What the Hell

"'I am Hel,' she agreed. 'Sometimes called Hela, though most mortals dare not speak my name at all. No jokes, Magnus Chase? Who the Hel are you? What the Hel do you want? You look Hela bad. I was expecting more bravado.'"

Rick Riordan, The Sword of Summer (2015)

Hel, Norse goddess of the dishonourable dead, in an 1889 woodcut after a picture by a German illustrator called Johannes Gehrts. Hela's name is, unsurprisingly, cognate with English 'hell'.

Can we please stop talking about hell?

No, wait, let me rephrase that slightly, before you start worrying that I'm turning into some sort of namby-pamby theological liberal who'd like to reinvent the doctrine of everlasting punishment for the unrighteous as something rather more palatable and rather less true: can we please stop talking about 'hell'? Because ever since I noticed that the ESV uses the English word 'hell' to translate three totally different Greek terms used in the New Testament, I've harboured a growing suspicion that our use of this word in anglophone Christian circles is actually obscuring from us, rather than helping us understand, what the Bible says about life after death and judgement of the wicked. In terms of matching things up with what's revealed in the Bible, I don't really know what Christians mean when they use the word 'hell' in any given instance. And, if you'll forgive me, I dare to suppose that they often don't really know what they mean either.

The way this post is going to work is that I'm going to examine the biblical usage of some Hebrew and Greek words that might be translated or construed as 'hell', and from there, try to illuminate the picture I think the Bible actually paints on this front. I, unsurprisingly, think my case is pretty dang compelling, but do please go and look up the references and consider for yourself and let me know if you discern from the scriptures a yet more compelling alternative.

Here we go, then … References mentioned under more than one category pertaining to the same word are indicated in italics. Some of the references are sort of ambiguous, and of course there's a good deal of overlap between categories, but I've tried to place everything as best I can; if occurrences in a single passage seem to have different aspects as their primary emphasis, I've placed them in different categories. I really hope I haven't messed up on any of the chapter and verse numbers, but boy are there a lot of them, so it's entirely possible that I have.

שְׁאוֹל

Sheol

(sometimes translated e.g. 'grave', 'realm of the dead')

65 occurrences in scripture

• As place where dead people go down to/parallelled with death: Genesis 37:35; 42:38; 44:29; 44:31; 1 Samuel 2:6; 1 Kings 2:6, 9; Isaiah 5:14; 14:9, 11; 28:15, 18; 39:10; 38:18; Ezekiel 31:15, 16, 17; 32:21, 27; Hosea 13:14 (×2); Habakkuk 2:5; Job 7:9; 17:13; 21;13; 24:19; Psalm 6:5; 16:10; 49:14; 55:15; 89:48; 141:7; Proverbs 5:5; 7:27; 9:18; Ecclesiastes 9:10; Song of Songs 8:6
• As place where judged sinners (not necessarily yet dead) go down to/where sin leads: Numbers 16:30, 33; Job 24:19; Psalm 9:17; 31:17; 49:14; 55:15; Proverbs 1:12; 5:5; 7:27; 15:24; 23:14 (in these last two, the point is established by contrast)
• Parallelled with death in context of God's rescue from it: 2 Samuel 22:6; Jonah 2:2; Psalm 18:5; 30:3; 49:15; 86:13; 88:3; 116:3
• As deep place/place under the earth/contrasted with heaven: Deuteronomy 32:22; Isaiah 14:15; 57:9 (though here it refers more generally to far-away-ness); Amos 9:2; Job 11:8; 17:16; 139:8; 157:11
• As place of darkness/concealment: Job 14:13; 17:13; 26:6; Proverbs 15:11 (in these last two, the point is established by contrast: it's not concealed from God)
• As place never satisfied: Habakkuk 2:5; Proverbs 27:20; 30:16
• As place where no one praises God or does other good human activities: Isaiah 38:18; Psalm 6:5; Ecclesiastes 9:10

תְהוֹם

Tehom

(sometimes translated e.g. 'deep', 'depths')

