What is the “pit” mentioned so often in the Bible?
This one is not as easy as one might suspect. Lots of words, a bit of Hebrew and Greek. Attention to the context.
I am using the King James Bible and the Concordance based on it by another “James”, James Strong. Different translations may have used different English words, but the Hebrew is pretty straightforward.
Let’s start in the Old Testament, and follow the meaning carefully, because there are many false teachings built on a false understanding of “the Pit.” There are three Hebrew words that are translated “well.” I give you Strong’s article number for his own research:
953. Bode: Basically, a hole that is used as a cistern or prison. Translated cistern, dungeon, fountain, well and well. Joseph, in Genesis, was thrown into a well. One of David’s mighty men killed a lion that was in a hole. David claims that God has delivered him from a terrible boredom, showing us that the word can also be taken figuratively.
Now there are times when the word is used to speak of death and the grave, and possibly even eternal punishment, as in Ezekiel 31. When the definite article is used with it, it can mean all of these latter things, and the translators often capitalized: “the Hole”.
7585. Sheol. The moat. Hell. The world of the dead. Including the internal ones of the same. Translated grave, hell, hole. This is by far the most frequently used word in Hebrew to convey the idea of something happening in the world to come. Although it is often not translated hole, it is translated hell quite often. Much more than a hole in the ground, though that hole, a grave, may surely be the point of entry to the Well. Just as the righteous spirits go somewhere “up”, the lost also take a direction when leaving the body. Below. In a well. And, of course, their spirit is gone by the time they’re buried in the ground, so we don’t have to attach spooky meaning to a graveyard. Necessarily. The fate of his soul is a completely different world, where evil reigns and he is punished for that reign. Very much alive, in a deadly way.
Those who dared to come against Moses quickly went to Sheol. Numbers 16. David affirms that the wicked will go to Sheol. David’s son says that the false women and their clients will be in Sheol. But it is not always so clear. Jonah claims that he called out to God from the womb of Sheol. And we know where he was. Also Jesus, according to David: God promised that he would not leave the soul of Jesus in Sheol. Definitely the place of the dead, but still a place from which one can be recovered. But still too, a shame. It shows us how much the prophet was being punished, and how far Jesus was willing to go for us.
7845. Shakath. Well, (figuratively): destruction. Translated Corruption, destruction, ditch, burial, pit. The uses of this word appear to overlap with the previous two words and have no specific meaning in our research. We also use different words to express basically the same idea. In the case of this study, we could say Hell of fire, Hell, Pit, Lake of fire, Hades, and mean the same thing in all cases.
In the New Testament, “pit” is translated by the Greek frehar, which brings us back to the Hebrew bore. A hole, a hole in the ground, a cistern, a well. Jesus spoke of a certain donkey that fell into a certain well.
The only other time it is used in the New Testament (as “pit”) it takes on an entirely different meaning, and not only has a definite article attached to it, but also includes the word “bottomless.”
A hole in the ground. In cistern. have a hole Bottomless. Possible? Of course. Through gravitational attraction, objects are carried along and around the bowels of the Earth, falling forever, without peace, without destination. Perhaps being thrown to the side on ledges along the way by torment, perhaps swimming in the lake of fire from time to time, and then falling back down?
It is not until the end of the Bible that this truth comes to light. The pit of which the prophets and historians of the Old Covenant speak turns out to be a place of unspeakable horror, where Satan accumulates his troops and occasionally sends them to the planet. The antichrist himself waits there, according to John, being fed with poison and power to strut the Earth during his few years, before his public disappearance. Oh, it’s already been a long fall for Satan, from the top of the Heavenly Mountain to the earth’s atmosphere, to the earth, and then below the earth, to a pit whose bottom cannot be reached.
Although “pit” is not translated otherwise in the New Testament (except where the woman at the “pit” calls that “pit” Jacob’s “pit”), we do know that sheol has become Hades in the language Greek. It also means the place of the dead, with all that that entails. But here we are concentrating on the word “well.”
We must view all of these words as a family (pit, grave, hole, hell, well, cistern, prison), and check each context carefully to see what is being said. The basic meaning of all of them is simply a hole in the ground. It may be a harmless hole filled with water. It may be a simple tomb, where bodies are temporarily stored, but not souls. Or it may be the larger “hole” John saw at the end of God’s revelation of truth to his church, encompassing the full scope of the prison created for those who have rejected God and his Son.
We are told that Jesus went and preached to a company of prisoners as a Spirit, while His body lay in a hole in the ground, soon to be taken out of the underworld forever. While he was close to him, he actually announced his triumph to the evil spirits. We are not told that He suffered there. Objection 1. It seems that his suffering for sin was accomplished on the cross, not in the grave.
The Pit, from the point of view of eternity, is Satan’s prison. It is the place of the dead. It is the place of entry into eternal suffering apart from God, for those who wanted so much to be apart from Him. It is a place to avoid. This escape can only come through the shed blood of the spotless Son of the living God.