"The land of gloom and darkness". Underworld from early Hebrew belief.
In Hebrew thought a place where the dead continue to exist in darkness, dust and helplessness, without wisdom and unable to know or praise God.
One of the three Biblical names for Hell. q.v. Lower_Sheol, Upper_Sheol
The abode of departed spirits of the lost (but including the blessed dead in periods preceding the Ascension of Messiah, wherein they were apparently in a separate area). Sometimes translated “grave,†“nether world,†“underworld,†“the Pit,†and “hell†(Greek Hades; Latin infern(os,us,um)), although hell is more synonymous with Gehinnom (Gehenna).
Sheol is the place of the dead; the nether world; the grave; death.
The shadowy underworld to which the departed spirits of the dead go.
Sheol is a Hebrew term that can mean either the realm of the dead (Genesis 37:35, English: grave or "the hereafter") or the place where the wicked (unbelievers) suffer after they die (Psalm 49:14-15).
In Hebrew, Sheol (ש×ול) is the "abode of the dead", the "underworld", "the common grave of mankind" or "pit".Metzger & Coogan (1993) Oxford Companion to the Bible, p277. In the Hebrew Bible, it is a comfortless place beneath the earth, beyond gates, where both the bad and the good, slave and king, pious and wicked must go after death to sleep in silence and oblivion in the dust. Sheol is the common destination of both the righteous and the unrighteous dead, as recounted in Ecclesiastes and Job.