35 occurrences in scripture

• As watery place/source of water/parallelled with sea (including Red Sea): Genesis 1:2; 7:11; 8:2; Exodus 15:5, 8; Deuteronomy 8:7; Isaiah 51:10; 63:13; Ezekiel 26:19; 31:4, 15 (not totally sure here because the idea is of stopping water, but hey); Jonah 2:5; Habakkuk 3:10; Job 28:14; 38:16, 30; 41:32; Psalm 33:7; 42:7; 77:16; 78:15; 104:6; 106:9; 135:6; 148:7; Proverbs 3:20; 8:24, 27, 28
• As deep place/contrasted with heaven: Genesis 49:25; Deuteronomy 33:13; Psalm 36:6; 71:20; 107:26; Proverbs 8:27, 28

אֲבַדּוֹן

Abaddon

(meaning 'destroyer')

6 occurrences in scripture

• Parallelled with Sheol
• as place exposed before God: Job 26:6; Proverbs 15:11
• as place never satisfied: Proverbs 27:20
• Parallelled with death
• as place not knowing wisdom: Job 28:22
• as place where no-one praises God: Psalm 88:11
• As faraway place/place of punishment?: Job 31:12

גֵּי (בֶן) הִנֹּם

Gey (Ven) Hinnom, i.e. Gehenna

(meaning 'valley of (the son of) Hinnom')

• As place in Jerusalem: Joshua 15:8; 18:6; Jeremiah 7:32; 19:2, 6; Nehemiah 11:30
• Specifically, where child sacrifices were burnt: 2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chronicles 28:3; 33:6; Jeremiah 7:31; 19:2, 6; 32:35

And because I clearly haven't bombarded you with enough information yet, here come the New Testament Greek terms:

ᾅδης

Hades

10 occurrences in scriptures

• Translating Sheol, as in Psalm 16:10 (see above): Acts 2:27, 31
• Parallelled with death: Revelation 1:18; 6:8; 20:13, 14
• As place where (wicked) dead go (and are tormented): Luke 16:23
• Contrasted with heaven in context of judgement: Matthew 11:23; Luke 10:15
• As one whose gates shall not prevail against the Church: Matthew 16:18

ἄβυσσος

Abyss

(sometimes translated e.g. 'bottomless pit')

9 occurrences in scripture

• Contrasted with heaven: Romans 10:17
• As place where evil spirits (including the Satan) and end-of-the-age plagues are imprisoned/rise from: Luke 8:31; Revelation 9:1, 2, 11; 11:7; 17:8; 20:1, 3

Ἀβαδδών

Abaddon

(transcribed from the Hebrew; Greek equivalent is Ἀπολλύων, Apollyon, also meaning 'destroyer')

1 occurrence in scripture

• As angel of the Abyss and king of the plague that rises from it: Revelation 9:11

γέεννα

Gehenna

(transcribed from the Hebrew)

12 occurrences in scripture

• As fiery place of ultimate post-death judgement: Matthew 5:22, 29, 30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5
• Associated with sin: Matthew 23:15; James 3:6 (again, associated with fire)

τάρταρος

Tartarus

not mentioned in scripture, but the cognate verb ταρταρόω meaning 'condemn to Tartarus' occurs once

• As place where evil angels are imprisoned until judgement: 2 Peter 2:4

Whew. OK. Now, if I haven't yet lost your attention completely (what a diligent reader you are!), here's the picture that I think emerges from all this.

It's pretty straightforward to match up the Greek terms with their Hebrew equivalents: Abaddon and Gehenna are literally just transcribed; and I'll admit that I haven't been through the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) thoroughly, but it seems fair to say that Hades is the standard Greek translation for Sheol, and Abyss for Tehom. That only leaves Tartarus, which I'll deal with in a moment.

Hades, like Hel, was of course used to refer both to the realm of the dead and the deity who ruled it. Here's Hades with his pet dog Cerberus, according to a statue in the Museum if Archaeology in Crete; thanks to Aviad Bublil on Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hades%26cerberus-AviadBublil.JPG#mw-jump-to-license.

