Death in Early Jewish Texts

Many biblical texts describe the dead as having a shadowy existence in the underworld, called Sheol, but the late biblical book of Ecclesiastes describes death as the end of consciousness. Thus, Ecclesiastes bemoans the fact that the wicked and righteous will experience the same fate—after many years, neither will be remembered. Ben Sira references Hades but, like Ecclesiastes (5:18), urges readers to take advantage of the physical pleasures and other benefits of this world while there is still time.

Contrary to these views, other Second Temple–era Jews believed that after death the righteous would be rewarded and the wicked would be punished; the earliest Jewish book that makes this claim is 1 Enoch. After death, a person’s soul would enter one of four waiting sections before receiving the ultimate judgment at the end of days. Like the author of 1 Enoch, the rabbis affirm the view that people’s souls live on after death. One midrash says that before death the righteous are given a vision of the rewards that await them in the “next world.” After experiencing this vision, they are satisfied to die. Elsewhere, the rabbis posit that after people die, their souls hover over their body for three days, hoping to return. Once they notice changes in their corpse, they relent and ascend to heaven.

The rabbis imagined that, for the righteous, death itself would not be painful. In fact in one talmudic story, R. Naḥman, appearing posthumously in a dream, describes death as easy, despite the overwhelming fear of death. Another talmudic passage describes death for the righteous as a “kiss [from God].” For less pious people, however, there are 902 other possible ways to die.