There is Elam and all her multitude, All around her grave, All of them slain, fallen by the sword, Who have gone down uncircumcised to the lower parts of the earth, Who caused their terror in the land of the living; Now they bear their shame with those who go down to the Pit.
(Ezekiel 32:24) NKJV
The lower parts of the Earth, or nether parts, is one of several phrases which describe physical features of the interior of the Earth that we can assign to the mantle.
One of the questions that most Christians avoid is, what happened to the Old Testament saints when they died? They couldn’t go to heaven because it was before the crucifixion and the propitiation hadn’t been paid for their redemption.
We all have the same evidence. Our choice of paradigm determines what we think it’s evidence of.
– Matty’s Razor
The OT saints went into Sheol, a word used to refer to the underworld realm of the dead. Part of sheol is a chamber in the lower mantle which we euphemistically refer to as Abraham’s bosom. The lower mantle is one of the regions of the internal structure of the Earth which we can deduce from seismological data.
We spend the month of March deducing how the Hebrew words erets, sheol and tebel are modified. It turns out that they can be resolved into logical groupings which correspond to the 4 major regions of the interior of the Earth. We euphemistically call them the levels of hell, but this has no similarity to the way that they’re described in Dante’s Inferno.
Levels of Hell
| Grave (sheol) Pit (sahat/bowr) | Earth (erets) | World (tebel) | |
| Crust | sheol | erets | tebel |
| Mantle | mibbeten sheol tavek sheol yerekah bowr | tachti erets erets tachti | mowcadah tebel |
| Great Gulf (outer core) | bad sheol | erets beriach matsuq erets mayim tachath erets | |
| Core (inner core) | sheol tachti tachti erets bowr, shachath missahat beli | mowcadar erets |
Faith is believing in something that you can’t see, because of evidence.
– Faith, definition
The following table contains all of the ways that the Bible refers to physical features of the mantle. Included in the list is the lower parts of the Earth, a synonym for the nether parts of the Earth.
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 |
Matty's Paradigm 