underworld

Distinctions

The seven of Eruvin 19a

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi's list: sheol, avadon, be'er shachat, bor shaon, tit hayaven, tzalmaves, and eretz hatachtis.

• Maharsha (Rabbi Shmuel Eidels, 1555 to 1631): the seven names correspond to seven different places within Gehinnom (see Sotah 10b).
• Midrash Konen (in Rabbi J. D. Eisenstein's Otzar Midrashim p. 256) assigns places to different types of sinners: Korach and his company in sheol; the lost souls of the wicked in avadon; robbers, thieves, and those who hold back a worker's wages in be'er shachat; those who transgressed in matters of intimacy in tit hayaven; slanderers in tzalmaves; those who quarrel with talmidei chachamim in eretz tachtis; and so forth.

Sheol (שאול)

Close to seventy occurrences.

• Ibn Ezra (to Bereishis 37:35) holds the literal sense is grave, and faults the Vulgate for rendering it infernus there.
• Rashi (there): the plain sense is grave, but exegetically it can refer to the soul's purgatory after death.
• Malbim: literally a deep pit from which it is impossible to get out; this, Rabbi Klein adds, may apply to both the grave and Gehinnom.
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: root ש-ל, something cast away or negated, and death is a plane of existence away from the living.
• Rabbi Tzvi Matisyahu Abrahams, a friend of Rabbi Klein's, takes a more exhortative approach (Root Connections in the Torah p. 274): the grave is sheol because when we are placed in the ground a great question (she'eilah) will hang over us as to where we are headed.

Avadon (אבדון)

Tehillim 88:12. Either the body's ruin and rotting after death, or that souls are lost (avad) there for a time.

Rabbi Avraham bar Chiya HaNasi (Hegyon HaNefesh p. 3a): sheol and avadon mean the same thing.

Shachat (שחת), be'er shachat (באר שחת)

Tehillim 16:10, 55:24. In many pesukim shachat means simply a pit.

• Rabbi Avraham Bedersi HaPenini (1230 to 1300): a pit dug to trap wild animals, which he connects to Gehinnom by noting that the wicked sometimes set traps to ensnare the righteous; he also explains shachat as an expression of hashchasah, destruction, since the body rots in the grave.
• Rabbi Pappenheim: root ש-ח, bending, since one stuck in so cramped a place must bend; from the same root hishtachavah (bowing, bending one's posture) and mashach (anointing, since oil softens a hard thing and makes it pliable).

Bor shaon (בור שאון)

Tehillim 40:3, literally "the Pit of Noise."

• Rabbi Yonah Ibn Janach and others explain that shaon (a ruckus of noise) and sha'anan (quiet) are related, an example of the common phenomenon in which Hebrew words of diametrically opposed meaning sometimes have related roots. In light of this, Rabbi Klein suggests, bor shaon might actually mean the Pit of Silence, where one can no longer complain or even speak after death.
• Rashi (to Yeshayahu 9:4) and Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) give shaon the same root as shoah, destruction; this, Rabbi Klein notes, fits avadon and shachat, which are also terms of destruction.

Tit hayaven (טיט היון)

Tehillim 40:3 (alongside bor shaon), literally "slimy mud." Gehinnom holds a man as quicksand does, and the dead lie in the grave without moving. Rabbi Pappenheim: hayaven from י-ן, trickery, a root related to onaah (profiting by cheating another) and to yayin (wine, which deceives by tasting good and then taking a man's mind); quicksand deceives likewise, looking like ground a man can walk on. Rav Hirsch (to Bereishis 9:20) and Rabbi Aharon Marcus (Keses HaSofer to Bereishis 10:2) say much the same.

Tzalmaves (צלמות)

Tehillim 107:10, Iyov 10:21. "Shadow of death"; the connection needs no argument.

Eretz hatachtis (ארץ תחתית) or eretz chittis (ארץ חתית)

The Gemara finds no pasuk for eretz hatachtis and falls back on a received tradition. Sefer Russiana and Rabbi Yitzchak Abuhab's Menoras HaMaor have eretz chittis, the land of the Hittites, and Tosafos prefer that girsa: since eretz tachtis does occur in Tanach (Yechezkel 31 in several places; see also Devarim 32:22), the Gemara would not have needed a tradition, whereas eretz chittis occurs nowhere. Rabbi Klein draws the consequence: eretz tachtis would be a scribal error for eretz chittis, and on that assumption the whole sugya makes more sense.

Variant lists

• Midrash Hallel (Otzar Midrashim p. 134) drops bor shaon and eretz hatachtis and adds gehinnom and tziyah (place of desolation).
• Midrash Din HaKever (p. 94) has be'er shaon for bor shaon, bor hatachtis (the underpit) for eretz hatachtis, and chatzar maves (Courtyard of Death) for tzalmaves.
• The Targumic Tosefta (start of Yechezkel) has dumah (literally, quiet) for bor shaon (in kabbalistic sources Dumah is the angel set over Gehinnom), arka for eretz hatachtis (Aramaic for earth, see Yirmiyahu 10:11), and gehinnom for tzalmaves.

Gehinnom (גיהנום) and tophet (תפת)

Neither explicitly refers to the netherworld in Tanach. Gei ben Hinnom and Tophes are places south of Yerushalayim where the Baal was served, child sacrifice included (Yirmiyahu 19). Both names were then borrowed for the sinner's afterlife. The Gemara asks why Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi left them out and answers that they are not names of the place or of quarters within it but allusions to what lands a man there: gehinnom, the valley (gei) into which those who occupy themselves with what is chinam, pointless, descend (Rashi: sexual impropriety); tophes, the place into which fall those whom the yetzer hara talks over (mefateh).

Alukah (עלוקה)

• Tosafos cite sources reading alukah, the leech of Mishlei 30:15, as another name for Gehinnom, though they also weigh its being a name for Shlomo HaMelech.
• Maharal: as a leech draws out blood, Gehinnom draws out the soul.
• Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin (Nefesh HaChaim 1:12): a leech draws out bad blood and then dies, and so Gehinnom cleanses a man of his sins until what the sin made is gone.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Names of the Underworld," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 29 June 2019.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Names of the Underworld," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).

Cited in the essay: Eruvin 19a (Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi's seven, and the Gemara on gehinnom and tophes) with Rashi and Tosafos there; Maharsha on the seven names, with Sotah 10b; Bereishis 37:35 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and the Vulgate; Rav Hirsch to Bereishis 9:20; Rabbi Aharon Marcus, Keses HaSofer to Bereishis 10:2; Devarim 32:22; Yeshayahu 9:4 with Rashi; Yirmiyahu 10:11, ch. 19; Yechezkel 31 and the Targumic Tosefta at the start of Yechezkel; Tehillim 16:10, 40:3, 55:24, 88:12, 107:10; Iyov 10:21; Mishlei 30:15; Midrash Konen, Midrash Hallel, and Midrash Din HaKever in Rabbi J. D. Eisenstein's Otzar Midrashim pp. 256, 134, 94; Sefer Russiana; Rabbi Yitzchak Abuhab, Menoras HaMaor; Maharal; Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, Nefesh HaChaim 1:12; Malbim, Sefer HaCarmel s.v. שאול; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Cheshek Shlomo s.v. של, שח and ין; Rabbi Avraham Bedersi HaPenini; Rabbi Yonah Ibn Janach; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Rabbi Tzvi Matisyahu Abrahams, Root Connections in the Torah p. 274; Rabbi Avraham bar Chiya, Hegyon HaNefesh p. 3a.