Multiple “Hells” In the Bible?
All the Words For Hell
Three words in the Greek scriptures (the New Testament) are translated as “hell”—Gehenna, Hades, and Tartarus. In some translations, “hell” also appears in the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament) as a translation of the word Sheol. What does each of these words mean, and why are they all called “hell”? Pastor Doug Wilson of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, explains:
Hades / Sheol— “‘Hades’… [is] the place of the dead. The Hebrew for that is ‘Sheol’ in the Old Testament. …In the Old Testament, Samuel came up out of the ground from Sheol [1 Samuel 28:11-15]; those who rebelled against Moses fell alive into Sheol [Numbers 16:30-33]; Jonah cries out to the Lord from the depths of Sheol [Jonah 2], where he was taken by the fish that swallowed him, down to the depths (and I actually think that Jonah actually died—you know, that Jonah died and was brought back to life and then was deposited on the beach after that). So, you have all these different uses of Sheol, which the New Testament describes as Hades. …Hades is a place where, in the Lord's Parable, Lazarus and the rich man were conversing with one another [Luke 16:19-31]. The rich man was in torment in Hades, there was a chasm between them, and Lazarus was in ‘Abraham's bosom’—sort of on the other side of the chasm, but in the same basic place.”
The parable of the rich man and Lazarus as depicted by James Tissot sometime between 1886-1894. (Public Domain)
Gehenna— “And ‘Gehenna’…comes from the garbage dump outside Jerusalem, the Valley of Ben Hinnom. So, the Valley of Ben Hinnom was the place ‘where the worm did not die, and the fire was not quenched’ [cf. Mark 9:48]…you know, like at a lot of dumps, there are fires burning all the time and that sort of thing, and that became a metaphor or an image of the final torment. So, Gehenna is a word referring to everlasting damnation.” Another name for Gehenna is the Lake of Fire. “In the Book of Revelation, death and Hades are thrown into the Lake of Fire [Revelation 20:14]. So, the Lake of Fire is the final judgment, the everlasting torment.”
Tartarus— “In the Greek conception, Hades had two compartments. There was Elysium, where the good folks went—I take ‘Abraham's bosom’ to be a Hebraism for Elysium—and…the deepest pit of the bad side was called Tartarus, which Peter uses that word one time without redefinition or anything like that [2 Peter 2:4]. I think many modern translations translate it ‘the nether gloom,’ but it's a very specific word for a specific place on the bad side of Hades.”
So, to summarize, Sheol or Hades is the place of the dead, which has both a good and a bad side; Tartarus is the deepest pit of the bad side; and Gehenna is the place of final judgment.
Why do we use the word “hell” for all of these?
“The Anglo-Saxon word hel,” Wilson says, “originally was much closer to ‘Hades’ [or Sheol]… But, over time, the modern English—contemporary English—makes people think of Gehenna, the final lake of torment…”
So, today, people often use the word “hell” to refer to the place of eternal torment at the end of time rather than the place of the dead. It’s just a matter of how the English language has developed. For that reason, when discussing hell, defining terms is always a good idea. As our language changes, though, God’s Word remains the same: there is a place of the dead and a coming final judgment.
But wait. If Hades/Sheol is the place of the dead, with both a good and a bad side, does that mean believers who die go there? We’ll touch on that in the next article.
This article was originally published in Project 18:15. If you read it here first, you’re late to the party. Don’t miss the next one!