Topic
Gulf
1 passage cited, from 1 classic reference work.
These works date from 1915 and are in the public domain. They reflect the Protestant scholarship of their time: their history, archaeology and dates can be out of date, and where they interpret, other traditions read the text differently. The verses are shown in the King James Version, the wording these works were written against.
The verses
The passages the works cite, those cited by more of them first.
- Luke 16:26ISBE
And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
In the reference works
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) · 4 references
(chasma, "a chasm," "vent," "a gaping opening"--a great interval; from chaino, "to gape" or "yawn"): Occurs only in Lu 16:26, "Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed" (compare "afar off" in 16:23). This is very different from, though it probably reflects, the rabbinical conception of the separation between the two compartments of Hades (Sheol) by "a hand's breadth," "a wall," or even, later, "a chasm," as the parable can be given here only a figurative significance, and is of purely ethical import. The fundamental difference between the Rich Man and Lazarus lies not in their conditions but in their characters. For "besides all this" (16:26) the Revised Version, margin gives "in all these things," thus implying that the moral distinctions which exist in this life (16:25) become more pronounced ("fixed") in the next world, and the "gulf" is impassable in the sense that a change of condition will not necessarily produce a change of soul.
See also ABRAHAM'S BOSOM; HADES.
M. O. Evans
Texts: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), from the CrossWire SWORD modules (public domain). Verse references were parsed from the works' own markup and checked against the KJV verse list.