The Lower Parts of the Earth

There is Elam and all her multitude, All around her grave, All of them slain, fallen by the sword, Who have gone down uncircumcised to the lower parts of the earth, Who caused their terror in the land of the living; Now they bear their shame with those who go down to the Pit.

(Ezekiel 32:24) NKJV

The lower parts of the Earth, or nether parts, is one of several phrases which describe physical features of the interior of the Earth that we can assign to the mantle.

One of the questions that most Christians avoid is, what happened to the Old Testament saints when they died? They couldn’t go to heaven because it was before the crucifixion and the propitiation hadn’t been paid for their redemption.

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We all have the same evidence. Our choice of paradigm determines what we think it’s evidence of.

– Matty’s Razor

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The OT saints went into Sheol, a word used to refer to the underworld realm of the dead. Part of sheol is a chamber in the lower mantle which we euphemistically refer to as Abraham’s bosom. The lower mantle is one of the regions of the internal structure of the Earth which we can deduce from seismological data.

We spend the month of March deducing how the Hebrew words erets, sheol and tebel are modified. It turns out that they can be resolved into logical groupings which correspond to the 4 major regions of the interior of the Earth. We euphemistically call them the levels of hell, but this has no similarity to the way that they’re described in Dante’s Inferno.

Levels of Hell

	Grave (sheol) Pit (sahat/bowr)	Earth (erets)	World (tebel)
Crust	sheol	erets	tebel
Mantle	mibbeten sheol tavek sheol yerekah bowr	tachti erets erets tachti	mowcadah tebel
Great Gulf (outer core)	bad sheol	erets beriach matsuq erets mayim tachath erets
Core (inner core)	sheol tachti tachti erets bowr, shachath missahat beli	mowcadar erets

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Faith is believing in something that you can’t see, because of evidence.

– Faith, definition

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The following table contains all of the ways that the Bible refers to physical features of the mantle. Included in the list is the lower parts of the Earth, a synonym for the nether parts of the Earth.

Biblical Features of the Mantle

Usage	Transliteration	Scripture	March Post
Abraham’s Bosom	kolpos	Luke 16:22	16
Belly of hell	mibbeten sheol	Jonah 2:2	16
Bottoms of the mountains	qetseb har	Jonah 2:6	16
Chambers of death	chadrei maveth	Proverbs 7:27
Foundations of the hills	mowcadar har	Psalms 18:7	17
Foundations of the mountains	mowcadar har	Deut. 32:22	17
Foundations of the world	mowcadah tebel	Psalms 18:15	17
Grave	sheol	Ezekiel 31:16	19
Lower parts of the Earth	tachti erets	Ezekiel 32:24	18
Midst of hell	tavek sheol	Ezekiel 32:21	19
Nether parts of the Earth	erets tachti	Ezekiel 26:20	18
Sides of the pit	yerekah bowr	Ezekiel 32:21	20

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