Isolation is Hell || What the…? || Part 1

Happy Spooky Month, everyone! I thought it would be a scary journey this month to go through the concepts of Hell. The concept of Hell is shown through three words in the Old and New Testaments: Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna. This is a 9-part series, looking at each concept in three parts. My goal for this series is to look at different descriptors of these words to understand a bigger and more comprehensive Hell and see if we truly understand it to be what we know today. I had some fun trying to think of a unique and respectable name. This study will be called: “What the…?” (had to self-censor).

The first part of the series will take us to Psalm 88:3 and 88:5 to talk about Sheol as the grave or place of the dead.

Psalm 88:3, 5

AMP	NLT	VOICE
3 For my soul is full of troubles, And my life draws near the grave (Sheol, the place of the dead).	3 For my life is full of troubles, and death draws near.	3 My soul is deeply troubled, and my heart can’t bear the weight of this sorrow. I feel so close to death.
5 Cast away [from the living] and abandoned among the dead, Like the slain who lie in a [nameless] grave, Whom You no longer remember, And they are cut off from Your hand.	5 They have left me among the dead, and I lie like a corpse in a grave. I am forgotten, cut off from your care.	5 Forsaken by Him and cut off from His hand, abandoned among the dead who rest in their graves. And You have sent me to be forgotten with them,

The important thing to remember when diving into a Psalm is that these are meant to convey intense emotions. With that, it’s essential to read it in its entirety. The sons of Korah wrote this psalm, coming from a place of suffering. The author is calling out to God, asking for help with the chaos of life. They feel like death is close, for he is alone and forgotten in a corpse deep in a grave. They say God’s anger is the source of this weight keeping him down. According to them, God forces their isolation and is asking for salvation from this punishment. They’re feeling ignored by God as well, afraid that this place of isolation caused by God will be all they know for the rest of their life.

Our feelings can be as intense as the psalmist’s, but our feelings don’t paint a complete picture of our situation. When we bring our unedited feelings to God, we allow him to point out where they are incomplete. We are in trouble whenever we give our feelings divine authority or assume that God can’t handle our feelings. I’ve heard it said before that our feelings are just the reaction to our situation. Our feelings aren’t our situations but the results of our situation. When we allow our feelings to dictate our thoughts and actions, we allow them to control our lives more than God. We believe that God wouldn’t be able to overcome the situation that caused our emotions and that we must stay there.

The Psalms are great prayers to recite because they show us how to bring everything about ourselves to God and train us to trust that he is always with us. It’s the underlying mindset about how God causes triumphs out of trials. God will use all situations for his good. It doesn’t mean that God causes bad things to happen to us because the evil forces of the world can lead us down paths that cause us hurt, pain, and grief. God wants us to bring all of ourselves to him. It’s the good and evil, stressful and peaceful, anxious and tranquil, that he wants us to share so that all things can go through him. When we submit all things to him, we can strengthen our trust and faith in him and remove the doubt that God will leave us to feel this representation of Hell on earth.

It’s short and sweet, but it’s a mental representation of what isolation can feel like. In Part 2, we will jump to Ecclesiastes to discuss how Hell is a place that lacks love, hate, envy, work, thought, knowledge, and wisdom. There is so much to cover! Until then, stay blessed.