There are three words that can accurately be translated “hell” in the Bible. A really good translation, like the New American Standard Bible shows hell mentioned 13 times. The 1611 King James Version has 54 mentions of hell, but inaccurately renders the word Sheol as hell a full 31 times. This is inaccurate because Sheol is word that simply means “the place of the dead” or “the grave”—it is not hell in the sense that Jesus described it. 

The three New Testament words accurately translated hell are, Hades, Tartaroo, and Gehenna. Hades is word associated with anguish; thought of as “infernal regions”—a dismal place for the wicked dead. Tartaroo was thought of by the ancient Greeks as the deepest abyss of Hades. It carries the idea of a subterranean region, doleful and dark; again, a place for the wicked dead. Tartaroo is used just once in 2 Peter 2:4. 

Then there’s Gehenna. It comes from a Hebrew phrase “the valley of Hinnon.” Gehenna is a literal place that still sits outside of Jerusalem today. But people aren’t being tormented there. So we deduce that Gehenna was an illustration. Back then, Gehenna was a dump where the city’s waste and rotting corpses were burned by fire and eaten by worms; hence, the frightfully picturesque words of Jesus, “Where their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched.” Gehenna was a necessary place to visit, kind of like your local county dump today, but no one really wants to live there long. Jesus, the master teacher, used a picture to tell us that we really don’t want to go to hell.

So we discover that non-literal language is used to describe hell. But non-literal doesn’t mean non-real. Whether hell is a literal “place” or some state of existence, who can be a 100% sure? But I think we should consider this: If it’s real, then it’s really bad, and you’ll not want to end up there.

We’ll talk about this more in the next hellish post. Stay tuned. Muwa ha ha ha.