Unconscious State

The reason why the phrase “slept with his fathers” is used in the Hebrew Scriptures is that when one dies they go to an unconscious state.

Ecclesiastes 9 describes the difference between those who are alive and those who are dead, Ecclesiastes 9:5-6

⁵For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. ⁶Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 9:10

¹⁰Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.

From these, one can understand that the living know and the dead do not know anything.  The living are conscious and the dead are unconscious.  As for the dead, their body is gone and it is their soul that is unconscious.

In the Hebrew scriptures, this is a consistent teaching, Psalm 6:5.

⁵For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?

Grave is the Hebrew word sheol.  The psalmist provides further details of the dead in Psalm 115:17:

¹⁷The dead praise not Yehovah, neither any that go down into silence.

And Psalms 146:3-4:

³Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.  ⁴His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.

These all speak of the unconscious state of death.

Next Job, Jonah

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