What we have, then, are three different locations. Sheol/Hades is a deep, dark place where humans go when they die; Tehom/the Abyss is a deep, watery place where evil spirits are; and Gehenna was a place in Jerusalem where children were burnt in fire to appease false gods, and hence the name came to refer to a fiery place where the true God will expend his wrath on the unrighteous. (As for Abaddon, it's hard to build up a clear picture from the Old Testament references, so I'm happy to lean on the New Testament one for my definition: he's the angel in charge of the Abyss, whose name is apparently sometimes used metonymously - further investigation needed.) For this reason, I think it seems very persuasive to equate Gehenna with the lake of fire mentioned in Revelation 19:20 and 20:10, 14-15. And who ends up in the lake of fire? The beast, the false prophet, the devil, death, Hades, and anyone whose name isn't written in the book of life.

But hang on - Hades is Sheol, right? So that means Sheol isn't the permanent abode of the dead, because it's thrown into Gehenna at the end of the age. Equally, note that the beast and the devil rise out of the Abyss before they're thrown into Gehenna. At the moment, then, the human dead are being kept separately to evil spirits - the former in Sheol, the latter in Tehom - but at the end of the age, those temporary holding cells will be done away with, and all the unrighteous, human or spirit, will end up in one place: Gehenna.

The fact that the Abyss is clearly the abode of evil spirits leads me to consider Tartarus, as alluded to in 2 Peter 2:4 (see above), another equivalent term for it. If you keep reading in 2 Peter, you'll find, a few verses into the next chapter, confirmation that all that belongs to the present order is reserved for destruction in fire, i.e. Gehenna. But that's preceded by a declaration that the former order was destroyed in water, out of which the present order was then created. Here we have an allusion to what happened before the beginning of Genesis, when the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the face of Tehom and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Over the waters. Which already existed. Because, according to Peter, the previous cosmos was destroyed in water.

This explains why, whereas Gehenna is conceived of as fiery, Tehom is conceived of as watery. The final judgement of the age before our own came in water, and the prison of the rebels of that age was therefore a watery one. (Quick side note: for this reason, it makes perfect sense that when God decided to wipe out all flesh in Genesis 6, he did it with water, because that's what your standard medium of judgement was at that stage. Of course, he subsequently ruled out the option of ever using the same strategy again, and so in later scripture you get increasing use of fire imagery to describe judgement, though water imagery for this purpose doesn't immediately disappear or anything.) The final judgement of the present age, by contrast, will come in fire, and the ultimate prison for rebels of both ages is therefore a fiery one. In the age to come, of course, there will be no rebellion, nor, therefore, any need for a final judgement.

So that's lots of death and judgement so far: where does God's salvation plan fit into all this? The story of the rich man and Lazarus is very informative here. Lazarus died and was carried by angels to Abraham's side; the rich man died and ended up in torment in Hades, i.e. Sheol. Abraham confirmed that there was a great chasm between these two places, but they evidently weren't too far separated to hold a conversation across that chasm. One of the key things we learn about Sheol from the Old Testament is that it's at the very opposite end of the cosmos to God's abode in heaven, so I don't think Abraham and Lazarus are in heaven at this point; they would seem, rather, to be in a different bit of Sheol, a bit where things suck a lot less. This makes sense of the implicit assumption in the Old Testament that Sheol is where everyone goes when they die, not just the wicked: for instance, Jacob and his sons all talked about his prospective death from sheer grief in terms of going down to Sheol, which would be a pretty terrible thing to say if there were some other afterlife option for righteous people. In Adam, all die, and all go to Sheol.

But then Jesus said to the thief on the cross that he would today be with him in paradise - the abode of God, heaven. And Paul talks about death as going to be with the Lord, who is, since his ascension, very definitely in heaven. Evidently, people can now go to heaven and not Sheol when they die. Something has changed. Gosh, it couldn't possibly be Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, justification of the elect, and defeat of sin and death, enabling sinful humans to stand in the presence of a holy God as beloved sons, could it? As in Adam all die, so in Christ all are made alive. So when Peter talks about the gospel being preached to the dead, so that, though judged in flesh - sent to Sheol - they might live in spirit, I assume he means that when Jesus died, and went to Sheol himself, he preached the gospel to Abraham and Lazarus and all the rest on that side of the chasm, and they believed and were born again and raised to the heavenlies, like the rest of us have been. Isn't that a neat solution to the question of what eternal salvation looked like before Jesus?

