orld, the playground of the forces of fear and superstition. As late
as the author of the book of Job and of the earlier Psalms, Sheol was
known as the despot of the nether world with its demoniacal forms, as the
"king of terrors" who extends his scepter over the dead.(889) Only
gradually does the thought find expression in the Psalms that the
Omnipotent Ruler of heaven could also rescue the soul out of the power of
Sheol,(890) and that His omnipresence included likewise the nether
world.(891) In this trustful spirit the Hasidic Psalmist expressed the
hope: "Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol, neither wilt Thou suffer
Thy godly one to see the pit. Thou makest me to know the path of life; in
Thy presence is fulness of joy; in Thy right hand bliss forevermore."(892)

4. Biblical Judaism evinced such a powerful impetus toward a complete and
blissful life with God, that the center and purpose of existence could not
be transferred to the hereafter, as in other systems of belief, but was
found in the desire to work out the life here on earth to its fullest
possible development. Virtue and wisdom, righteousness and piety, signify
and secure true life; vice and folly, iniquity and sin, lead to death and
annihilation. This is the ever recurring burden of the popular as well as
of the prophetic and priestly wisdom of Israel.(893) In the song of thanks
of King Hezekiah after his recovery, the Jewish soul expresses itself,
when he says:(894) "I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord in the
land of the living.... But Thou hast delivered my soul from the pit of
corruption. For the nether world cannot praise Thee; death cannot
celebrate Thee. The living, the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do this
day. The father to the children shall make known Thy truth." Therefore the
author of the seventy-third Psalm, ennobled by trials, finds sufficient
comfort and happiness in the presence of God that he can spurn all earthly
treasures.(895) Job, too, in his affliction longed for death as release
from all earthly pain and sorrow, but not to bring him a state of rest and
peace like the Nirvana of the Indian beggar-monk, or an outlook into a
better world to come. Such an awakening to a new life seems to him
unthinkable,--although many commentators have often endeavored to read such
a hope into certain of his expressions.(896) Instead, his belief in God as
the Ruler of the infinite world, with His lofty moral purpose far
outreaching all