A particular section of the ground or the sea can only hold so many decomposing bodies at one time until they return to "dust," but Sheol can hold as many people as have died. Habakkuk 2:5 describes an enemy of God who is as greedy as Sheol, which is never full or "satisfied" with the dead it has claimed. Proverbs similarly says it never has enough (Proverbs 30:15-16). The wicked go there just like the righteous (Job 3:11-19), something Revelation affirms by saying Hades gave up the dead that were in it before the final judgment: Acts 2:27 quotes Psalm 16:10 and substitutes the word Hades for Sheol, but Hades is Biblically not an intermediate realm of torture for the wicked (Luke 16:19-31 is a parable [1] that would otherwise contradict the blatant teaching on the matter).
If the wicked or unsaved dead, who were not part of the resurrection that already took place for the righteous or saved (Revelation 20:4-6), are resurrected from Hades and the sea before their judgment, why would Hades be referenced next to the sea if one is an afterlife for conscious souls? As the aforementioned passage from Job says, Sheol is a dimension/state of rest where souls sleep, free from the misery of human life. Death "claims" people one by one, rich or poor, rulers and the ruled, men and women, old and young, and it is never full, as Habakkuk and Proverbs say. Human death, introduced by sin (Genesis 3:22-24, Romans 5:12, 6:23), brings more and more into Sheol where they join the hordes of unperceiving minds, if they exist at all, waiting for their resurrection (Daniel 12:2, 13).
Yes, the true Sheol of the Bible is a state of unconsciousness for the souls of the dead (or a dimension where these unconscious souls are suspended), all the dead. For the body, Sheol or the grave refers to the literal physical location that holds a person's remains. For the mind, it at most refers to a place/state of unconsciousness, or perhaps phenomenological nonexistence, as the dead "sleep" (Daniel 12:2 again, as well as John 11:11-13, Mark 5:35-40, and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18), wholly unperceiving to the point of not even knowing themselves or logical axioms (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10) until their resurrection (John 5:24-29). There is no present experience in heaven for the righteous or morally righteous punishment for the wicked, not if what the Bible actually says is true.
Death "reigns" in this way until death itself is done away with as the last enemy of God to perish (1 Corinthians 15:26). Never full, never satisfied until then, death and Sheol are compared to the power of genuine love in Song of Songs 8:6. Love is said to be as strong as death and as unyielding as Sheol, what the Bible presents as the inevitable, collective intermediate "place" of the dead, where they join together in the same total lack of thought, emotion, and activity, in the words of Ecclesiastes 9. If love is as mighty as the grip of the physical grave and the unconsciousness of Sheol, it can be quite potent indeed, for the Teacher comments on how death is faced by everyone and how the inability to think or do anything is what all the dead descend to. It is only elsewhere that an eventual eschatological resurrection is taught.
Sheol is neither a being nor a place where beings experience anything at all, but it is in a sense insatiable. This makes it a great parallel for the person who has given himself or herself over to greed as Habakkuk directly teaches. The eye might never tire of seeing (Ecclesiastes 1:8) and many fools allow themselves to be carried away by greed in part because of this. Biblically, they would simply not end up in torment within Hades after death like the rich man in the mere parable of Jesus from Luke 16, just the same soul sleep or temporary annihilation of the dead before resurrection and the subsequent second death in hell (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6), this one permanent and without the opportunity of resurrection. How ironic that greed, a sin that could damn someone to destruction in hell after Sheol, is analogous to the of the capacity of Sheol to take more and more.
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