Realm Of The Dead Below

Deuteronomy 32:22-28 – For a fire will be kindled by my wrath, one that burns down to the realm of the dead below. It will devour the earth and its harvests and set afire the foundations of the mountains. “I will heap calamities on them and spend my arrows against them. I will send wasting famine against them, consuming pestilence and deadly plague; I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts, the venom of vipers that glide in the dust. In the street the sword will make them childless; in their homes terror will reign. The young men and young women will perish, the infants and those with gray hair. I said I would scatter them and erase their name from human memory, but I dreaded the taunt of the enemy, lest the adversary misunderstand and say, ‘Our hand has triumphed; the Lord has not done all this.’” They are a nation without sense, there is no discernment in them.

Psalm 6:5 – Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave?

Psalm 120:4 – He will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows, with burning coals of the broom bush.

Isaiah 1:3 – The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”

Jeremiah 8:7 – Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the Lord.

Application:

• ·         It is the living, not the dead, who remember God’s mercies and celebrate His deliverances. The Israelites usually viewed death as they saw it—the very opposite of life. The grave brought no escape from God, but just how they viewed the condition of the godly dead is not clear. The Old Testament writers knew that human beings were created for life, that God’s will for His people was life and He had power over death. They also knew that death was everyone’s lot, and at its proper time the godly rested in God and accepted it with equanimity. Death could even be a blessing for the righteous, affording escape from the greater evil that would overtake the living. Furthermore, the death of the righteous was reputedly better than that of the wicked. It seems clear that there was even an awareness that death was not the end of hope for the righteous, that God had more in store for them.
• ·         As a weapon, the tongue is a sharp arrow and a searing fire, and God’s judgment will answer in kind.
• ·         Refusal to know and understand God later resulted in Judah’s exile from her land.
• ·         Although migratory birds obey their God-given instincts, God’s rebellious people refuse to obey His laws.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV