Sheol is the underworld of the Hebrew Bible, and it is important precisely because it is not heaven or hell in the later sense, it predates that division. In the older strata of the Hebrew scriptures, Sheol is the common destination of all the dead, righteous and wicked alike: a shadowy, silent pit deep in the earth to which everyone descends, where the shades (rephaim) exist in a dim, weakened, sleeplike state. Its most striking feature is separation from God and from worship, "the dead praise not the Lord," says the Psalmist; "in Sheol who shall give thee thanks?", so that the tragedy of death is above all the loss of the vibrant relationship with the living God that defined Israelite religion. There is little sense here of reward or punishment after death; the emphasis of the Hebrew Bible falls overwhelmingly on this life, on covenant and blessing in the land.
Only in the latest books and in the Second Temple period does a differentiated afterlife emerge, resurrection, judgement, and the sorting of the dead, transforming the undivided gloom of Sheol into the beginnings of heaven and Gehenna. Sheol thus preserves an older Israelite vision: death as a universal descent into silence, its sting not torment but the end of praise.