Revelation 20:13

See Pirke Aboth, iv. 32: “Let not thine imagination assure thee that the grave is an asylum” (for, like birth and life and death, judgment is appointed before the King of the kings of kings). “And the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her, and so shall the dust those that dwell therein in silence, and the secret chambers shall deliver up those souls (of the righteous, iv. 35) that were committed unto them,” 4 Esd. 7:32 reproducing, as here, Enoch Leviticus 1, “and in those days will the earth also give back those who are treasured up within it, and Sheol also will give back that which it has received, and hell will give back that which it owes”. Also En. lxi. 5 where the restoration includes “those who have been destroyed by the desert, or devoured by the fish of the sea and by the beasts”. Evidently drowned people are supposed not to be in Hades; they wander about or drift in the ocean (Achill. Tat. ver 313), μηδὲ εἰς ᾅδου καταβαίνειν ὅλως. According to the prophet's conception (cf. Revelation 13:8; Revelation 13:14.f.) the fate of pagans must have been a foregone conclusion, when the Imperial cultus was made the test of character; in which case “the scene before the white throne is rather a final statement of judgment than a statement of final judgment” (Gilbert). But the broader allusioni to works here shows that the prophet is thinking of the general ethical judgment, which embraced issues wider than the particular historical test of the Emperor-worship. ᾅδης κ. τ. λ., cf. Plutarch's (de Iside, 29) derivation of Amenthes, the Egyptian name for Hades, as “that which receives and gives”. As in Slav. En. lxv. 6 and the later Iranian Bundehesh (S. B. E. ver 123 f.), the resurrection of the body is not mentioned, though it is probably implied (cf. En. Leviticus 1, lxii. 14 and Matthew 27:52 f.).