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The Four "Hell" Words of the Bible

The King James Version translates four different Hebrew and Greek words as "hell." But these four words mean very different things. Understanding the distinctions changes how we read the Bible's teaching on the fate of the wicked.

Sheol and Hades — The Grave

Sheol (Hebrew) and Hades (Greek) are the same concept in two languages. We know this because the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) translates sheol as hades 58 times, and the New Testament confirms it — Peter quotes Psalm 16:10 using hades where the Hebrew has sheol (Acts 2:27).

Sheol/hades is simply the realm of the dead. Everyone goes there — righteous and wicked alike. Jacob expected to go there (Genesis 37:35). Christ went there (Acts 2:27). The wicked go there too (Psalm 9:17).

What is sheol like? Every teaching passage that describes it says the same thing: unconsciousness.

  • "The dead know not any thing" (Ecclesiastes 9:5)
  • "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom" in sheol (Ecclesiastes 9:10)
  • "In death there is no remembrance of thee" (Psalm 6:5)
  • "The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence" (Psalm 115:17)

Sheol/hades is also temporary. Revelation 20:13-14 says death and hades deliver up their dead and are then cast into the lake of fire. Hades itself is destroyed.

Gehenna — Final Destruction

Gehenna comes from the Valley of Hinnom, a real place south of Jerusalem. In the Old Testament, it was the site of child sacrifice to Molech. The prophet Jeremiah cursed it and renamed it the "Valley of Slaughter" — a place of death and burial (Jeremiah 7:31-32).

Jesus uses gehenna 11 of the 12 times it appears in the New Testament. The critical detail is the vocabulary he chooses. In Matthew 10:28, Jesus says God can "destroy" (Greek: apollymi) both soul and body in gehenna. In Luke 12:5, God kills first, then casts into gehenna. When Jesus quotes Isaiah 66:24 about the "worm" and "fire" in Mark 9:48, the original passage describes corpses — dead bodies, not living, suffering people.

The word for "torment" (Greek: basanizo) never appears in a single gehenna passage. Jesus consistently uses destruction language, not torment language.

Tartaroo — Angels Only

Tartaroo appears exactly once in the entire Bible (2 Peter 2:4). It describes fallen angels cast into a prison of darkness, "reserved unto judgment." It is a temporary holding place for angels. It says nothing about the fate of human beings.

The Lake of Fire — The Second Death

The lake of fire is distinct from all four words above. Hades is cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14), so they cannot be the same thing. The Bible identifies the lake of fire as "the second death" (Revelation 20:14; 21:8).

When the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are cast into the lake of fire, the text uses the word "torment" (Revelation 20:10). But when human beings are cast in, the text switches to "death" (Revelation 20:14-15; 21:8). This vocabulary shift appears deliberate.

The Bottom Line

No single passage, in any of these four words, states in plain teaching language that human beings will be consciously tormented forever. The Bible's own vocabulary for the fate of the wicked is consistent: destroy, perish, death (Matthew 10:28; John 3:16; Romans 6:23). The concept of eternal conscious torment requires combining elements from different words, different genres, and different subjects — and overriding the destruction vocabulary that the biblical authors actually used.

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." — Romans 6:23