HELL
The one word that stands in thousands of minds as the synonym of endless torment, is the word Hell. The popular belief is that in the Bible a place or condition of endless woe is denoted by this word. Does the Bible teach the ideas commonly held among Christians concerning Hell? Does the Hell of the Bible denote a place of torment, or a condition of suffering without end, to begin at death? What is
The Hell of The Bible?
Manifestly the only way to arrive at the correct answer is to trace the words translated Hell from the beginning to the end of the Bible, and by their connections ascertain exactly what the divine Word teaches on this important subject. It seems incredible that a wise and benevolent God should have created or permitted any kind of an endless hell in his universe. Has he done so? Do the Scripture teachings concerning Hell stain the character of God and clothe human destiny with an impenetrable pall of darkness, by revealing a state or place of endless torment? Or do they explain its existence, and relieve God’s character, and dispel all the darkness of misbelief, by teaching that it exists as a means to a good end? It is our belief that the Bible hell is not the heathen, nor the “orthodox” hell, but is one that is doomed to pass away when its purpose shall have been accomplished, in the reformation of those for whose welfare a good God ordained it.
The English word Hell grew into its present meaning. Horne Tooke says that hell, heel, hill, hole, whole, hall, hull, hole, halt and hold are all from the same root. “Hell, any place, or some place covered over.” The word was first applied to the grave by our German and English ancestors, and as superstition came to regard the grave as an entrance to a world of torment, Hell at length became the word used to denote an imaginary realm of fiery woe.
In the Bible four words are translated Hell: the Hebrew word Sheol, in the original Old Testament; its equivalent, the Greek word Hadees, in the Septuagint; and in the New Testament, Hadees, Gehenna and Tartarus.
Sheol and Hadees.
The Hebrew Old Testament, some three hundred years before the Christian era, was translated into Greek, and of the sixty-four instances where Sheol occurs in the Hebrew, it is rendered Hadees in the Greek sixty times, so that either word is the equivalent of the other. But neither of these words is ever used in the Bible to signify punishment after death, nor should the word Hell ever be used as the rendering of Sheol or Hadees, for neither word denotes post-mortem torment. According to the Old Testament the words Sheol—Hadees primarily signify only the place, or state of the dead. In every instance in the Old Testament, the word grave might be substituted for the term hell, either in a literal or figurative sense. The word, being a proper name, should always have been left untranslated. Had it been carried into the Greek Septuagint, and thence into the English untranslated Sheol, a world of misconception would have been avoided, for when it is rendered Hadees, all the materialism of the heathen mythology is suggested to the mind, and when rendered Hell, the medieval monstrosities of a Christianity corrupted by heathen adulterations is suggested. Sheol primarily, literally, the grave or death; secondarily and figuratively the political, social, moral or spiritual consequences of wickedness in the present world, is the precise force of the term, wherever found.
Sheol occurs exactly sixty-four times, and is translated hell thirty-two times, pit three times, and grave twenty-nine times. Dr. George Campbell, a celebrated critic, says that Sheol signifies the state of the dead in general, without regard to the goodness or badness of the persons, their happiness or misery.”
Only Five Old Testament Texts Are Claimed.
Professor Stuart (orthodox Congregational) only dares claim five out of the sixty-four passages as affording any proof that the word means a place of punishment after death. “These,” he says, “may designate the future world of woe,” though he adds: “I concede, to interpret all the texts which exhibit Sheol as having reference merely to the grave is possible; and therefore it is possible to interpret ” them “as designating a death violent and premature, inflicted by the hand of Heaven.”
An examination shows that these five passages agree with the rest in meaning consequences of temporal duration.
Ps. 9:17 “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” The wicked here are “the heathen,” “mine enemies,” i.e., they are not individuals but “the nations that forget God.” They will be turned into Sheol, death, die as nations, for their wickedness. Individual sinners are not meant.
Dr. Allen, of Bowdoin College, says of this text: “The punishment expressed in this passage is cutting off from life, destroying from the earth by special judgment, and removing to the invisible state of the dead. The Hebrew term translated hell in the text does not seem to mean, with any certainty, anything more than the state of the dead in their deep abode.” Professor Stuart: “It means a violent and premature death inflicted by the hand of heaven.”
Job 21:13: “They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave.” It would seem that no one could claim this text as a threat of after-death punishment. It is a mere declaration of sudden death. This is evident when we remember that it was uttered to a people who, according to all authorities, believed in no punishment after death.
