What are the pangs of Sheol in Psalm 116:3?

Sheol for the wicked is connected with pain and sorrow. “For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell [sheol]” (Deut. 32:22). “The sorrows of hell [sheol] compassed me about (2 Sam. 22:6). “The pains of hell [sheol] gat hold upon me” (Ps. 116:3). Qeber is never connected in this way with judgment and sorrow. The body in the grave is unconscious and cannot feel pain or experience sorrow. A conscious entity, the soul, in the condition of sheol can experience such things.

Sheol for the wicked is connected with pain and sorrow. “For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell [sheol]” (Deut. 32:22). “The sorrows of hell [sheol] compassed me about” (2 Sam. 22:6). “The pains of hell [sheol] gat hold upon me” (Ps. 116:3).

What is the reason for Israel's finally calling on the Lord? "The pains of death" faced her, "the pangs of sheol" were so threatening with their trouble and sorrow that this drove her from her previous indifference to realize there was no help in anyone but the Lord (v. 3). Then her imploring cries were not only for bodily deliverance, but for that of her soul (v. 4).

Should one of my readers be following Jonah in a course of rebellion and selfwill, too proud and too far from God to pray; just take note of the ways of God with man. Just bear in mind that God can make the proudest spirit bow, and can bring a prayer from the hardest heart. Jonah said: "I cried by reason of my distress unto Jehovah." Honest Jonah — he frankly confessed that it was by reason of his distress that he was finally compelled to cry to God. He could face death without a tremble but there are worse things than death, as he found out. Now such distress came upon him that there was nothing else for it, he must pray. Listen to another (or, indeed, could it be Jonah speaking again?), in Psalm 116:3-4: "The bands (or distresses) of death encompassed me, and the anguish of Sheol took hold of me; I found trouble and sorrow: then called I upon the name of Jehovah: I beseech Thee, Jehovah, deliver my soul." If we persist in walking in the paths of rebellion and selfwill, we may be quite sure that we also will find "trouble and sorrow," such trouble and such sorrow, that it will force us to our knees. O, dear Christian, you who have turned away from the presence of the Lord, who have grown cold and hard, you who have ceased to pray, you who have lost the joys you once possessed in Christ — take warning, and take heart, from Jonah. Listen to the 5th verse of that lovely 116th Psalm, following immediately after the verses quoted above: "Gracious is Jehovah and righteous; and our God is merciful." Does it not remind you of the very character that Jonah gave of God? Such, you, and I, dear reader, will find our God to be; if we will but return, He will "abundantly pardon."

God desires the salvation and blessing of his fallen creature, man; but, like the writer of Psalm 116, we have to be brought low in the presence of God before we are ready to accept the cup of salvation that He offers. Describing the experience through which he had passed, the Psalmist says, "The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow." This was surely a dreadful plight; when in the extremity of human weakness, and beyond all creature aid, the gates of death and hell were open wide before him, ready to receive him. What could he do but throw himself upon the mercy of God? Therefore he says, "Then called I upon the name of the LORD; O LORD, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul."

Psalm 116 voices the sentiments of faith, just as God's fresh deliverance is being experienced. Still viewing the Psalms from the prophetic standpoint, we may see in verse 3 an allusion to the sorrows of the great tribulation, when the godly had been brought down to the very gates of death and "hell," or "Sheol." Looking back on that terrible hour, the confession has to be made, "I was greatly afflicted: I said in my haste, [i.e., alarm or agitation] All men are liars" (verses 10, 11). Now however, the speaker is delivered from death, from tears, from falling (verse 8).

"Ps. 116 records a similar experience: 'Compassed me have the cords of death, and the straits of sheol have found me; distress and sorrow I find, and in the name of the Lord I call; I pray Thee, O Lord, deliver my soul … for Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, my feet from overthrowing. I walk habitually before the Lord in the land of the living' (vv. 3-9, — Young). Whatever application these words may have to release from spiritual death, ver. 15 makes it clear that the ultimate deliverance in view is from death in sheol. For this must be the 'death of His saints' which remains precious in the eyes of the Lord, and rescue from this the reason of the thanksgiving, "Thou hast loosed my bonds" (v. 16)."

Psalm 116:3 shows the conditions that we must face down here; "The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow." Every tie that is formed in this world is to be dissolved, and this is constantly brought before us in our pathway through this scene. Death comes before us; its dark waters rolling in upon the soul as some loved one is taken from us, or as we are laid aside with serious illness. Yet for the Christian the position is so different from what we have here, for we know that death but leads into the presence of Christ, which is far better. The Lord Jesus has passed through death's dark raging flood that we might pass through the waters of Jordan dry shod.

To begin with sheol. It is a word apparently derived from shaal, "to ask," and is generally supposed to derive its meaning from the insatiate way in which death continually "demands" its victims. Some have, however, suggested, what seems at least as probable, that it is derived rather from the "questioning" as to the dead, as in Job 14:10: "man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"

Sheol is connected with distress such as is evidenced by crying aloud with the voice. “Out of the belly of hell [sheol] cried I, and thou heardest my voice” (Jon. 2:2).