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: the seven names answer to seven distinct places within Gehinnom (see Sotah 10b). Midrash Konen (in Otzar Midrashim p. 256) assigns them: 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.

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 by derashah it is where the soul is judged. Malbim: a deep pit from which there is no climbing out, which suits 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 (Root Connections in the Torah p. 274) reads it from she'eilah, the question hanging over a man as he is lowered in.

avadon (אבדון)

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

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

Tehillim 16:10, 55:24. In many pesukim shachat means simply a pit. Rabbi Avraham Bedersi HaPenini: a pit dug to trap wild animals, and the wicked likewise set traps for the righteous; he also hears hashchasah, destruction, since the body decays 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, "the pit of tumult." Ibn Janach and others hold shaon (uproar) and sha'anan (quiet) are one root, a case of a Hebrew root carrying a sense and its opposite; on that reading bor shaon is the Pit of Silence, where one can no longer complain or speak at all. Rashi (to Yeshayahu 9:4) and Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) put shaon with shoah, devastation, which lines it up with avadon and shachat.

tit hayaven (טיט היון)

Tehillim 40:3, the clinging mire. Gehinnom holds a man as quicksand does, and the dead lie in the grave without moving. Rabbi Pappenheim: hayaven from י-ן, trickery, the root of onaah (profiting by cheating another) and of 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, and the sugya then runs properly.

Variant lists

Midrash Hallel (Otzar Midrashim p. 134) drops bor shaon and eretz hatachtis and adds gehinnom and tziyah (waste). Midrash Din HaKever (p. 94) has be'er shaon for bor shaon, bor hatachtis for eretz hatachtis, and chatzar maves for tzalmaves. The Targumic Tosefta (start of Yechezkel) has dumah 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 names 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.

Rendering guidance

• Gehinnom stays transliterated. "Hell" imports eternal damnation, "purgatory" imports a Catholic doctrine, and Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin's leech is precisely the point neither word carries.
• Sheol: "the grave" as the default, on Ibn Ezra. Only where a source is reading it as the place of the soul should the English shift, and then say so.
• Trap: English "pit" will absorb shachat, bor shaon, and tit hayaven at once. In Eruvin 19a and in the Midrash Konen list, keep all seven distinct, transliterated with a gloss: "be'er shachat, the well of the pit," and so on. The moment two of them read alike the count of seven stops meaning anything.
• Tzalmaves: "the shadow of death," not "deep darkness."
• Tophes stays a proper name in Yirmiyahu and transliterated in the Gemara's derashah, since the derashah works off the sound of the word.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Names of the Underworld," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 26 Sivan 5779 (2019-06-29): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8304-names-of-the-underworld.md. Primary loci cited: Eruvin 19a (Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi's seven) with Tosafos there; Sotah 10b with Maharsha; Bereishis 9:20, 10:2, 37:35 with Rashi and Ibn Ezra; Devarim 32:22; Yeshayahu 9:4; 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 Eisenstein's Otzar Midrashim pp. 256, 134, 94; Menoras HaMaor; Nefesh HaChaim 1:12; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim.