53) The Deep Contains Dead Things

Blessed of the LORD be his land,

for the precious things of heaven…

AND for the deep that coucheth / רָבַץbeneath.” (Deuteronomy 33:13)

While currently only used in terms of lounge furniture, the original meaning of “couch” was very different and important to understand in this context. The English word derives from the Latin collocare “to lay, place, station, arrange,” translated into Old French c. 1300 couchier “to spread or lay.

This word is found in heraldic use – ergo in the context of war banners – as couchant (“lying down with the head up”), and in the late 15th century referencing a crouching beast of prey, expanding the understanding of this word as meaning “lie hidden”. This meaning is also found from 1520s as “express in an obscure or veiled way, imply without distinctly saying” (1560s).

With this background, we can understand that in 1611 the translators’ intention of “coucheth beneath” was not a comfortable place to rest. To confirm this definition, the Hebrew word for “deep” רָבַץ is also translated “lying down” and “resting”, consistent with the action of “coucheth”. The general meaning gleaned from all the verses is that of a long-term condition unmoving in that place or situation.”

“who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth…When I made…thick darkness a swaddlingband for it, And…set bars and doors,..

Hast thou commanded…and caused the dayspring to know his place…take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?

they stand [still] as a garment [hung in the closet]. And from the wicked their light is withholden.” (Job 38:8-15)

The Greek ἄβυσσον (abysson) has also been translated as “the abode of devils.”

“torment me not…many devils…besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep.” (Luke 8:28-31)

“The deep” is a place of darkness, evil, the Adversary’s ambush.

The 66 citations in the Hebrew Old Testament describing the condition of the deep as contrasting with heaven not only in location but in condition is the unimpeachable source for the New Testament’s references to the abyss.

“Canst thou by searching find out God?…It [searching] is

as high as heaven; what canst thou do?

deeper than hell / Sheol;“(Job 11:7-8)

“Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above🙂

Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)” (Romans 10:6-7)

The writings directed to the Gentile converts – Luke’s gospel, Paul’s ministry documented in Acts, and Peter’s letters – did not need explanation because they refer to the same concepts their audience understood from paganism.

Tartarus = In Greek mythology, Tartarus was a “place of punishment under the earth, to which, for example, the Titans were sent.” In the Bible this word is used only once, by Peter to Gentiles, clearly referencing the same biblical place of the deep by validating the pagan teaching of the punishment of the “sons of God” who revolted against their lord and master.

Bottomless pit / the deep = ἄβυσσος, the abyss, unfathomable depth. “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit,” Revelation 20:1-2

This condition of entrapment and inactivity is consistent with the place the Greeks called Tartarus, well portrayed in Netflix’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman text to screen. When the Immortal Sandman was separated from his sources of power he reverts to a horrible state of inactive energy yet still sensate in a glass bubble. You just can’t get this dimension of spiritual education from pastors who fear demons, rather than take dominion over them.

“And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there…came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power / authority, irresistible control, as the scorpions of the earth have power.” (Revelation 9:1-3)

Hades = ᾍδης “(from 1 /A “not” and idein/eidō, “see”) – properly, the “unseen place,” hell, the (invisible) realm of pure energy disembodied souls in fiery torment for those who rejected a relationship with the giver of life. “Jesus of Nazareth…ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain…Christ also hath once suffered for sins…he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;” (I Peter 3:17-19) Whom God hath raised up…David speaketh concerning him…thou wilt not leave my soul in hell / hades.” (Acts 2:22-36)

When we understand where exactly it was that Jesus knew he was going to as part of suffering the penalty of sin for all humanity, his experience on the cross pales in comparison, and we should be shocked into awareness of what exactly he suffered to save our souls from our own justly earned wrath of God.

sheol: שְׁאוֹל (Hebrew) underworld to which people descend at death to Rest In Peace.

I will go down into sheol / the grave unto my son” (Genesis 37:35) Consistent with the First Law of Thermodynamics which states that energy can only transformed from one form to another, the grounding of souls at the loss of the body converts active kinetic energy to inactive potential.

In Hindu mythology, the underworld is referred to as Patala. In the Hindu epic Ramayana. Rama and Lakshmana were taken by the king of the underworld Ahiravan, brother of the demon king Ravana. Later on they were rescued by Hanuman.

The Angami Naga tribes of India claim that their ancestors emerged in ancient times from a subterranean land inside the Earth.

Buddhists believe in Naraka.

