Rock my Soul in the Bosom of Abraham – San Francisco Botanical Garden, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California

Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham;
Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham;
Rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham;
Oh, rock my soul.

So high, I can’t get over it;
So low, I can’t get under it;
So wide, I can’t get ‘round it;
Oh, rock my soul.

- Peter Yarrow


In the religoin of Bibilcal Israel, Sheol was primarily a place of "silence" to which all mortals were destined to go. However during, or soon after, the exile in Babylon ideas of an afterlife of reward or punishment began to enter Judaism.

During the Second Temple period (roughly 500 BCE–70 CE) the concept of a Bosom of Abraham first occurs in Jewish papyri that refer to the "Bosom of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." This reflects the belief of Jewish martyrs who died expecting that: "after our death in this fashion Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will receive us and all our forefathers will praise us" (4 Maccabees 13:17).

Other early Jewish works adapt the Greek mythical picture of Hades to identify the righteous dead as being separated from unrighteous in the fires by a river or chasm. In the pseudepigraphical Apocalypse of Zephaniah the river has a ferryman equivalent to Charon in Greek myth, but replaced by an angel. On the other side in the Bosom of Abraham: "You have escaped from the Abyss and Hades, now you will cross over the crossing place … to all the righteous ones, namely Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Enoch, Elijah and David." In this myth Abraham was not idle in the Bosom of Abraham, he acted as intercessor for those in the fiery part of Hades.

Later rabbinical sources preserve several traces of the Bosom of Abraham teaching. In the Talmud (Kiddushin 72b) Adda bar Ahavah of the third century, is said to be "sitting in the bosom of Abraham." Likewise, according to Rabbi Levi in the Midrash (Genesis Rabba 67) "In the world to come Abraham sits at the gate of Gehenna, permitting none to enter who bears the seal of the covenant".