Here's What the Bible REALLY Says About HELL!

 When you hear someone speak of “hell,” what springs to mind? An image of an underworld cavern blazing with flames? The souls of the damned screaming in agony from the midst of those flames while cackling demons run to and fro, stabbing those tortured souls with pitchforks? Do you picture this scene enduring for all eternity, without a moment of relief for the condemned?

That’s the popular concept of hell. A place of endless torture, presided over by Satan and his demons, for whoever rejected Jesus Christ in this life. But that isn’t what the Bible teaches, not even close! It’s all baloney. Fiction. Human imagination.

According to etymonline.com, the Old English word hel or helle literally meant “concealed place.” It’s related to the Old Norse word hellir, which means “cave” or “cavern.” This original meaning of the word is closer to the truth of what the Bible teaches, but not quite there. Let’s investigate further!

What Happens to the Dead?

As we’ve noted before, the Bible teaches that the dead have no consciousness or knowledge of anything. That means they cannot, at this moment, be alive or conscious to be tortured! There’s no need to devote much space to that again here, but let’s look at a few key verses.

God told Adam the first man, not that he would go to hell or heaven or any other place, but that he would one day die and return to dust: “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19).

In the Psalms, King David pleaded with God for deliverance from an illness, writing, “For in death there is no remembrance of You; in the grave who will give You thanks?” (Psa. 6:5). Again, another psalmist wrote, “The dead do not praise the LORD, nor any who go down into silence” (Psa. 115:17).

The Book of Ecclesiastes couldn’t be any plainer: “For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished” (Eccl. 9:5-6). Again, a few verses later, Ecclesiastes reminds us that life is short, saying, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going” (Eccl. 9:10).

Finally, King Hezekiah praised God and gave thanks after being healed from a deadly illness, saying, “For Sheol cannot thank You, death cannot praise You; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your truth. The living, the living man, he shall praise You, as I do this day; the father shall make known Your truth to the children” (Isa. 38:18-19).

One day, at the resurrection, the dead will awaken. An angel told the prophet Daniel, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2).

And our Savior Himself said, “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28-29; NASB).

So the dead know nothing. They are unconscious, asleep in the earth. One day, they will hear the voice of God, arise from their graves, and be judged. That means that no one is currently in hell being tortured.

But what about the verses in our English Bibles that mention the word “hell”? What do they mean? And will there be a hell — a fiery place of eternal punishment — in the future?

There are four words in the Bible, one Hebrew and three Greek, that are sometimes translated as “hell.” Let’s look at each one.

Sheol

In the Old Testament, the only word translated “hell” is the Hebrew word sheol. In addition to being translated as “hell,” sheol is also frequently translated as “grave” or “pit.” Crucially, the Bible never mentions fiery torment or punishment of any kind in connection with Sheol.

Sheol is not hell, as we think of hell today, but simply the grave. Not a specific grave or tomb, but the grave in general. A yawning chasm or bottomless pit which devours the living. Those who die go down into the grave, their flesh returns to dust, and they are seen no more.

Several Scriptures speak of Sheol this way, as a pit which is never full. For example, Prov. 27:20 tells us, “Hell [sheol] and Destruction [abaddon] are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.” And again in Prov. 30:15-16, we find, “There are three things that are never satisfied, four never say, ‘Enough!’: The grave [sheol], the barren womb, the earth that is not satisfied with water – and the fire never says, ‘Enough!’”

Job vividly described Sheol as the grave: “If I wait for the grave [sheol] as my house, if I make my bed in the darkness, if I say to corruption, 'You are my father,' and to the worm, 'You are my mother and my sister,' where then is my hope? As for my hope, who can see it? Will they go down to the gates of Sheol? Shall we have rest together in the dust?" (Job 17:13-16). Everything Job said about Sheol corresponds to the grave: it is a rest in the dust, it is dark, and it is where one’s flesh decays and is eaten by worms.

Sheol is not a place of torment, but the place of rest for ALL the dead — rich and poor, free and slave, righteous and wicked. As we find in Psa. 89:48, “What man can live and not see death? Can he deliver his life from the power of the grave [sheol]?”

The patriarch Jacob, a righteous man, knew that one day he would die and be buried in the grave, in Sheol: “And all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and he said, ‘For I shall go down into the grave [sheol] to my son in mourning.’ Thus his father wept for him” (Gen. 37:35).

In the midst of his affliction, the righteous Job longed for death, calling out to God, “Oh, that You would hide me in the grave [sheol], that You would conceal me until Your wrath is past, that You would appoint me a set time, and remember me!” (Job 14:13). Job longed for this life to be over, for his troubles to end, and to await the resurrection. He described Sheol as a place of hiding or concealment, which is what our English word “hell” originally meant!

