Hell

“Hell” in English Bibles renders several distinct terms, and distinguishing them clarifies the Bible’s teaching on the fate of the dead. In the Old Testament, Hebrew Sheol denotes the realm of the dead — the shadowy unseen world to which all descend — rendered “grave,” “pit,” or “hell” (Psalms 16:10; Job 14:13). Yet even there the OT voices hope: “God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol” (Psalms 49:15), and Daniel foresees a resurrection to “everlasting life” or “shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). The Greek Hades is the New Testament counterpart, the intermediate abode of the dead awaiting judgment (Luke 16:23; Revelation 20:13).

The decisive word for final punishment is Gehenna, spoken almost always by Jesus himself. It derives from the Valley of Hinnom (Hebrew gê-hinnōm) south of Jerusalem, where apostate Israel had burned children to Molech (Jeremiah 7:31) and which became a byword for defilement and judgment. Jesus uses it for the place of final, conscious ruin: better to lose an eye or hand “than that your whole body be thrown into hell,” where “the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:43-48); fear him who “can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28); even contemptuous anger puts one in danger of “the hell of fire” (Matthew 5:22).

Jesus’ teaching presses its reality and seriousness. The rich man finds himself “in torment” in Hades, separated by a fixed chasm (Luke 16:23-26). At the last judgment the King sentences the unrepentant to “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41; Matthew 25:46), and Revelation names the final state “the lake of fire… the second death,” into which death, Hades, and all whose names are not in the book of life are cast (Revelation 20:14-15; Revelation 21:8). Scripture also speaks of it as exclusion from God’s presence (2 Thessalonians 1:9).

Hell stands as the solemn counterpart to the gospel: the just judgment of a holy God upon unrepented sin, and the measure of what Christ bore for his people. Its warning is never given to crush but to drive sinners to mercy, for God “desires all people to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4) and “takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezekiel 33:11). The same Lord who spoke most of hell opened the only way of escape from it, that whoever believes in him “should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).