Is the idea of seven heavens / the seventh heaven biblical?
Answer
People sometimes use the idiom
seventh heaven to refer to an experience of great joy, ecstasy, or pleasurable contentment. The expression itself implies that there are seven heavens or seven levels of heaven, a teaching found in several non-Christian religions.
Two very old religions teach the existence of seven heavens: Hinduism and the ancient Babylonian cult. In
Hinduism, there are seven higher worlds and seven lower worlds; the earth is the lowest of the higher worlds. The six higher worlds above us are places of increasing wonder and delight where people who have accumulated
good karma go after they die. The seventh heaven is, of course, the best. When the dead have spent all the time their good deeds have earned them, they are reincarnated and return to earth. Those who live extraordinarily pious lives can break out of this cycle and experience nirvana, a state of eternal existence.
The ancient Babylonians did not teach that the seven heavens were for humans; rather, they divided the heavens into seven levels of space between the earth’s atmosphere and the spirit of the heavens. Beyond was the zodiac. Each of the seven heavens was associated with a particular god and a celestial body: the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, the sun, Jupiter, and Saturn.
Historians aren’t sure when the Jews first learned of Babylon’s seven heavens; Abraham might have been exposed to such a belief before he left Ur, or Hebrew scholars may have learned of it while exiled in Babylon. Either way, rabbis adapted the myth, integrating it into the
Talmud—their extra-scriptural writings. The Jewish “heavens,” associated with the various celestial bodies, contain a mix of people, angels, demons, Nephilim, and natural phenomena. The specifics of the myth changed with the teacher. As the astronomical and meteorological sciences have advanced, Jews have rejected the idea of a literal seven heavens and now see them as metaphorical—there’s no way hail could come to Earth from Jupiter, after all.
Islam combines the seven heavens of Judaism with a story from
Zoroastrianism. Hadith literature tells how Muhammad was taken on a journey through all seven heavens. In each heaven he met a character from the Bible or another prophet of Islam. Centuries prior to Muhammad, the Zoroastrian priest Arta Viraf supposedly made a similar trip to heaven. In both Islam and Zoroastrianism, the seven heavens are levels of paradise reserved for increasingly devout worshipers.
The Italian poet Dante Alighieri combined Babylonian mythology with Christian metaphor when he wrote
The Divine Comedy. In Dante’s epic poem, the seven celestial bodies represent ever more virtuous natures. Above these heavens, in which the righteous are rewarded after death, are four more levels. The last is empyrean, the true paradise and immaterial dwelling place of God.
The Bible says nothing that would validate a belief in seven heavens, but the word
heaven itself can have several meanings. The Hebrew for “heaven,”
shamayim, only appears in the plural form and can mean “sky” (
Genesis 1:8–9), “outer space” (
Genesis 22:17), or “the place where God dwells” (
Joshua 2:11). In the New Testament, the Greek
ouranos can mean “the dwelling place of God” (
Matthew 12:50) or “the sky” (
Acts 10:11). And
paradeisos (“paradise” or “garden”) can refer to the place where dead believers await resurrection (
Luke 23:43), to where God dwells now (
2 Corinthians 12:4), or to our eternal home (
Revelation 2:7).
In
2 Corinthians 12:2 Paul says he knew a man (assumed to be himself, although he is speaking in the third person) who was taken to “the third heaven.” The “
third heaven” here simply refers to the spiritual dwelling place of God, as opposed to the other two “heavens”—the atmosphere and outer space. The three “heavens” implied in
2 Corinthians 12:2 would be the three different realms that we call “the sky,” “space,” and the “spiritual heaven.”
In our vernacular,
seventh heaven means “the best, happiest place to be,” but the Bible doesn’t give any indication that a seventh heaven actually exists. God promises He will not always live above us, but He will live with us in the New Jerusalem (
Revelation 21). And although we will receive rewards according to our works (
Revelation 22:12), the Bible never suggests that we’ll be segregated into various levels of heaven.
For Further Study
Heaven and the Afterlife: The Truth About Tomorrow and What It Means for Today by Erwin Lutzer
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