The Three-Story World of the Hebrew Imagination

Guest Post by Chad Byrd

Welcome to the Biblical Imagination, where we attempt to read the Bible with fresh eyes, shedding new light on old truths.

I am working on a new project. I hope to have it ready to post in a week or two at the most. In the meantime, today’s guest post is by Chad Byrd. His fits well within the goal here at the Biblical Imagination by helping us understand how ancient Israelites conceived the world God created. Chad is a Scholar in Residence at @1517. I discovered him last year on Twitter/X and have followed him since. I asked Chad if I may occasionally share some of his posts here. He kindly said yes! So here is his first.

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Photo by Taylor Durrer on Unsplash

The Three-Story World of the Hebrew Imagination

Understanding ancient Israelite cosmology is helpful when reading the Bible. Needless to say, they didn’t think of our planet or solar system as we do today. The simplest way to explain the Israelite view is that they conceived of a Three-Story World or Three-Decker Universe.

This is reflected, for instance, in Exodus 20:4, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Here are the “three stories” or “three decks”: (1) the heaven above, (2) the earth beneath, and (3) the water under the earth.

The top level is the heavens, which Genesis 1 describes as a vast vault, in which are the sun, moon, and stars. On the other side of that vault are storehouses of wind, hail, rain, and snow. Here, too, is the dwelling place of God. Heaven is sometimes called the throne of God. He “looks down” from heaven. A few times, the OT mentions the “highest heaven,” which seems to be the uttermost heights of heaven itself. Later, during the intertestamental era, and into the NT, there were envisioned various levels of heaven, such as the “third heaven” that Paul mentions in 2 Cor. 12:2.

The middle level is where we dwell, “in the earth beneath.” All lands are conceived of as islands, which rest atop the sea. As Psalm 24 says, “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.” As the heavens are above the earth, so the seas are below the land.

The lowest level is “the water under the earth,” that is, the seas and oceans of the world, which are thought of as one vast and deep body of water, upon which the islands of the world rest. This base level of the world is also described as the Deep or Abyss, which becomes iconic of Sheol and later Gehenna.

In the Israelite imagination, the seas are a space of chaos and confusion. Thus, the Gentile world is often pictured with imagery drawn from the sea. That is also why, in Revelation 20, there is no sea in the new heavens and new earth, because all chaos and confusion are gone. This Three-Story World has many other nuances in the biblical narrative, but it forms the basic structure of—what we might call—the “moral world” of heaven and earth and hell.

To understand any literature, we need to get into the mind of the one who wrote it, as well as their addressees. So also, when reading the Bible, we need to see the world as a three-decker universe. When we do, much of the imagery and assumptions and symbolism of the biblical narrative become clearer.

If you would like to read more from Chad, you can find him here on Twitter.