Prov. 5:5: “Her feet go down to the grave; her steps take hold on hell.” This language, making death and Sheol parallel, announces that the strange woman walks in paths of swift and inevitable sorrow and death. And so does Prov. 9:18: “But he knoweth not that the dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell.” Sheol is here used as a figure or emblem of the horrible condition and fate of those who follow the ways of sin. They are dead while they live. They are already in Sheol or moral death.
Prov. 23:13-14: “Withhold not correction from the child; for if thou beatest him with the rod he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.” Sheol is here used either as the grave to denote the death that rebellious children experience early, or, it may mean that moral condition of the soul which Sheol, the realm of death signifies. But in neither case is it supposable that it means a place or condition of after-death punishment, in which, as all scholars agree, Solomon was not a believer.
That the Hebrew Sheol never designates a place of punishment in a future state of existence, we have the testimony of the most learned of scholars, even among the so-called orthodox. We quote the declarations of a few:
Rev. Dr. Whitby: “Sheol throughout the Old Testament, signifies not a place of punishment for the souls of bad men only, but the grave, or place of death.”: Dr. Chapman: “Sheol, in itself considered has no connection with future punishment.” Dr. Allen: “The term Sheol itself, does not seem to mean anything more than the state of the dead in their dark abode.” Edward Leigh, who, says Horne’s “Introduction,” was one of the most learned men of his time, and his work a valuable help to the understanding of the original language of the Scriptures,” observes that “all learned Hebrew scholars know the Hebrews have no proper word for hell.” Prof. Stuart: “There can be no reasonable doubt that Sheol does most generally mean the underworld, the grave or sepulchre, the world of the dead. It is very clear that there are many passages where no other meaning can reasonably be assigned to it. Accordingly, our English translators have rendered the word Sheol grave, in thirty instances out of the whole sixty-four instances in which it occurs.” Dr. Thayer in his “Theology of Universalism” quotes as follows: “Dr. Whitby says that Hell ‘throughout the Old Testament signifies the grave, or the place of death.'” Archbishop Whately: “As for a future state of retribution in another world, Moses said nothing to the Israelites about that.” Paley declares that the Mosaic dispensation “dealt in temporal rewards and punishments. The blessings consisted altogether of worldly benefits, and the curses of worldly punishments.” Prof. Mayer says, that “the rewards promised the righteous, and the punishments threatened the wicked, are such only as are awarded in the present state of being.” To the same important fact testify Prof. Wines, Bush, Arnauld, and other distinguished theologians. All Hebrew scholars agree that the Hebrews had no word proper for hell as a place of punishment.
If we consult the passages in which the word is rendered grave, and substitute the original word Sheol, it will be seen that the meaning is far better preserved:
Gen. 37:34-35: “and Jacob rent his clothes, and put sack-cloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him: but he refused to be comforted: and he said, For I will go down into the grave (Sheol—Hadees) unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.”
It was not into the literal grave, but into the realm of the dead, where Jacob supposed his son to have gone into which he wished to go.
Gen. 42:38 and 44:31, are to the same purport: “And he said, my son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he is left alone: and if mischief befall him by the way in which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave.” “It shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, that he will die; and thy servants shall bring down the gray hears of thy servant our father with sorrow to the grave.”
The literal grave may be meant here, but had Sheol remained untranslated, any reader would have understood the sense intended. The remaining passages where the word is rendered grave are 1 Sam. 2:6-13; 1 Kings 2:6-9; Job 7:9, 14:13; Numb. 16:33; Job 17:13-14; 21:13; 33:21-22; Ps. 6:5; 30:3; 88:3; Prov 1:12; Ps. 20:3, 140:7; Cant. 8:6; Eccl. 9:10; Isa. 38:19; Ps. 31:17, 89:48; Prov. 30:16; Isa. 14:11, 38:18. Of the latter passage, “For the grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth,” Prof. Stuart says, “I regard the simple meaning of this controverted place (and of others like it, e.g. Ps. 6:5; 30:9; 88:11; 115:7; Comp. 118:17) as being this namely, ‘The dead can no more give thanks to God nor celebrate his praise among the living on earth, etc.'” And he properly observes: “It is to be regretted that our English translation has given occasion to the remark that those who made it have intended to impose on their readers, in any case a sense different from that of the original Hebrew. The inconstancy with which they have rendered the word Sheol, even in cases of the same nature, must obviously afford some apparent ground for this objection against their version of it.