But, lest anyone think that only the righteous go to Sheol, the Bible also gives many examples of the wicked going to the grave, to Sheol. For instance, “The wicked shall be turned into hell [sheol], and all the nations that forget God” (Psa. 9:17).

In fact, when God killed Korah, Dathan, and Abiram for rebellion in the wilderness, He caused a literal pit, a grave, to open in the earth and swallow them alive! “And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the men with Korah, with all their goods.  So they and all those with them went down alive into the pit [sheol]; the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the assembly” (Num. 16:32-33).

God’s Word plainly tells us that there is no consciousness in Sheol, no knowledge of anything. We read these Scriptures already, but let’s review and remember them:

Psalm 6:5 — For in death there is no remembrance of You; in the grave [Sheol] who will give You thanks?

Ecclesiastes 9:10 — Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave [Sheol] where you are going.

Ecclesiastes 9:5-6 — For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished; nevermore will they have a share In anything done under the sun.

So that’s what the Old Testament has to tell us about Sheol. Not a place of fiery torment, but simply the grave. A place of rest to await the resurrection of the dead.

What about the New Testament?

Hades

In the New Testament, there are three Greek words that are sometimes translated as “hell”: hades, gehenna, and tartaroo. Let’s start with Hades.

Though Greek mythology attached other meanings to Hades, the word itself simply means “not to be seen” or “not to be known.” It is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Sheol, that is, the grave or pit into which all the dead go.

The rabbis who translated the Septuagint, or Greek Old Testament, consistently translated the Hebrew sheol into Greek as hades. All the verses we’ve just read about Sheol therefore apply to Hades as well.

Indeed, the New Testament likewise speaks of Hades as the place of ALL the dead. Even Jesus Christ Himself, when He was crucified, died and went into the grave, that is, Sheol or Hades. However, Christ’s body did not decompose, nor did He remain in the grave, but triumphed over it. As the apostle Peter proclaimed, “He [David], foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption” (Acts 2:31).

Appearing to the apostle John in a vision in the Book of Revelation, Jesus told Him, “I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death” (Rev. 1:18). Hades is the grave, from which Christ will raise all who are dead.

The apostle Paul, quoting the Septuagint version of Hos. 13:14, wrote, “O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” (1 Cor. 15:55). In that passage, too, the Septuagint translated the Hebrew sheol into Greek as hades. Hades is Sheol; Hades is the grave.

Gehenna

The second Greek word translated “hell” in our English Bibles, gehenna, is quite different from hades or sheol. Unlike those, it doesn’t refer to the grave, but to a final punishment for the wicked.

Gehenna comes from two Hebrew words, gay’ (Strong’s # H1516), or “valley,” and hinnom (Strong’s # H2011). Gehenna is literally the “Valley of Hinnom.” For centuries, this place had been a place of burning, where idolaters burned their children in the fire as sacrifices to pagan deities. Because of this, God vehemently condemned the people of Judah and vowed to avenge the innocent:

31 "And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart.

32 "Therefore behold, the days are coming," says the LORD, "when it will no more be called Tophet, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Tophet until there is no room.

33 "The corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth. And no one will frighten them away. (Jer. 7:31-33.)

In the place where the people of Judah had burned their children in the fire, their own corpses would be feasted upon by birds and wild beasts. And so, the Valley of Hinnom, or Gehenna, became associated with Divine judgment, not only in the Bible, but also in rabbinic writings such as the Babylonian Talmud.

(As a sidenote, around AD 1200, Rabbi David Kimhi claimed that the Valley of Hinnom “was a loathsome place where people would cast away filth and carcasses, and there was a constant fire burning to consume the impurities and bones of the dead” (Radak Tehillim 27). This claim is often repeated as fact to this day. The problem is, Rabbi Kimhi is the earliest source of this claim, but he lived around 1,200 years after Jesus Christ! Neither Josephus nor any other contemporary writers mention the Valley of Hinnom being a waste dump, nor has anyone found archaeological evidence of it.)

The New Testament links Gehenna with slaughter and the fires of eternal judgment that will consume the wicked. Jesus warned of this judgment, saying, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell [gehenna], into the fire that shall never be quenched — where ‘Their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’” (Mark 9:43-44). That latter part is a quote from Isa. 66:24, where God said, “And they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm does not die, and their fire is not quenched. They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

But the fires of Gehenna have little to do with the popular concept of hell. They aren’t fires of eternal torture, but fires which consume and destroy the wicked, both soul and body. Jesus plainly said, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell [gehenna]” (Mat. 10:28).