To summarise, then - I think a nice chronological schema should do it:

• Former age
• Judgement in water; rebels (evil spirits) in Tehom
• Present age
• Humans all go to Sheol when they die, but there's a nice separate bit for those who had faith
• The cross: all those with faith now go to heaven to be with the Lord; the rest still get Sheol
• Evil spirits still in Tehom
• End of the age: judgement in fire; rebels (from both ages, i.e. spirits and humans) all thrown into Gehenna
• Future age
• New heavens and earth; all righteous (spirits and humans) with the Lord forever and ever; no rebellion; no final judgement

So I hope you can see why I think the term 'hell' is potentially not a very helpful one with which to refer to the fate of those who die in their sins. If you're convinced by my proposed system - which to my mind just falls out of scripture if you really look at it, but as I say, always very happy to be corrected - then can I encourage you to join me in trying to replace 'hell' with an appropriate term for what you actually mean in the instance at hand? I tend to feel we can only do ourselves a favour by being clear about this stuff.

But the key point is always, of course, that all thanks and praise are due to God who was and is and is to come, whose judgement on rebellion is just and proportional, who has unbelievable mercy on sinners like you and me to buy us back from the trajectory of ending up first in Sheol and then in Gehenna, by the blood of Jesus who underwent that judgement of death in our stead; and unbelievable grace to grant us to dwell in his own presence, to receive the inheritance of the perfect age to come, which will end neither in water nor in fire nor in anything, but rather continue forever and ever. Can I get an 'amen'?

Conversations with my Internal Nihilist, or A Mandate for Continued Existence

“Really, stop crying. You’ve got a lot to look forward to, you know: a normal human life on earth, mortgage repayments, the nine to five, a persistent nagging sense of spiritual emptiness. Save the tears for later, boyo.”

Doctor Who S6 E12, ‘Closing Time’ (2011)

Her:      Morning.

Me:      What are you doing here?

Her:      Well, I took a look at your schedule for the past little while, as I do, you know, and it seems you and I haven’t hung out in a little while. You’ve been spending far too much time enjoying the sensations of the present moment and far too little looking at the bleak, blank meaninglessness underneath them. So here I am to fix that. How about an hour or two of staring into the void?

 

Creates some sort of impression of voidishness, even if it can hardly be called an actual void. Thanks to Stuart Miles at freedigitalphotos.net.

Me:      Actually, you’re all right. I have other things to be getting on with.

Her:      Yeah, but do you, though? I mean, you might have other tasks that you’ve set for yourself, but is there really any point to any of them? Is completing them really going to do any good in the world, you being what you are? And, perhaps more to the point, are you really going to be able to concentrate on any of them now that I’ve started this conversation?

Me:      You just had to ask that last question, didn’t you? Fine, then, let’s go void-staring.

Her:      Yay!

Me:      But this time my readers are coming too. Any of them who fancy the trip, I mean.

Her:      Ooh, are you sure you want to do that? You know the kinds of places our conversations tend to go; I wouldn’t want to bring guests into that part of the house. Aren’t you concerned that people might start to worry about you?

Me:      Hardly. Everyone knows that I’m just about the most mentally stable person one could ever hope to meet. In fact, I’m so relentlessly fine and crisis-less that it’s actually kind of hilarious. So I’ll just slot in a little disclaimer here to the effect that when I go void-staring with you, our conversations are extremely theoretical and removed. They don’t carry any impetus towards practical action, or hold me hostage without my consent, or even have any prime influence on how I think, because I already know that I don’t find your way of looking at things compelling; all I’m doing by having the conversation is sweeping the paths that lead to that conclusion. It’s like those physics questions where the exam paper has already given you the correct answer, and all you have to do is set out the series of calculations by which you reach it. Show your working, and so prove with double certainty that the answer is right.

Her:      I wouldn’t be so cocky if I were you. The void is looking really existentially empty today. Take a look.

Me:      Oh boy. I hate this bit.

