The Christian Standard Bible uses the English word “hell,” in one form or another, thirteen times.¹Matthew 5:22, 29–30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5; James 3:6; 2 Peter 2:4. With a single exception,²Second Peter 2:4, where the Greek term is Tartarus. the Greek word translated “hell” is gehenna. The ESV opts in one place (Matthew 16:18) to translate the Greek word Hades as “hell,” where it always otherwise transliterates it as “Hades.” The NKJV adds a number of references to “hell” in the Old Testament.³Deuteronomy 32:22; Psalms 9:17; 55:15; 139:8; Proverbs 5:5; 7:27; 9:18; 15:11, 24; 23:14; 27:20; Isaiah 14:9; Ezekiel 31:15–17; 32:21, 27; Amos 9:2; Habakkuk 2:5. In each instance, the Hebrew word is Sheol. To understand what the Bible teaches about hell, it will be helpful to survey these terms.

Sheol

Baker’s Dictionary of Theology says that “Sheol is uniformly depicted in the OT as the eternal, amoral abode of both righteous and unrighteous alike.”⁴Edward Fudge,The Fire that Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2011 [3rd edition]), 44. The Reader’s Digest ABC’s of the Bible concurs: “The Hebrew word Sheol described the region below the earth to which all humanity descended at death…. Sheol was not a place of punishment, for both the righteous and the wicked ended there.”⁵Reader’s Digest, ABC’s of the Bible: Intriguing Questions and Answers about the Greatest Book Ever Written (Pleasantville: The Reader’s Digest Association, 1991), 139.

A survey of the Old Testament bears this out. More than one Old Testament saint expected to end up in Sheol. Jacob anticipated Sheol at death (Genesis 37:35; 42:38; 44:29, 31), as did Job (14:13). David expected God to “ransom” his “soul from the power of Sheol” (Psalm 49:15), which implies that he intended to go there when he died. Even Messiah would find himself in Sheol (Psalm 16:10; cf. Acts 2:24–31). Fudge concludes, “There is simply no basis for making Sheol an exclusive place of punishment for the wicked.”⁶Fudge, The Fire that Consumes, 44. This means that “hell” is not the best translation for Sheol, even when the context is one in which punishment is implied.

As the abode of the dead, Sheol is portrayed as “a land of darkness and gloom … a land of blackness like the deepest darkness, gloomy and chaotic, where even the light is like the darkness” (Job 10:21–22). Heman the Ezrahite spoke of it as “the darkness” and “the land of oblivion” (Psalm 88:12). This leads Robert Martin-Achard to speak of Sheol as “a metaphorical expression of non-being.”⁷Robert Martin-Achard, From death to life: A study of the development of the doctrine of the Resurrection in the Old Testament (New York: Oliver & Boyd, 1960), 17. While we should not think of Sheol as the literal grave where a person is buried, its use in the Old Testament is one in which it is the place to which the dead go. Froom suggests “gravedom” as an alternate translation.⁸Froom,The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, https://goo.gl/rQOCVA, retrieved 19 October 2016.

In the Old Testament, there is hope of release from Sheol for the righteous, but there is no evidence that the wicked might anticipate release.

Hades

The Greek concept of Hades is roughly equivalent to the Hebrew understanding of Sheol. It is certainly distinct from gehenna, as is recognized by the CSB and most modern English translations of the Bible. As noted, the ESV in one instance (Matthew 16:18) translates Hades as “hell,” but for the most part it simply transliterates the word into English. The NKJV follows the same convention.

The parallel between Sheol and Hades can be clearly seen in Acts 2:27, where, quoting Psalm 16:10, Luke uses Hades in the place of David’s Sheol. Like Sheol, Hades is not a place of punishment for the wicked, but the universal destiny of humankind at death.

Tartarus

There is one place in the New Testament that employs a very Greek, rather than Jewish, concept of the destiny of the dead. Second Peter 2:4 says that “God didn’t spare the angels who sinned but cast them into hell and delivered them in chains of utter darkness to be kept for judgment.” Here, the word translated “hell” is the Greek word Tartarus.⁹ The Holman Christian Standard Bible transliterates the word Tartarus, but other mainstream English translations all use the word “hell.” The translators of the CSB, having chosen to transliterate it in the HCSB, opted, for whatever reason, to revert to “hell” in the CSB.

Tartarus will be familiar to readers of classical Greek mythology. In the Odyssey, Tartarus was the place where the Titans were chained for endless punishment. Fudge observes that Homer and Plato both use Tartarus and Hades interchangeably.¹⁰Fudge, The Fire that Consumes, 225.

Even if Tartarus is not the same as Hades, it does not help to determine the final destiny of the wicked. As far as the biblical evidence suggests, Tartarus, if it is not the same as Hades, is the abode of fallen angels, not humans, and only “until the judgment.”

Gehenna

Depending on which translation you read, Sheol, Hades and Tartarus may or may not be translated as “hell.” The one word that is universally translated “hell” in English Bibles is the Greek word Gehenna.With a single exception (James 3:6), Gehenna is always spoken of by Jesus.

It is often claimed that Gehenna was the name given to a city dump just outside Jerusalem, where fire perpetually burned the material cast into it. There is no evidence that this was the case, as even traditionalists recognize.¹¹Denny Burk, Four Views on Hell: Second Edition (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), 22. Burk writes, “In spite of a popular and long-running misunderstanding, there is no evidence that the Valley of Hinnom was ever used as a garbage dump. Hinnom was not infamous as a flaming heap of garbage.”

The name Gehenna means “the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom.” The valley is given this name as early as Joshua 15:8 (cf. 18:16). It was later the site where the idolatrous people of God performed human sacrifices to false gods (2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:31). This abomination earned the valley the name “Topheth,” meaning “place of fire” (2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:31–32; 19:6). It is thought that Topheth was the place that God had prepared as the “burning place” for the slain Assyrians in the days of Hezekiah (Isaiah 30:31–33; 37:36). In any case, Jeremiah said that, during Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Jerusalem, Gehenna would be called the Valley of Slaughter, where Israelite corpses would be heaped following God’s judgment (Jeremiah 7:31–32; 19:2–13). Josephus says that the slain bodies of Jews were heaped in this same valley following the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Isaiah pictured it as a place of burning corpses in 66:15–16, 24.

It is this image that Jesus used to speak of hell. Since there is no evidence that the valley was used as an ever-burning garbage heap in New Testament days, we must ask what Jesus’ hearers would have understood when they heard him speaking of Gehenna. If we take the Old Testament references to the place seriously, we must assume that they would have thought of slaughter—of death. Conscious torment would not have entered their minds, but death very much would have.