The Hebrew realm of the dead — down, dark, silent — appearing here for the FIRST time in the Bible, in Jacob's 'I will go down to my son, mourning, to Sheol' (37:35). Crucially, everyone goes there: righteous and wicked alike, with no second word set against it. It is not a place of punishment, and the Hebrew Bible offers no rival destination. The KJV renders it 'the grave' here, but 'hell' in thirty-one other places and 'the pit' in three — so an English reader cannot tell that Jacob, Job, David and Isaiah are discussing one thing, and would reasonably conclude the patriarch expects the grave while the wicked go elsewhere. That is a doctrine assembled out of an inconsistent gloss. The Douay, following the Vulgate's infernum, prints 'into hell' right here — a patriarch expecting to join his beloved son there. The ASV and NWT both simply transliterate, 'Sheol,' declining to settle by translation what the Hebrew leaves open; this translation follows them on the merits — the same principle as 'vault' for raqia and 'side' for tsela. ⚠ Psalm 139:8 makes a stronger claim about it than the rest of the Psalter does: 'if I spread my bed in Sheol, there you are.' Elsewhere in the Psalms, Sheol is precisely where God is NOT remembered and does not act (6:5, 88:10-12, 115:17). Psalm 139 sits against those verses, and the Psalter does not reconcile them. → first discussed at Gen 37:35