was in the grave, otherwise he could not have been brought up from it. However, he didn’t go down to the pit. The grave in this passage is sheol, elsewhere translated as hell. The pit is bowr, always translated as the pit. Sheol includes the pit, but the pit is a part of sheol that you can’t come back from.
You can come back from the grave but you can’t come back from the pit? That makes sense if the grave is the mantle and the pit is the core. So what are the sides of the pit? The pit refers to the molten core of the earth, it’s below the great gulf and can be seen from the lower mantle. This being the case the sides of the pit refers to the mantle. This gives us the premise for our hypothesis.
Predictive Testable Hypothesis 28
- IF the grave refers to the region of the earth’s mantle,
- AND the pit refers to the molten core,
- THEN you may be brought up from the grave, but not the pit.
The sides of the pit is included in our list of functional synonyms for the mantle.
Biblical Features of the Mantle
| Usage | Transliteration | Scripture | March Post |
| Abraham’s Bosom | kolpos | Luke 16:22 | 16 |
| Belly of hell | mibbeten sheol | Jonah 2:2 | 16 |
| Bottoms of the mountains | qetseb har | Jonah 2:6 | 16 |
| Chambers of death | chadrei maveth | Proverbs 7:27 | |
| Foundations of the hills | mowcadar har | Psalms 18:7 | 17 |
| Foundations of the mountains | mowcadar har | Deut. 32:22 | 17 |
| Foundations of the world | mowcadah tebel | Psalms 18:15 | 17 |
| Grave | sheol | Ezekiel 31:16 | 19 |
| Lower parts of the Earth | tachti erets | Ezekiel 32:24 | 18 |
| Midst of hell | tavek sheol | Ezekiel 32:21 | 19 |
| Nether parts of the Earth | erets tachti | Ezekiel 26:20 | 18 |
| Sides of the pit | yerekah bowr | Ezekiel 32:21 | 20 |
The word translated as sides is from the Hebrew root yerekah. We encountered this before when we looked at references to the ends of the earth. We considered that the phrase the ends of the earth may simply be referring to the coast, where the land meets the sea. The Bible also uses the phrase the coasts of the earth, which is an occurrence of the word yerekah. A possible translation could be the coasts of the pit. If the pit is the molten core of the earth, and yerekah bowr is the coast of the pit, the lower mantle, then the pit also includes the great gulf.
Salvation
- Call upon the name of Jesus Christ,
- believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
- confess your sin.
Read through the Bible in a year
| Reading plan | March 20 | |
| Linear | 1 Samuel 24-28 | |
| Chronological | Deuteronomy 28-29 |
Matty's Paradigm 