Her:      You see? All these things you claim you ought to be getting on with – what’s really the point of any of it? What does any of it achieve that’s actually worth something? Do you suppose the world would be any the worse if you were to vanish from it right now? or better yet, if you were never to have been born at all, and every deed of your sinful little life were to be unravelled from existence? Would that not be a mercy on the rest of creation, that it would be spared having to put up with all your wicked selfishness?

Me:      Apparently God the supremely merciful didn’t think so.

Her:      I’m not surprised you brought him up. But do you truly dare to imagine that he’s glorified in you, chief of sinners you, in your constant failure, your constantly loving the world more than him or neighbour? Do you dare to imagine that you ever do anything that isn’t irretrievably tainted by the evil impulses of your flesh? You’ve caught glimpses of your own heart, just glimpses, and were you not left breathless that something so vile, so bestially self-seeking, should ever have been allowed to exist in the first place? And what excuse have you, particularly given that you live in wealth and comfort and privilege and are probably literally the most fortunate person alive, what excuse have you for living as if without the proper gratitude to him who is your Lord and your Creator and the Redeemer of your soul from Gehenna?¹

Me:      I have no excuse; I plead –

Her:      You plead the blood of Christ, I suppose? What a terribly handy get-out-of-jail-free card. Your spirit sits sinless in the heavenlies and cringes at every way in which you in the flesh fail to honour Christ as Lord, and won’t it be simply marvellous when the perishable is done away with and that spiritual version of you is all that remains, and doesn’t the very thought fill you with a profound and desperate longing – but a longing is all it is, because that’s not yours yet, is it? In fact, it’s blooming hard to begin to get your mind round the notion that it will ever be yours, seeing as it sits so far from anything you’ve ever actually experienced. And in the meantime, while your every thought and word and deed is still steeped in sin, what good are you to anyone? What benefit do you offer anyone? What loss would it be to anyone – or not rather a gain! – if you were simply to stop existing?

Me:      So now you’re, what, trying to get me to seek validation from people, but with the precondition that nothing anyone could say will convince you that I’m actually worth something? What is this, some sort of variant on impostor syndrome that swaps academic achievement for social and moral?² That’s rather a dangerous line of argument for you to take, given that I pretty much showed impostor syndrome the door probably a couple of years ago now.

Her:      It’s no use pretending you’re still all cool and unruffled. I saw my words hit their mark.

Me:      Maybe so, but a hit doesn’t necessarily entail damage.

Her:      Oh, shut up, as if I’m buying that. I know I get under your skin. I’ve had you crying before, haven’t I? I’ve had you on your knees asking your precious Saviour with tentative earnestness why he lets you carry on living when nothing you do is ever truly good.

Me:      Hey, everyone has bad days. It’s just that those bad days lead to a slightly different set of questions if you know Jesus than if you don’t.

Her:      And one of those questions is, wouldn’t the world be better off without you pootling about in it being all sinful and stuff?

Me:      Dude, this conversation has been way too dark for way too long. Frankly, I am super bored. I’ve a good mind to just start ignoring you and get on with my day.

Her:      I won’t really go away until you answer the question, though.

Me:      Fine, then. I’ll answer the question. To kick off, you’ve presumably spotted that I am in fact currently still alive, and, given that God’s sovereign and all, that must mean he wants me alive. And since he is supremely wise and has engineered all of creation for the display of his glory, that must mean that me continuing to be alive, even, yes, continuing to be alive in flesh and sinfulness and imperfection, somehow glorifies him.

Her:      Your logic there might be sound, but it’s awfully thin to stand on.

Me:      I haven’t finished showing my working yet. Let’s entertain the opposite scenario. Suppose God were to bring about our full spiritual resurrection the moment we were born again, zap us bodily up to his presence in heaven the split second we turned from our idols and placed our trust in Christ. I mean, there wouldn’t be very much trusting Christ to witness before faith turned into sight, would there? How would God demonstrate his faithfulness to persist with us in patience our whole lives long? How would he demonstrate his justice in rewarding those who persevere in faith through suffering? How would he demonstrate the extent of his grace, sufficient for every stumble, if there was never any chance to stumble at all? and conversely, how would he demonstrate the extent of his power to radically sanctify people still living in the depths of enemy territory so that they stumble less and less often? How could he make even the worst things work together for the good of his people if, the moment they become his people, there are no more worst things any more? How could he grant his Church the privilege of building herself up in love if she’s never built together in the first place? How could his mercies be new every morning if there are no more mornings for them to be new in?