We see this same concept throughout the Bible. The wicked will not be tortured forever, but annihilated and forgotten.

The apostle Paul described Jesus Christ, at His return, “in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” (2 Thes. 1:8-9).

Heb. 10:26-27 warns, “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.”

And the Book of Malachi declares, “‘For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up,’ says the LORD of hosts, ‘that will leave them neither root nor branch. ... You shall trample the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day that I do this,’ says the LORD of hosts” (Mal. 4:1, 3).

Once burned to ashes, the wicked will be forgotten. “The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth” (Psa. 34:16). “You have rebuked the nations, you have destroyed the wicked; you have blotted out their name forever and ever” (Psa. 9:5).

Gehenna, then, isn’t a place of eternal torment. It has nothing to do with the popular concept of hell. It is instead a reference to the everlasting destruction of the wicked. They will be burned in the fire of God’s wrath, their souls and bodies alike will be destroyed, they will be turned to ash and trampled underfoot, and they will be forgotten. Gehenna isn’t eternal torture, but eternal destruction.

Tartaroo

The third and final Greek word translated as “hell” in our English Bibles is tartaroo. It appears just once in the Bible: “For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell [tartaroo] and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment” (2 Pet. 2:4). Tartaroo applies to the angels, or demons, who rebelled against God.

Jude 1:6 echoes Peter’s statement, albeit without using the word tartaroo: “And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.”

Now, what does this mean? Are the demons literally bound in chains or confined to a specific place? Not at present, no. Demons tormented people on earth during the lives of Jesus Christ and His apostles, and they will still be here on earth moments before Christ returns (Rev. 16:14).

But the day of judgment looms over them, and they know this. Jesus declared that the same everlasting fire which will consume wicked human beings is also reserved for Satan and his demons: “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Mat. 25:41).

The Book of James tells us that the demons tremble before our great Creator: “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe — and tremble!” (Jam. 2:19). And when Jesus cast demons out of people, those same demons spoke in fear of their looming judgment: “And suddenly they cried out, saying, ‘What have we to do with You, Jesus, You Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?’” (Mat. 8:29).

Satan and his demons have no possibility of repentance, “but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries” (Heb. 10:27). They are in spiritual bondage and apprehension, awaiting their final judgment and sentence. That’s what Tartaroo describes.

The Final Judgment

So none of the Greek or Hebrew words commonly translated as “hell” in our English Bibles have anything to do with a place of eternal torture, as popularly imagined today. On the contrary, the Bible tells us that the dead rest in their graves, that they are asleep, that they know nothing, and that they will one day be resurrected and judged. It tells us that the wicked will be cast into unquenchable fire, burned to ashes, and forgotten.

As if all this wasn’t enough, the Bible also plainly tells us that only the righteous will live forever, that only they will inherit eternal life. The wicked, in contrast, will inherit eternal death.

In John 3:16, Jesus declared, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Notice! Only those who believe Jesus Christ will have everlasting life. Again, Jesus declared, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36). The righteous will have everlasting life; the wicked will not.

As Paul explained in Rom. 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The apostle John, too, wrote, “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15). Returning to Paul’s writings once more, we find again that the wicked “shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” (2 Thes. 1:9).

To suggest that the wicked will live forever in torment is to suggest either that they will have everlasting life, something which the Bible reserves only for the righteous, or else that life isn’t really life. If everyone lives and no one truly perishes, then the Bible wouldn’t tell us that only the followers of Jesus Christ will inherit everlasting life.

What About Lazarus and the Rich Man?

At this point, though, someone will inevitably ask, “What about Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the rich man? Doesn’t that describe something like our popular concept of hell?” This is a valid question, so let’s take a look!

In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus told a parable about two men, the one a wealthy man and the other a beggar named Lazarus. The name “Lazarus” is a Hellenized form of the Hebrew Eleazar, which means “whom God helps.” And indeed, this beggar was covered with sores, had no means of support, and no one to help him on earth. In this life, Lazarus was lower than a dog.

In time, both men died. We’re told that the rich man died and was buried, but this is not said of Lazarus. Perhaps his corpse was simply thrown on a refuse dump somewhere. Regardless, the rich man becomes conscious and sees Lazarus in the arms of Abraham, whom Jesus said will be in the Kingdom of God (Luke 13:28), while he himself is tormented by fire. He has no more time to change his ways; his fate is sealed. This is the first point of Jesus’ parable, a point made many times in Scripture: the wicked who prosper in this life will be paid back in full at the judgment, while the righteous who suffer in this life will be blessed in the Kingdom of God.

