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Four Hell Words: Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, Tartaroo

A Plain-English Summary

The King James Bible translates four different Hebrew and Greek words as "hell," making them look like a single concept. They are not. This study examines each word in its own right -- where it comes from, how it is used across the whole Bible, and what it does and does not tell us about the fate of the wicked.

Sheol and Hades: The Realm of All the Dead

Sheol is the Hebrew word (Old Testament) and hades is its Greek equivalent (New Testament). The ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures (the Septuagint) translates sheol as hades in 58 out of roughly 65 occurrences, and Peter's sermon on the Day of Pentecost confirms the equivalence directly -- he quotes Psalm 16:10 ("thou wilt not leave my soul in hell") and substitutes hades for sheol without comment (Acts 2:27, 31). These two words are interchangeable; they refer to the same thing.

What that thing is matters greatly. Both righteous and wicked people go to sheol/hades. Jacob went there (Gen 37:35), David expected to go there (Ps 16:10), Christ's soul was there between his death and resurrection (Acts 2:27, 31), and the wicked also go there (Ps 9:17; Num 16:33). Sheol/hades is not a punishment venue for the wicked -- it is the common destination of all the dead.

The didactic passages of Scripture -- those that directly teach rather than paint poetic pictures -- describe sheol consistently and repeatedly:

  • "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave [sheol], whither thou goest." (Eccl 9:10)
  • "In death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave [sheol] who shall give thee thanks?" (Ps 6:5)
  • "The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence." (Ps 115:17)
  • "Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise thee?... Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" (Ps 88:10-12)
  • "A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness." (Job 10:21-22)

Six direct teaching passages from four different biblical authors (Solomon, David, Heman, Job) all describe sheol as a state of unconsciousness, silence, darkness, and no activity. Not one didactic passage describes sheol as a place of conscious suffering.

Two passages are sometimes cited as evidence for conscious activity in sheol -- Isaiah 14:9-10 (where the dead "speak") and Ezekiel 32:21 (warriors who "speak" in sheol). But Isaiah 14 is identified by the text itself as a taunt-poem (v. 4), a literary form that uses personification -- the same passage has trees rejoicing and sheol being "stirred." Ezekiel 32 is a funeral lament, and verse 27 describes the same figures lying with their swords under their heads (sleep/rest imagery). These are not didactic descriptions of sheol's nature. The consistent teaching of Scripture on this point is silence, unconsciousness, and the end of all activity.

Hades is also temporary. Scripture states plainly: "Death and hell [hades] delivered up the dead which were in them... and death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." (Rev 20:13-14). Hades is a holding state, ended by resurrection and judgment. It is also distinct from the lake of fire -- one is cast into the other; they are not the same place.

Gehenna: Eschatological Destruction

Gehenna is a different word entirely, used 12 times in the New Testament (11 times by Jesus, once by James). It comes from the Hebrew ge-Hinnom, the Valley of the son of Hinnom -- a real valley southwest of Jerusalem (Josh 15:8; 18:16).

The Old Testament history of that valley is significant. It was a site of child sacrifice to the god Molech (2 Ki 23:10; Jer 7:31). Jeremiah then cursed it, renaming it "the valley of slaughter" and prophesying that it would become a mass burial site -- they would "bury in Tophet, till there be no place" (Jer 7:32; 19:6). The valley's associations are death, slaughter, and corpse disposal.

When Jesus uses gehenna, he uses the vocabulary of destruction, not torment:

  • "Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell [gehenna]." (Matt 10:28)
  • "It is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell [gehenna]." (Matt 5:29-30)
  • "Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell [gehenna]." (Luke 12:5)

The Greek word in these passages is apollumi -- to destroy, to perish. Jesus does not say "torment both soul and body." He says "destroy." And in Luke 12:5, the sequence is notable: God kills first, then casts into gehenna. The alternative Jesus consistently presents is not "life vs. torment" but "life vs. gehenna" -- "it is better for thee to enter into life" (Matt 18:9; Mark 9:43, 45, 47).