Why the word should have been rendered grave and pit in the foregoing passages, and hell in the rest, cannot be explained. Why it is not the grave, or hell or better still, Sheol or Hadees in all cases, no one can explain, for there is no valid reason.
Sheol—Hadees Rendered Hell.
The first time the word is found translated Hell in the Bible is in Deut. 32:22-26:
“For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest Hell (Sheol-Hadees) and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction; I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without and terror within shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs. I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men.” Thus,
The Lowest Hell Is On Earth,
And its torments consist in such pains as are only possible in this life: “hunger,” “the teeth of beasts,” “the poison of serpents,” “the sword,” etc.; and not only are real offenders to suffer them, but even “sucklings” are to be involved in the calamity. If endless torment is denoted by the word, infant damnation follows, for into this hell “the suckling and the man of gray hairs” go, side by side. The scattering and destruction of the Israelites, in this world, is the meaning of “fire in the lowest hell,” in this text, as any reader can see by carefully consulting the chapter containing this first instance of the use of the word. Similar to this are the teachings wherever the word occurs in the Old Testament: “For thou wilt not leave my soul in Hell nor suffer thine holy one to see corruption.” Ps. 16:10. Here “corruption” is placed parallel with Sheol, or death.
“Though they dig into Hell, thence shall my hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down.” Amos 9:2. “If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in Hell, behold, thou art there. Ps. 139:8. “It is high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than Hell; what canst thou know.” Job 11:8.
Important Facts.
The following are only a few of the reasons why Sheol-Hadees in the Old Testament denotes a condition of temporal punishment:
1. Hell is in this world. The Lowest Hell is on earth. Deut. 32:22,24,25. “For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest Hell (Sheol—Hadees) and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.” See Jonah 2:2; Rev. 6:8.
2. Hence David, after having been in Hell, was delivered from it. Ps. 30:3; 2 Sam. 20:5,6. “O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave; thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. When the waves of death compassed me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid. The sorrows of Hell (Sheol—Hadees) compassed me about; the snares of death prevented me,” so that there is escape from Hell. Ps. 18:5,6; 116:3; 86:12,13; Rev. 20:13; Ps. 17:5, 30:3.
3. Jonah was in the fish only seventy hours, and declared he was in hell forever. He escaped from Hell. Jon. 2:2, 6: “Out of the belly of Hell (Sheol—Hadees) cried I, and thou heardest my voice, earth with her bars was about me forever.” Even an eternal Hell lasted but three days.
4. It is a place where God is, and, therefore, must be an instrumentality of mercy. Ps. 139:8: “If I make my bed in Hell (Sheol—Hadees) behold thou art there.”
5. Men having gone into it are redeemed from it. 1 Sam. 2:6: “The Lord killeth and maketh alive; he bringeth down to the grave (Sheol—Hadees) and bringeth up.”
6. Sheol is precisely the same word as Saul. If it meant Hell would any Hebrew parent have called his child Sheol? Think of calling a boy Hell!
7. Nowhere in the Old Testament does the word Sheol, or its Greek equivalent, Hadees, ever denote a place or condition of suffering after death; it either means literal death or temporal calamity. This is clear as we consult the usage.
8. Jacob wished to go there. Gen. 38:35: “I will go down into the grave (Sheol—Hadees) unto my son mourning.”
9. If the word means a place of endless punishment, then David was a monster. Ps. lv:15: “Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into Sheol—Hadees.”
10. Job desired to go there; 14:13: “Oh that thou wouldst hide me in Sheol—Hadees.”
11. Hezekiah expected to go there. Isa. 38:10: “I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of Sheol—Hadees.”
12. Korah, Dathan and Abiram (Numbers 16:30-33) not only went there, “but their houses, and goods, and all that they owned,” “and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods. They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into Sheol—Hadees, and the earth closed upon them; and they perished from among the congregation.”
13. It is in the dust. Job 17:19: “They shall go down to the bars of Sheol—Hadees, when our rest together is in the dust.”
14. It has a mouth, is in fact the grave. See Ps. 141:7: “Our bones are scattered at Sheol’s—Hadees’ mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth.”
15. The overthrow of the King of Babylon is called Hell. Isa. 14:9-15, 22-23: “Hell (Sheol—Hadees) from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from the thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave and the noise of thy viols; the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. For I will rise up against them saith the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, saith the Lord. I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts.” All this imagery demonstrates temporal calamity, a national overthrow as the signification of the word Hell.
