The term rephaim is used to denote the manes of the departed. The etymology of the word, as well as its use, makes it mean the weak, the relaxed. "I am counted as them that go down into the under world; I am as a man that hath no strength." This faint, powerless condition accords with the idea that they were destitute of flesh, blood, and animal life, mere umbroe. These ghosts are described as being nearly as destitute of sensation as they are of strength. They are called "the inhabitants of the land of stillness." They exist in an inactive, partially torpid state, with a dreamy consciousness of past and present, neither suffering nor enjoying, and seldom moving. Herder says of the Hebrews, "The sad and mournful images of their ghostly realm disturbed them, and were too much for their self possession." Respecting these images, he adds, "Their voluntary force and energy were destroyed. They were feeble as a shade, without distinction of members, as a nerveless breath. They wandered and flitted in the dark nether world." This "wandering and flitting," however, is rather the spirit of Herder's poetry than of that of the Hebrews; for the whole tenor and drift of the representations in the Old Testament show that the state of disembodied souls is deep quietude. Freed from bondage, pain, toil, and care, they repose in silence. The ghost summoned from beneath by the witch of Endor said, "Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?" It was, indeed, in a dismal abode that they took their long quiet; but then it was in a place "where the wicked ceased from troubling and the weary were at rest." Those passages which attribute active employments to the dwellers in the under world are specimens of poetic license, as the context always shows. When Job says, "Before Jehovah the shades beneath tremble," he likewise declares, "The pillars of heaven tremble and are confounded at his rebuke." When Isaiah breaks forth in that stirring lyric to the King of Babylon, "The under world is in commotion on account of thee, To meet thee at thy coming; It stirreth up before thee the shades, all the mighty of the earth; It arouseth from their thrones all the kings of the nations; They all accost thee, and say, Art thou too become weak as we?" he also exclaims, in the same connection, "Even the cypress trees exult over thee, And the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art fallen, No man cometh up to cut us down."