 

New every morning. Someone got up early to take this one.

Her:      Are you done yet?

Me:      Please. I could do this all day.

Her:      I thought you had other things to be getting on with. Speaking of which, where exactly do those mundane little tasks fit into this grand, inspiring picture you’re painting? The only point you’re able to ascribe to anything is the glorification of God, so anything you spend your time on that isn’t directly geared towards that is still totally worthless. And given how rubbish you are at obeying your professed Master, I can still make a very compelling case that you’re doing more harm than good.

Me:      You’re not listening. God is so mind-blowingly brilliant that he glorifies himself in my rebellion as much as in my obedience, in my defeats as much as in my triumphs. I mean, I’d very much rather be obedient, because God is mind-blowingly brilliant and all his ways are perfect and his instruction is the very measure of all that’s good and right, but God’ll have his glory either way. If I do rightly, he’s glorified because he’s the one who makes me capable of that; if I do wrongly, he’s glorified because his love and grace and mercy in carrying out the deserved punishment for all my wrongdoing on Jesus in my stead, so that I might be forgiven it, go light-years beyond any stretch of the human imagination.

Her:      You’re trying to claim that every single thing you ever do glorifies God?

Me:      Mate, I glorify God merely by existing. I glorify him merely by existing as his redeemed and adopted child, and that’ll be the case whatever I do, because, newsflash, I made literally no contribution whatsoever to its being brought about: it’s a gift of grace, so that no one might boast.³ In fact, you know what you are, at the end of the day?

Her:      Pray enlighten me.

Me:      You’re just another claim that salvation is by works, dressed up a bit differently to usual. You justify the notion that the world would get alone just fine without me, thank you very much, by suggesting that my good works are insufficient to earn me the right to exist. Well, duh! My good works are insufficient to earn me literally anything! Is that supposed to be some kind of news or something? My right to exist is not earnt. Rather, my responsibility to exist is freely and graciously given.

Her:      Responsibility?

Me:      So you are listening. Yes, responsibility, or duty, or if a right, then in the sense of a privilege. If God has caused me to exist for the sake of his glory, then for the sake of his glory, it’s my duty and my privilege to continue to exist.

Her:      Even if everything you’re doing feels pointless. Even if you’re convinced you’re doing more harm than good with every breath you take.

Me:      Hey, if the fact that I was dead in my sins didn’t stop God from glorifying himself through me, why should anything else threaten to? I have to say, you’re really clutching at straws now.

Her:      All right, fine, I give in. You are too blooming good at winning these arguments.

Me:      I’m just lucky you’re as pathetic as you are, really. You go down without too much of a fight. Sure, you’ve had me crying and asking God stupid questions, but you forget that crying and asking God stupid questions is something I tend to do fairly regularly and without a great deal of prompting. It’s all just part of showing my working.

Her:      Wow. I matter so little to you.

Me:      It’s true, you do. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that everything you do is pointless, and the world would be a better place if you were to vanish from it. But funnily enough, God has brought glory for himself even out of our little trip to the void, in my being moved to doxologise even if in nothing else. How’s that for mind-blowingly brilliant?

Footnotes

¹ I’ve decided that the word ‘hell’ is confusing and am therefore trying not to use it. I’ll probably blog about that issue at some point, but for the moment, suffice it to say that Gehenna refers to everlasting fiery post-death punishment to which those who don’t obey God are sentenced. Or feel free to form your own conclusion from how the term is used: https://www.stepbible.org/?q=version=ESV|version=SBLG|strong=G1067&options=VHNUG.

² Impostor syndrome is another thing I’m vaguely intending to blog about at some point, but again, for the moment, here’s the Wikipedia page to give you an introduction if you’re not familiar with the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome.

³ There are a whole lot of scriptural allusions in this post, but this is probably the most explicit, from Ephesians 2: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+2&version=ESVUK. I’ll leave you to hunt the rest down for yourself.