16. The captivity of the Jews is called Hell. Isa. 5:13-14: “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge; and their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore Sheol—Hadees hath enlarged herself and opened her mouth without measure; and their glory, and their multitude, and their pomp, and he that rejoiceth, shall descend into it.”
17. Temporal overthrow is called Hell. Ps. 49:14: “Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them; and the upright shall have dominion over them in the morning; and their beauty shall consume in Sheol—Hadees, from their dwelling.” Ezek. 32:26-27: And they shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the uncircumcised, which are gone down to Sheol—Hadees, with their weapons of war, and they have laid their swords under their heads.” Men are in hell with their swords under their heads. This cannot mean a state of conscious suffering.
18. All men are to go there. No one can escape the Bible Hell, (Sheol—Hadees) Ps. 89:48.
19. There is no kind of work there. Eccl. 9:10.
20. Christ’s soul was in Hell (Sheol—Hadees) Acts 2:27-28.
21. No one in the Bible ever speaks of Hell (Sheol—Hadees) as a place of punishment after death.
22. It is a way of escape from punishment. Amos 7:2.
23. The inhabitants of Hell (Sheol—Hadees) are eaten of worms, vanish and are consumed away. Job. 7:9-24. Ps. 49:14.
24. Hell (Sheol—Hadees) is a place of rest. Job 17:6.
25. It is a realm of unconsciousness. Ps. 6:5. Isa. 38:18. Eccl. 9:10.
26. All men will be delivered from this Hell (Sheol Hadees). Hos. 13:17.
27. This Hell (Sheol—Hadees) is to be destroyed. Hos 13:14: “Oh grave I will be thy destruction.” 1 Cor. 15:55: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” Rev. 20:13-14: “And death and Hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and death and Hell were cast into the lake of fire.”
The Old Testament Repudiates The Heathen Doctrine.
At the time these declarations were made, and universally accepted by the Hebrews, the surrounding nations all held entirely different doctrines. Egypt, Greece, Rome, taught that after death there is a fate in store for the wicked that exactly resembles that taught by so-called orthodox Christians. But the entire Old Testament is utterly silent on the subject, teaching nothing of the sort, as the sixty-four passages we have quoted, the only texts containing the word Hell, show, and as the critics of all churches admit. And yet “Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22) who believed in a world of torment after death. If Moses knew all about this Egyptian doctrine, and did not teach it to his followers, what is the unavoidable inference?
Dr. Strong says, that not only Moses, but “every Israelite who came out of Egypt, must have been fully acquainted with the universally recognized doctrine of future rewards and punishments.” And yet Moses is utterly silent on the subject.
Dr. Thayer remarks: “Is it possible to imagine a more conclusive proof against the divine origin of the doctrine? If he had believed it to be of God, if he had believed in endless torments as the doom of the wicked after death, and had received this as a revelation from heaven, could he have passed it over in silence? He knew whence the monstrous dogma came, and he had seen enough of Egypt already, and would have no more of her cruel superstitions; and so he casts this out, with her abominable idolatries, as false and unclean things.”
In addition to the passages already quoted, the word Sheol—Hadees is rendered Hell in the following texts: Job. 11:7-8; Ps. 139:8; 18:5; 86:13; 116:3; Prov. 15:11; 23:14; 27:20; Isa. 28:15-18; 57:9; Ezek. 31:16-17; Jon 2:2; Amos 9:2; Hab. 2:5.
We believe we have recorded every passage in which the word occurs. Suppose the original word stood, and we read Sheol or Hadees in all the passages, instead of Hell, would any unbiased reader regard it as conveying the idea of a place or state of endless torment after death, such as the English word Hell is also generally supposed to denote? Such a doctrine was never held by the ancient Jews, until after the Babylonish captivity, during which they acquired it of the heathen. All scholars agree that Moses never taught it, and that it is not contained in the Old Testament.
Thus not one of the sixty-four passages containing the only word rendered Hell in the entire Old Testament, teaches any such thought as is commonly supposed to be contained in that
“Orthodox” And Heathen Views Identical.
Now do popular Christian descriptions resemble anything in the Old Testament? Do they not exactly copy the heathen description? Whence came these ideas? They are not found in the Old Testament. And yet the world was full of them when Christ came.
Jeremy Taylor, of the English Church, says: “The bodies of the damned shall be crowded together in hell, like grapes in a wine-press, which press one another till they burst; every distinct sense and organ shall be assailed with its own appropriate and most exquisite sufferings.”
