Verse 7
7. Into the deep In the Hebrew and the Septuagint the phrase is to beyond sea. And as to the ancients the sea was conceived as unbounded, so this phrase would mean to a limitless distance. The apostle’s word is abyss, which was conceived as a bottomless deep. Where its place, is not distinctly said; but as earth to the ancient conception was the limitless plane of sublunary existence, (as being antithetic to heaven,) it would, verbally, be in the depths of earth. When our conceptions are purified by astronomy, however, the abyss, hell, is no longer necessarily located in our earth. In substituting the bottomless abyss for the limitless ocean, the apostle simply adapts the phrase to his present purpose; which is, to use the term abyss as hades, or the state of the dead, into which Christ descended after his crucifixion. (See notes on Luke 16:23.)
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