Kabbalah Library

43. All the wicked in Hell ascend through certain chambers. There are several doors in Hell, and all the doors correspond to doors in the Garden of Eden. When the wicked who received their punishment are taken out of there, they open the doors and place them outside. All the doors are called by names that correspond to the doors in the Garden of Eden, and each door in the Garden of Eden corresponds to that same door in Hell. Those doors in the Garden of Eden, doors opposite doors, when they see the door in Hell, they know by that from which Behina [discernment] is its corresponding door in the Garden of Eden.

44. The last chamber in Hell, the lowest of all, is twofold: chamber over chamber. It is called “A land of thick darkness,” as it is written, “Four-square it shall be and double,” which translates as “a square shall be weary.” Here, too, “Thick darkness” means doubled. That chamber is called “the bottom of Sheol.” Sheol is the upper chamber, and “the bottom” is the lower chamber. For this reason the land of thick darkness is called “bottom,” and is also called “doom.” This is why it is written, “Sheol and doom,” which are a twofold chamber, one atop the other. All the chambers were not twofold, and all are not weary, meaning they are not called “A land of thick darkness,” except this one.

45. One who descends to Doom, which is called “bottom,” never rises. That person is considered a man who has perished and has been lost from all the worlds. This is the place to which people who despise answering Amen is lowered. They are sentenced in Hell for many Amens that were lost from him, meaning that he did not appreciate. He is brought down to that bottom chamber, in which there is no door, and he is lost and never rises from there. This is why it is written, “As the cloud is consumed and vanishes, so he that goes down to Sheol shall come up no more.” But Jonah said, “From the depth of Sheol I cried for help; You heard my voice,” so did he rise from there? It is also written, “He brings down to Sheol, and brings up.” But here it is a Sheol from which there is rising, and there it is the bottom from which he does not rise. Here he repented and remade penitence, and there he did not repent.

46. “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns.” “They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters” is that he did not wish to sanctify the name of the Creator with the Amen. His punishment is as it is written, “To hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns,” which descend to Hell degree by degree until they go down to Doom, which is called “the bottom.” And if he sanctifies the name of the Creator to aim in the Amen properly, he rises degree by degree to be refined by that next world, which always continues and never stops, as it is written, “The Lord preserves the faithful and fully recompenses the proud doer.”