Is Hades Like a Womb? Visions of 4 Ezra

By Pinchas Shir

July 22, 2023

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Hades is Like the Womb (4 Ezra)

The book of 4 Ezra (sometimes called 2 Esdras in Latin) is an extra-biblical apocalyptic Jewish work, very much like the book of Revelation in the New Testament and Daniel in Israel's Scriptures. In this book, Ezra is shown visions, and the angel Uriel serves as a guide who helps him make sense of them. These visions were put to paper between the first and third centuries CE, and it is not certain if any of its contents can be traced to Ezra in the Bible. Some parts of the book have been augmented by Christian scribes, and some exist in Latin only, but the bulk of the visions are very Semitic in their expressions and reasoning. Even if the text has nothing to do with Ezra in the Bible, most scholars still see it as a valuable work of Jewish apocalyptic literature. The following passage highlights the notion of waiting for the time of redemption. It speaks of those in Hades (or, Hebrew, Sheol) expecting a time when God will release them.

(4 Ezra 4:26-43): 26 He answered me and said, “If you are alive, you will see, and if you live long, you will often marvel, because the age is hastening swiftly to its end. 27 For it will not be able to bring the things that have been promised to the righteous in their appointed times, because this age is full of sadness and infirmities. 28 For the evil about which you ask me has been sown, but the harvest of it has not yet come. 29 If therefore that which has been sown is not reaped, and if the place where the evil has been sown does not pass away, the field where the good has been sown will not come. 30 For a grain of evil seed was sown in Adam’s heart from the beginning, and how much ungodliness it has produced until now, and will produce until the time of threshing comes! 31 Consider now for yourself how much fruit of ungodliness a grain of evil seed has produced. 32 When heads of grain without number are sown, how great a threshing floor they will fill!”

33 Then I answered and said, “How long and when will these things be? Why are our years few and evil?” 34 He answered me and said, “You do not hasten faster than the Most High, for your haste is for yourself, but the Highest hastens on behalf of many. 35 Did not the souls of the righteous in their chambers ask about these matters, saying, ‘How long are we to remain here? And when will come the harvest of our reward?’ 36 And Yeremiel the archangel answered them and said, ‘When the number of those like yourselves is completed; for he has weighed the age in the balance, 37 and measured the times by measure, and numbered the times by number; and he will not move or arouse them until that measure is fulfilled.’”

38 Then I answered and said, “O sovereign Lord, but all of us also are full of ungodliness. 39 And it is perhaps on account of us that the time of threshing is delayed for the righteous—on account of the sins of those who dwell on earth.”40 He answered me and said, “Go and ask a woman who is with child if, when her nine months have been completed, her womb can keep the child within her any longer. 41 “No, my lord,” I said, “it cannot.” He said to me, “In Hades, the chambers of the lives are like the womb. 42 For just as a woman who is in travail makes haste to escape the pangs of birth, so also do these places hasten to give back those things that were committed to them from the beginning. 43 Then the things that you desire to see will be disclosed to you.”

4 Ezra compares waiting on God’s time to a harvest. Harvesting should not happen until the crop is ready. Interestingly, 4 Ezra connects the harvest and reaping with just reward. But that is not all. According to the angel, the release from Sheol is inevitable. It is also compared to the harvest and the time of childbirth. As with pregnancy, the full term is reached, the proper time for birth arrives. Similarly, the author suggests that after a divinely appointed amount of time, God will bring the dead out of Hades.