Torments of the Soul after Death
75I answered and said, “If I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, show this also to your servant: whether after death, as soon as everyone of us yields up the soul, we shall be kept in rest until those times come when you will renew the creation, or whether we shall be tormented at once?”
76He answered me and said, “I will show you that also, but do not include yourself with those who have shown scorn, or number yourself among those who are tormented. 77For you have a treasure of works stored up with the Most High, but it will not be shown to you until the last times. 78Now concerning death, the teaching is: When the decisive decree has gone out from the Most High that a person shall die, as the spirit leaves the body to return again to him who gave it, first of all it adores the glory of the Most High. 79If it is one of those who have shown scorn and have not kept the way of the Most High, who have despised his law and hated those who fear God—80such spirits shall not enter into habitations, but shall immediately wander about in torments, always grieving and sad, in seven ways. 81The first way, because they have scorned the law of the Most High. 82The second way, because they cannot now make a good repentance so that they may live. 83The third way, they shall see the reward laid up for those who have trusted the covenants of the Most High. 84The fourth way, they shall consider the torment laid up for themselves in the last days. 85The fifth way, they shall see how the habitations of the others are guarded by angels in profound quiet. 86The sixth way, they shall see how some of them will cross over into torments. 87The seventh way, which is worse than all the ways that have been mentioned, because they shall utterly waste away in confusion and be consumed with shame, and shall wither with fear at seeing the glory of the Most High in whose presence they sinned while they were alive, and in whose presence they are to be judged in the last times.”
Translation from the New Revised Standard Version.
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 2: Emerging Judaism.