But in Jesus’ parable, this is not yet the judgment; the rich man’s family is still living. And so he desires for Lazarus to be raised from the dead to go to his family and warn them to repent, but he is simply told, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead” (Luke 16:31). That’s Jesus’ closing statement in this parable, and it’s His main point. Those who don’t believe the written Word of God won’t believe signs and wonders either. If they don’t believe the writings of Moses and the prophets, then they won’t believe miracles. And indeed, Jesus Himself rose from the dead, yet many still disbelieve!

We have only to look at the history of Israel to see further examples. God brought the ten plagues on Egypt and delivered Israel from bondage, but the Israelites still doubted Him. God parted the Red Sea for Israel and drowned the Egyptians in it, but the Israelites still doubted Him. God gave the Israelites bread from heaven and brought water for them out of rocks in the desert, but they still doubted Him. The Israelites heard the voice of God thundering from Mt. Sinai, and they still disbelieved and disobeyed Him! Miracles had no lasting effect on them. With each new difficulty, they doubted God and thought, “God delivered us last time, but what about this time?”

Now then, what are we to make of the rich man becoming conscious in his grave, being tormented in fire, and communicating with Abraham? 

Well, remember that this is a parable, a fictional story. Jesus used this story for teaching. It isn’t unusual for parables to contain absurd elements in order to illustrate their points. Consider the Old Testament parable about trees talking among themselves about choosing a king, ultimately settling on a bramble as their king (Judg. 9:7-15). Are we to gather from this that trees can talk and communicate with one another, or that they choose kings for themselves? Of course not! It’s just a parable.

These aren’t isolated examples. God told Cain that Abel’s blood cried out from the ground (Gen. 4:10). Did God literally hear Abel’s blood crying out? No, it’s obviously a figure of speech. In Isa. 14:9-11, rotting corpses covered with worms and maggots are said to be excited to meet the king of Babylon at his death. In the preceding verse, v. 8, the trees are also said to rejoice that no woodsman will come to chop them down. Is any of this meant to be taken literally? Does blood speak? Do trees speak? Do corpses speak? Of course not! This shouldn’t be difficult for anyone to understand.

But if we are to take Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the rich man literally, miss His main points entirely, and conclude instead that He was telling us about hell, then why stop there? Why not take every parable or figure of speech in the Bible literally as well? Why not conclude also that blood speaks? That rotting corpses get excited and speak when another corpse joins them? That trees speak to one another and choose rulers? That would be no less absurd.

The Origin of Hell

So if the popular concept of hell isn’t found in the Bible, then where does it come from? Where did we get the idea of an underworld cavern filled with flames, where the souls of the damned writhe and scream in agony as laughing demons run to and fro and stab them with pitchforks?

The answer is that it originated in pagan mythology. All the pagan religions have similar concepts of an underworld ruled over by malevolent deities — a concept that you will never find in the Bible! In Babylonian mythology, in Egyptian, in Greek, in Roman, in Norse, and many more, you can read about these pagan underworlds to your heart’s content and see that they share many similarities, but share nothing in common with the Bible.

In the decades and centuries following the deaths of Jesus’ apostles, early Christianity continued to spread in a world dominated by paganism, and many pagan customs and beliefs infiltrated the church, a process known as syncretism which we’ve documented elsewhere in blog posts about pagan holidays such as Christmas and Easter. Like the pagans, Christians began to believe that the wicked are not truly destroyed as the Bible teaches, but that they will live forever in an underworld, apart from God.

Mainstream Christianity today is a hybrid religion much like the ancient Samaritan religion, a mixture of truth and paganism. Though the Protestant Reformation rejected some of the pagan elements of the Roman Catholic Church, it still clung to most of them, as Protestants do to this day.

Conclusion

The popular imagination of hell, an underworld ruled over by Satan and his demons, is a lie from Satan himself. You’ll never find such a thing in the Bible. And none of the words translated as “hell” in our English Bibles have anything to do with this concept.

Instead, the Bible teaches that the dead go to the grave, which is called Sheol in the Old Testament and Hades in the New Testament. There, their bodies decompose and their flesh returns to dust. They are asleep, unconscious, and have no knowledge of anything, but are awaiting the resurrection.

One day, they will be resurrected. Jesus said, “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28-29; NASB).

The righteous will enter into eternal life in God’s Kingdom; the unrepentant sinners will enter into eternal death. They will be cast into devouring fire, which will consume both soul and body, and which is called Gehenna in the Gospels. They will be burned to ashes, trodden underfoot, and forgotten. And that’s the truth of what the Bible has to tell us about the fate of the wicked!