Mot is Death personified, a mythic power in Israelite poetry continuous with the Ugaritic god Motu. He is the insatiable swallower whose throat stretches to the netherworld: Death and Sheol open their jaws and enlarge their appetite to gulp down the multitude, and personified Death climbs in through the windows to cut off children in the streets. He is called the Firstborn of Death, whose disease consumes the limbs of the wicked. In the tradition's forward-looking hope Yahweh confronts and defeats him, promising to ransom his people from the power of Sheol and to swallow up Death itself forever, an inversion of Mot's own devouring appetite.