The Biblical meaning of the words death and soul

The word death is used in the Bible for the first time in the passage in which God forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It stands to reason that when God told Adam and Eve that they would die if they were going to disobey His command, they had already come to know death in the vegetable world and in the animal world and consequently knew the meaning of the words death and dying. Within this context it is important for people to realize that both in the Hebrew and in the Greek texts the same words are used for the dying of animals, of plants and of people. And nowhere does the Bible suggest that the death of people differs from the death of other living beings like animals and plants. In the Bible the word death suggests in all cases where the word is used the cessation of all life functions. Death is the opposite of life. Nowhere does the Bible suggest that after a person has died part of that person continues to live in a hereafter or that part of man is immortal. The human soul dies in the same way as the animal soul dies: death means the end of every form of activity and every form of awareness. The dead are not conscious of anything: the Bible often compares the condition of death of people with a state of deep sleep.

For that matter: people can wake up from a deep sleep. And according to the Bible the human dead can be made alive again by God at the end of time (on the last day, after God has put an end to our present human history). People differ from animals in the sense that they may hope for a resurrection: a second life.

The Biblical vision of death is the exact opposite of the vision of non-Christian religions and the vision of the great Greek philosophers. Non-Christian religions and Greek philosophy teach that humans have an immortal soul which continues to live after its owner has died in a hereafter where souls are rewarded or punished. But the Bible teaches that souls are mortal and that the only hope of immortality for people lies in the idea of a resurrection.

In Western culture the notion that a human being consists of a body and a soul, which are separated at death, comes from pagan religions and particularly from Greek philosophy. In the Bible the word soul means life itself, living as such, and when a person dies the soul dies together with the body.

Again: though the Bible teaches that at the death of a person everything that that person has and is dies, ceases to exist, ceases to function, this does not mean that the Bible teaches that in the case of all human beings death has the last word and that every human who has ever died will never live again. The Bible teaches that Jesus has died, has been resurrected and is now alive.

And the Bible also teaches that when Jesus at the end of human history will establish God’s Kingdom, He will resurrect from the dead all the people who deserve to get a place in that kingdom and give them a completely new and eternal life.

On the other hand: within the Biblical vision of death there does exist a form of dying and a form of being dead from which no resurrection is possible. The Bible has a number of words of phrases for this phenomenon: the second death, the definitive death or the lake of fire.

In particular the Bible book called Revelation shows that this second death or definitive death is the final destination for Satan, for the demons and for those human beings who flatly refuse to subject themselves to God and His commandments. For these former angels and purposefully disobedient people there will come a time when God will remove them from existence and will never allow them to exist any more in whatever form.

It is a pity that in the course of the centuries the word soul has got a completely different meaning in Western culture from the meaning it has in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures.

Unfortunately something similar has happened with the word hell. In non-Christian religions of antiquity the word hell meant a place where the souls of dead persons who have lived badly are for ever punished and tortured.

In the Bible the notion of hell in the sense of a place where the souls of dead people are punished is completely absent. It is not mentioned or referred to anywhere. People who think clearly will realize that such an idea simply cannot exist in a Bible which, as we have seen before, teaches that human souls die in the same way as bodies die and that after death human souls are not conscious of anything and consequently cannot feel any pain or suffering.

The word hell is often used in modern Bible translations for the Hebrew word sheol and the Greek word hades. But this Hebrew word and this Greek word have nothing to do with punishment or torture. In the Holy Writings the words sheol and hades simply refer to the condition of being dead, of not being able to do any form of activity, of not being conscious of anything. Human souls sleep in death, they rest in death. They are not tortured in death.

The fact that within Christianity and within Western culture the word hell has acquired such a totally different meaning, compared to what the words sheol and hades originally meant has led to a lot of confusion and a lot of misunderstanding with regard to what the Bible teaches about death, the condition in which the dead find themselves and the hope for a life after death which people may certainly cherish.

After Satan had rebelled against God, he not only succeeded in persuading Adam and Eve to follow him in his rebellion, but also a large number of angels in heaven. These are the fallen angels that the Bible calls demons or devils. Shortly before the Flood they left heaven, adopted male bodies and married attractive earthly women. From these liaisons there arose extremely violent children who made life on earth so horrible and so godless in those days that God felt He was obliged to destroy all humanity by means of a Flood. Except for eight righteous people.

At this Flood the demons got rid of their human bodies and returned to their spirit world. Though the Bible says that they will be destroyed at the end of our present human history, their influence on human life and human society is still immense. Many Bible texts show very clearly that all over the world the power and the influence of Satan and his demons is immense and this will remain so until the day when God’s Kingdom will be established on our earth and there will come an end to any form of influence of rebellious angels