In Thracian and Dacian legends, it is said that there are caverns occupied by an ancient god called Zalmoxis. According to the Ancient Greeks, there were caverns under the surface of the earth which were entrances leading to the underworld…

In Celtic mythology there is a legend of a cave called “Cruachan“, also known as “Ireland’s gate to Hell”, a mythical and ancient cave from which according to legend strange creatures would emerge and be seen on the surface of the Earth…In County Down, Northern Ireland there is a myth which says tunnels lead to the land of the subterranean Tuatha Dé Danann, a group of people who are believed to have introduced Druidism to Ireland, and then went back underground.

The same biblical term “deep” is applied to contemporary geology.

Earth’s geological abyssal zone is defined as depths of 4,000–6,000 m / 13,000 – 20,000 feet, It is named from the Greek word ἄβυσσος (ábussos), meaning “bottomless”. This zone, and below, remains in perpetual darkness. Unseen so ignored, it nonetheless covers most of the earth – 60% counting the total earth’s surface and 83% calculating just the sea’s surface…this level is the most common.

The air pressure at sea level set to 1 atmosphere, or 15 pounds per square inch / psi. The human body cannot survive pressures above 60 psi.

In June 2023 a diving vessel carried sightseers to the sunken Titanic 12,400 feet below the ocean’s surface, [level 4 in the diagram above] where the pressure is 5,500 psi, experienced a catastrophic implosion.

The pressure below that depth can reach as high 11,000 psi.

And yet, horrific deep sea monsters have been discovered there.

Unveiling the Depths: The discovery of approximately 5,000 new species in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) / abyssal plains [level 5 in the above diagram] represents a monumental leap in our understanding of marine biodiversity. They represent an entire ecosystem teeming with life, previously hidden in the vast abyssal plains of the Pacific Ocean.Since there is no light, this “life”, consistent with the perpetuation of energy in evil spirits, is acquired by feeding off other creatures.

Modern oceanography’s report that the deep is a place of darkness, extreme pressure and searing extreme burning temperature validates the biblical report of hell as a place of torment. The abyssal zone’s freezing temperatures ~ 2–3 °C (36–37 °F) produce the same effects as exposure to fire and is medically described as ice “burn”.

The medical findings are consistent with the description of torment in hell – overwhelming pain experienced by a non-existent body part but-still-active electrical sensory nervous system sensory observed in phantom limb pain or severe burns.

Continuing in Enoch chapters 15-16:

“they took and brought me to…the place of darkness…And I saw a deep abyss, with columns of heavenly fire…And beyond that abyss I saw a place which had no firmament of the heaven above, and no firmly founded earth beneath it…it was a waste and horrible place…when I inquired regarding them, The angel said: ‘This place is the end of heaven and earth: this has become a prison…‘Here shall stand

the angels who have connected themselves with women,

and their spirits assuming many different forms are defiling mankind and shall lead them astray into sacrificing to demons as gods,

the women also of the angels who went astray shall become sirens.’

A siren is a specifically Greek concept of a nymph / female demigod, made famous in the Odyssey, who lured human males to destruction through their sweet songs, understood conceptually as female consorts of the angels who joined them in perpetrating this crime against humanity and are punished accordingly.]

And I proceeded to…a place chaotic and horrible…And from thence I went to another place, which was still more horrible than the former, and I saw a horrible thing: a great fire there which burnt and blazed, and the place was cleft as far as the abyss / bottomless, being full of great descending columns of fire: neither its extent or magnitude could I see, nor could I conjecture. Then I said: ‘How fearful is the place and how terrible to look upon!’ Then Uriel answered me…‘This place is the prison of the angels, and here they will be imprisoned for ever…’

Enoch’s description of “great descending columns of fire” beyond imaginable extent is an exact match to The Van Allen Belts of intense solar radiation surrounding the earth, which “descend”, in their “doughnut-shaped zones of highly energetic charged particles” into the center space of the earth at the polar regions.

If Enoch is to be trusted as to the fact and origin of evil spirits, shouldn’t we trust him on geography as well? He describes what the Bible logically calls “the bottomless pit” as the center of a toroidal / donut shaped earth.

So how do we reconcile blessing the LORD Creator for both

the precious things of heaven…

AND for the deep that coucheth / רָבַץbeneath.” (Deuteronomy 33:13)

“when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing AND the curse which I have set before thee, And shalt return unto the LORD thy God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul;

That then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee.” (Deuteronomy 30:1-3)