In equating the concept behind the New Testament word Hades with that of the Old Testament Sheol [1], the Bible makes it clear that its Hades is not like the realm of of Greek mythology, with its Elysian Fields and Tartarus. Yes, the New Testament once speaks of a Biblical Tartarus in 2 Peter 2:4, but it is only a special prison for select fallen angels until they are sentenced to the lake of fire. As for the Christian Hades, it is the metaphysical state of either unconscious existence or total nonexistence of the soul that all the human dead share before their resurrection (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10), except when human spirits are briefly revived by means such as sorcery (like with the witch of Endor summoning the spirit of Samuel). After being restored to life as a mind-body unity, the unrighteous dead of Hades/Sheol, the grave, will be placed in hell to be cosmically exterminated (Revelation 20:13-15). The Biblical Hades is Sheol, and the Biblical Sheol is not a spiritual realm at all.
There are other scattered verses beyond the more explicit and relevant ones like Job 3:11-19 and Mark 5:35-40, which I repeatedly point to, that either sharply clarify or strongly imply that the dead are without awareness, without memory, and without emotion, as Ecclesiastes 9:5-10 so plainly mentions. The author of Psalm 88 asks in verses 10-12, "Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up and praise you? Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction? Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?" The Psalmist calls the state of the dead oblivion, a term for unconsciousness or nonexistence, and, just as other verses do, uses the word grave to refer to the condition of the dead. This parallels what David states in Psalm 6:5 when he says to God, "No one remembers you when he is dead. Who praises you from the grave?"
Other than the very abnormal, temporary revival of Samuel's spirit before his resurrection in 1 Samuel 28, there are only a handful of verses across the entire Bible that might at first seem to present a conscious intermediate state between the first death and the resurrection--after all, even if Sheol/Hades was a realm where the dead consciously exist in the meantime, it would still not be New Jerusalem or the lake of fire (hell) despite what many people claim. No, the unrighteous inhabitants of Hades, the collective grave of Earth with its unconscious dead, are thrown into hell (Revelation 20:13-14); they are not in hell currently according to the Bible no matter what Hades is. A passage that, if it stood alone, would seem to characterize Sheol as a literal underworld of spirits is Isaiah 14:9-11. Of course, the likes of Ecclesiastes 9 far more directly teach soul sleep/oblivion as the current fate of all humankind. Something like Isaiah 14 is clarified in light of such verses, which are themselves not as overt as those teaching the fate of the wicked in hell is eventual nonexistence (such as Ezekiel 18:4 and 2 Peter 2:6).
If the dead have no perception, no experience of any kind, as Ecclesiastes says and other passages concur with, then there cannot actually be spirits of the departed waiting before their resurrection to receive the spirit of a dead pagan king like Isaiah 14 describes. Actually, just a single verse earlier (14:8), Isaiah describes pine trees and cedars as celebrating the demise of the king of Babylon (14:4) and using words to convey that how no one will cut them down any longer. Immediately after this is when the author says Sheol is roused as spirits greet the fallen king and note how weak he now is. The context is one of highly figurative wording. Even if this kind of temporary afterlife was what the Bible taught over soul sleep, then the deceased kings of the world would still have thrones in the conscious realm of the dead and continue to rule or at least formally act as if they are, as verse 9 mentions. There is no mention of torment like so many imagine. This is not what evangelicals teach when they say that all people went to Sheol as spirits before the resurrection of Christ "moved" the righteous to heaven while the wicked suffer until their resurrection! Not only is the rousing of Sheol mentioned right in a figurative context, but it is also really the other, aforementioned verses that repeatedly and explicitly teach soul oblivion or sleep for those who are presently dead.
Luke 16:19-31, though, is the most popular passage proponents of Sheol as an intermediate netherworld for conscious spirits point to. Since these verses are more numerous than three figurative verses in Isaiah, in a separate post, I will address their irrelevance to what the Old Testament and New Testament alike teach about the intermediate state of Sheol/Hades. The Biblical Sheol is less important than the Biblical heaven and hell that are even more misunderstood due to assumptions and tradition, yet it is important in its own right. As mentioned in part one of this series, even the nature of justice is affiliated with this: it would not be just for lesser but unrepentant sinners born early in human history to suffer agony during a longer wait for annihilation in hell than a greater sinner born many years later, not that Isaiah 14:9-11 even speaks of torment of the wicked before they are in hell! The dead know nothing, the Bible says. They do not perceive or desire or praise anything, according to the provided verses, for their spirits are in a dreamless sleep or do not exist whatsoever for now.
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