I was originally going to talk about how often G-d jumps in to swallow people up in a dramatic action (you know, Korach, Jonah), but I got sidetracked on the language around the swallowing. When Moshe talks about how G-d will prove that Korach's death is unnatural, he uses this term: Sheol. וְיָרְד֥וּ חַיִּ֖ים שְׁאֹ֑לָה They will go to Sheol alive.

It's hard to read Sheol as "death" given that these guys are going there alive. That point is emphasized when the term gets used again, right away, confirming that Moshe's prediction has come true: וַיֵּ֨רְד֜וּ הֵ֣ם וְכׇל־אֲשֶׁ֥ר לָהֶ֛ם חַיִּ֖ים שְׁאֹ֑לָה They, and all their stuff, went down, alive, to Sheol.

So what is this Sheol? One good reason to find out is that Korach had a lot of stuff. Reish Lakish says that his coffers were so stuffed it required three hundred white mules just to carry the keys to the locks. In case you're curious how he got so rich, one opinion says that Korach found one of Joseph's three storehouses for the wealth he accumulated in Egypt during the famine.

But, maybe it's not worth the trip to get Korach's stuff. Is “Sheol” Hell? Do we have references to a literal Hell in the bible's text? When Moshe's words are debated in the Gemara, the sages make it pretty clear that these guys go to a literal Hell. (The Gemara at the time is discussing whether Moshe asks G-d to create an entrance to Hell, or just to move the entrance closer to him for a moment, a wish that I experience whenever someone knocks on my door to tell me about the local political office they're running for.)

In fact, the Gemara is so keen on this interpretation of Korach's followers going to Hell, that it goes into a lengthy discussion of the literal "special place in Hell" reserved for Korach's sons, because the pasuk explicitly says that they did not die. So they get to live in a special place for alive people in Hell, for all eternity, alternately burning up and talking about how Moshe was right and they were wrong. No other argument was ever resolved so soundly.

But the term the Gemara in Sanhedrin keeps using is Gehenna. So is Sheol just a synonym? And if so, why do all the translations of our parsha just transliterate Sheol from Hebrew to English so it sounds the same, without trying to translate it? So I figured we could look at where else the term is used.

Yaakov uses the term in describing his grief when he receives the fake news that Joseph is dead. Rejecting comfort, he says כִּֽי־אֵרֵ֧ד אֶל־בְּנִ֛י אָבֵ֖ל שְׁאֹ֑לָה he will go down mourning his son to Sheol. Yaakov uses it again to describe what it would be like if the brothers take Benjamin to Egypt and then fail to return with him: you will send my white head down to Sheol in grief. Note that in both cases he describes "going down," which sounds oddly literal. My instinct is to say Yaakov speaking allegorically, using Hell as an amplifier of grief, or perhaps a stand-in for "death", rather than to accept that Yaakov is literally going down to Hell, because if even Yaakov, our forefather, has to worry about that, game over, man.

So where else is the term used? We see it in Tehilim, as a place the wicked are returned to, and we see Sanhedrein very explicitly interpret that verse as a place of suffering for sinners after their lives. And we see it again in Ezekiel, where it has various ominous relations to the netherworld, and seems separate from death, though some dead people reside there.

I can't reconcile these usages with Yaakov's comments. It keeps sounding like there is a literal Hell where Korach’s followers and all his stuff landed.

In a nice connection to my intended d'var, I thought I found a reconciliation in the story of Jonah, because he says: מִבֶּ֧טֶן שְׁא֛וֹל שִׁוַּ֖עְתִּי (from the belly of Sheol I called to you). And we all know he was in the belly of a fish, right? Wrong: the gemara in Eruvin explicitly says that he is referring to one of the three entrances to literal Hell, which, as it happens, was inside the belly of the fish that swallowed him. Who but the most prolific traveler could have guessed?

Sometimes it helps to look at the evolution of a word. Where Sefaria translations of שאלה are all transliterations, Google says the modern word translates to "borrowed." It’s interesting that most of these texts, especially Tehilim, have a notion of "returned" built into them. Even Yaakov in his suffering talks about Benjamin’s return, and there are scholars who suggest that he always awaited Joseph’s return. So then do Korach's followers go to their "return"? Are we back to figurative "just desserts"? Maybe. But that doesn’t square with the gemara.

It’s not enough to draw conclusions. You can see why far greater scholars than an armchair Sefaria user left this word untranslated. Maybe Sheol’s meaning is ambiguous, and it can refer to either a literal place or a figurative state of mind, similar to the English word that we would never ever say in front of our children’s pristine ears, outside of a d’var torah.

And of course, last of all, the word is a close cousin to שאלה which I'll liberally interpret as "an open and unresolved question," like a literal, or perhaps figurative, gaping hole in the ground, when you seek solid footing, or understanding.