Is Hell Actually Inside the Earth? (Numbers 16)

We are pressing forward in the book of Jude today. As I’ve said before, Jude is kind of like the Bible’s junk drawer. Everyone has a junk drawer at their house; it’s full of random objects that you just aren’t sure where else to put them, so you throw them all into one drawer and you call it your junk drawer. 

That’s how Jude is. It’s like a collection of things that you just aren’t so sure what to do with. Just about every verse of Jude contains a callback to a Bible story. Almost always a weird Bible story. And we just spent three weeks talking about Balaam because he comes up in Jude 11. Let’s read it again:

Jude 11

Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error; they have been destroyed in Korah’s rebellion.

As a reminder, or if you’re with us for the first time, the book of Jude is a book about apostates. Apostates are those who fall away from Christianity, and right here, Jude introduces the fate of apostates: they rely on their works like Cain, they are materialistic like Balaam, and then they will suffer the same fate of those in Korah’s rebellion. 

So what happened to the people in Korah’s Rebellion? 

Numbers 16:32-33 say

32 And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the people who belonged to Korah and all their goods. 33 So they and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol [aka: hell], and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly.

Wow, there is a story in the Bible where the ground opened up under some people’s feet and literally dropped them straight into hell itself?

Why would God do this?

And this literally happened. Does this mean hell is literally inside the earth?

I find all this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible. 

Turn to Numbers 16, and let’s get weird.

0:00 - Introduction

2:20 - The Legend of Korah

13:15 - Where is Hell?

22:22 - Closing Thoughts

If you want to get in touch, my email is [email protected]

Hosted by Luke Taylor