In Mark 9:43-48, Jesus quotes Isaiah 66:24: "Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." The passage Jesus is quoting from reads: "They shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched." (Isa 66:24). The Hebrew word translated "carcases" (peger) means dead bodies, corpses -- the same word used for dead bodies in Lev 26:30, Isa 14:19, Jer 33:5, and Nah 3:3. The worm and the fire in Isaiah 66:24 act on the dead, not on the living. Jesus chose this passage as his gehenna imagery. "Unquenchable fire" in the Old Testament refers to fire that cannot be put out before it finishes its work (cf. Jer 17:27; 2 Ki 22:17) -- it does not mean fire that continues indefinitely.

Across all 12 gehenna passages in the New Testament, the vocabulary of torment (basanizo, basanismos, kolasis) is never applied to human beings. The consistent vocabulary is destruction.

Tartaroo: For Angels Only

Tartaroo appears exactly once in the New Testament, as a verb: "God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell [tartaroo], and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment." (2 Pet 2:4). Jude 1:6 confirms the same: "the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day."

Tartaroo is applied only to fallen angels. It describes a temporary imprisonment before final judgment -- not a final destination. It says nothing about the fate of human beings.

The Lake of Fire and What Scripture Calls It

Revelation 20 describes the devil, the beast, and the false prophet being "tormented day and night for ever and ever" in the lake of fire (Rev 20:10). When human beings are cast into the same lake of fire (Rev 20:15; 21:8), the text does not use the word "torment." It uses "the second death." Death vocabulary, not torment vocabulary.

The Translation Problem

The KJV translates sheol as "grave" 31 times and "hell" 27 times -- the same Hebrew word, in different passages, rendered differently with no consistent rule. It translates hades 10 times as "hell" and once as "grave." It translates gehenna and tartaroo as "hell" as well. An English reader who encounters "hell" 54 times in the KJV has no way to know that four different words with four different meanings -- different subjects, different timeframes, different associations -- all lie behind that one English word.

What the Bible Says and What It Does Not Say

Scripture clearly states:

  1. Sheol and hades are the same concept -- the common destination of all the dead, righteous and wicked alike.
  2. Sheol/hades is characterized in direct teaching passages by unconsciousness, silence, darkness, and no activity.
  3. Hades is temporary; it gives up the dead at resurrection and is itself destroyed.
  4. Hades and the lake of fire are distinct places -- one is cast into the other.
  5. Jesus' vocabulary for gehenna is "destroy" (apollumi), not "torment."
  6. The OT source of Jesus' worm-and-fire imagery (Isa 66:24) describes these things acting on corpses, not living beings.
  7. Tartaroo is used once, for angels only, describing temporary holding before judgment.

Scripture does not state:

  1. That sheol or hades is a place of torment -- no didactic passage says this, and the one parable that depicts conscious suffering in hades (Luke 16:23) is a parable.
  2. That gehenna is a place of eternal conscious torment -- the vocabulary is destruction, the source text describes corpses, and no gehenna passage applies torment language to human beings.
  3. That the torment of the devil, beast, and false prophet in Revelation 20:10 is the same fate as ordinary human beings -- when humans enter the lake of fire, the text calls it "the second death."
  4. That all four "hell" words describe one unified concept -- they have different meanings, different subjects, and different timeframes. The appearance of a single concept is an artifact of the English translation, not a feature of the original languages.

Conclusion

None of the four words the KJV translates as "hell" inherently means "eternal conscious torment." Sheol and hades refer to the general state of death -- the destination of all the dead, described in teaching passages as unconscious and silent, and temporary pending resurrection. Gehenna refers to eschatological destruction, with Jesus consistently using "destroy" and "perish" language, drawing on an Old Testament source that describes dead bodies consumed by worm and fire. Tartaroo applies only to fallen angels awaiting judgment and says nothing about human fate.

The case for eternal torment in these four words cannot be built from the words themselves. It would require reading a parable as a literal geography lesson, reading destruction vocabulary as torment vocabulary, reading a text about corpses as a text about living conscious beings, and reading four distinct words as a single unified concept -- a unity that exists only in the English translation and not in the original.

This is a plain-English summary of study etc-05. The full technical study with complete verse analysis is available in CONCLUSION.md.

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