Job 17:16

To the chambers of Sheol it descends,

   Together we shall return to dust.

I just learned that Sheol is the correct spelling and Microsoft left it out of the Word dictionary. I never thought Bill Gates and his people were godly, but I do not expect them to be blatantly anti-God. Maybe I am naïve, and maybe they are as evil as all the rest of the tech titans, but why can’t money be enough for these businesses? Why do that have to be actively dragging the world down with them? (Rhetorical.)

Reminding myself that ‘it’ is ‘hope’, ‘descends’ was also ‘go down’ six times. ‘Chambers’ was also ‘bars’ or ‘gates’. ‘Sheol’ was also ‘death’ or ‘the pit’.

‘Return’ was ‘descend’, ‘have rest’, ‘go down’, and ‘plunge’. I inserted return from my thoughts on dust.

Remembering that the focus of these efforts is me getting my thoughts together on the verse, and Sheol was only temporary, it represents the ‘place’ our souls wait for history to finish before we can enter heaven or be sent to hell. It is not hell. I was originally thinking it odd that his hopes went to hell, but them going to wait is much more in line with my thinking. Still bothers me how the people in the Avengers movie turned to dust. Makes that a little too real.

One of the things my mom would do is tape little saying up where she could see them. To me it was a bunch of messy sticky notes, but I am sure to her it was a way to keep God at the front of her mind. I now have three sayings sitting on this desk. Two are old postcard type items with sayings to help keep me motivated to work as if for God. The new one is a reminder to pray before writing these. My thoughts this morning we about how this verse does not fit well on a post it to see all the time.

Overall, this verse points out to me that my hope cannot die because it is solely in Christ. Even with my numerous years of life, I still make stupid mistakes like bending over and hitting my head on things (twice yesterday), walking into walks (once yesterday), and not exercising (two days in a row). Not hard to believe that average life spans were so short back before modern medicine. This is my reminder that as with my hopes, all the goodness in my life comes from Christ, and I need to remember to be grateful and to glorify Him to others.

Written 9/17/25, Posted 10/9/25, Job 411/~1070