In the ancient world, people generally believed that those who died went to the “abode of the dead.” In the HB/OT, the most common term for this abode is “sheol” (שְׁאֹל). Although there is no description of it in the HB/OT, some passages seem to describe it as a vast, subdivided burial chamber (e.g., Ezek 32:21-28). It was a place of gloom, darkness, and forgetfulness where the dead would live on as “shades” (רְפָאִים). The state of the dead in sheol was thought to be nebulous, insubstantial, and even one of alienation from God. While this conception of sheol may seem gloomy, it also reflected a belief that the deceased continued to exist after death.
There are a number of passages in the wisdom literature, however, that stand in stark contrast to the belief in an underworld where existence would continue. This paper will focus on several such passages in Job in which the book’s namesake appears, at least at times, to express a belief that death meant the complete cessation of human existence, a concept known in contemporary philosophical, religious, and scientific studies as eternal oblivion that is mostly associated with religious skepticism, secular humanism, nihilism, agnosticism, and atheism. In one passage, for example, he exclaims that, after death, he “shall not be” (Job 7:8). In another, he uses several analogies that strongly imply the complete dissolution of the human person at death (Job 7:10). In yet another, he cries out that even if the LORD were to seek him he would not find him, because he “shall not be” (Job 7:21).
This paper will provide a study of these and other passages from Job and consider how what may seem to be a belief in eternal oblivion relates to what appears to have been the more common view that the deceased continued to exist in Sheol. Did these oppositional views exist concurrently and does their presence in the HB/OT attest to a wider variety of ancient Israelite views about the state of the dead than has previously been supposed? Alternatively, could a belief in eternal oblivion represent a diachronic development that occurred in Israelite religious thought? Or, if the idea of eternal oblivion does appear in the book of Job, could it be the result of intercultural influence? Finally, how does the idea of eternal oblivion relate to biblical teaching about resurrection?