Most Church Fathers read Ephesians 4:9 as Christ’s descent into Hades (the underworld / Sheol / the abode of the dead), not merely the Incarnation or burial. The verse
“Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?”
is treated as the necessary counterpart to the ascent in Psalm 68:18 (quoted in 4:8). He who went up first went down to the lowest place, so that the same person fills all things (4:10).
Irenaeus is explicit and polemical. He quotes the verse against Gnostics who claimed “the lower parts” meant only this world while their “inner man” ascended to a super-celestial realm. Christ “observed the law of the dead,” tarried until the third day “in the lower parts of the earth,” and then rose in the flesh. Irenaeus links the descent to visiting those “resting from their labours” and to delivering the righteous dead, citing a Jeremiah-like tradition that the Lord remembered His dead and descended to preach salvation to them.
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