Calvin describes it: “Forever harrassed with a dreadful tempest, they shall feel themselves torn asunder by an angry God, and transfixed and penetrated by mortal stings, terrified by the thunderbolts of God, and broken by the weight of his hand, so that to sink into any gulf would be more tolerable than to stand for a moment in these terrors.”
Johnathan Edwards said: “The world will probably be converted into a great lake or liquid globe of fire, in which the wicked shall be overwhelmed, which will always be in tempest, in which they shall be tossed to and fro, having no rest day or night, vast waves and billows of fire continually rolling over their heads, of which they shall forever be full of a quick sense within and without; their heads, their eyes, their tongues, their hands, their feet, their loins, and their vitals, shall forever be full of a glowing, melting fire, fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements; and, also, they shall eternally be full of the most quick and lively sense to feel the torments; not for one minute, not for one day, not for one age, not for two ages, not for a hundred ages, nor for ten thousand millions of ages, one after another, but forever and ever, without any end at all, and never to be delivered.”
And Spurgeon uses this language even in our own days: “When thou diest, thy soul will be tormented alone: that will be a hell for it; but at the day of judgment thy body will join thy soul, and then thou will have twin hells, thy soul sweating drops of blood, and thy body suffused with agony. In fire exactly like that which we have on earth thy body will lie, asbestos-like, forever unconsumed, all thy veins roads for the feet of pain to travel on, every nerve a string on which the devil shall forever play his diabolical tune of Hell’s unutterable Lament.”
These horrible ideas were not obtained from the Old Testament, and yet they were fully believed by Jew and Pagan when Christ came. Whence came these views? If the New Testament teaches them, then Christ must have borrowed them from uninspired heathen. What does the New Testament teach concerning Hell?
The Jews of the time of Christ had abandoned the Old Testament teachings concerning retribution. They had made void the word of God by their traditions. How did they come to change their views?
Convincing Testimonies.
Whitby on Acts 2:27, says: “That Sheol throughout the Old Testament, and Hadees in the Septuagint, answering to it, signify not the place of punishment, or of the souls of bad men only, but the grave only, or the place of death, appears, 1st. From the root of it, Sheol, which signifies to ask, to crave and require. 2d. Because it is the place to which the good as well as the bad go, etc.”
We repeat that during all the time that generations following generations of Jews were entertaining the ideas taught in the sixty-four passages, the surrounding heathen believed in a future, endless torment. Their literature is full of it. Says Good in his “Book of Nature”:
“It was believed in most countries, that this Hell Hadees, or invisible world, is divided into two very distinct and opposite regions, by a broad and impassable gulf; that the one is a seat of happiness, a paradise, or Elysium, and the other a seat of misery, a Gehenna, or Tartarus; and that there is a supreme magistrate and an impartial tribunal belonging to the infernal shades, before which the ghosts must appear, and by which they are sentenced to the one or the other, according to the deeds done in the body. Egypt is said to have been the inventress of this important and valuable part of the tradition; and undoubtedly it is to be found in the earliest records of Egyptian history.” (It should be observed that Gehenna was not used before Christ, or until 150 A.D. to denote a place of future punishment.)
Dr. Anthon says, “As regards the analogy between the term Hadees and our English word Hell, it may be remarked that the latter, in its primitive signification, perfectly corresponded to the former. For, at first, it denoted only what was secret or concealed; and it is found moreover, with little variation of form, and precisely with the same meaning, in all the Teutonic dialects.”
The heathen sages admit that they invented this doctrine.
Strabo says: “The multitude are restrained from vice by the punishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, and by those terrors and threatenings which certain dreadful words and monstrous forms imprint upon their minds . . . . . For it is impossible to govern the crowd of women, and all the common rabble, by philosophical reasoning, and lead them to piety, holiness and virtue—but this must be done by superstition, or the fear of the gods, by means of fables and wonders; for the thunder, the aegis, the trident, the torches (of the furies) the dragons, etc., are all fables, as is also all the ancient theology.” Geo. B. i.
Seneca says: “Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment-seat, etc., are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors.”
Dr. Thayer in his “Origin and History,” says” “The process is easily understood. About three hundred and thirty years before Christ, Alexander the Great had subjected to his rule the whole of Western Asia, including Judea, and also the Kingdom of Egypt. Soon after he founded Alexandria, which speedily became a great commercial metropolis, and drew into itself a large multitude of Jews, who were always eager to improve the opportunities of traffic and trade. A few years later, Ptolemy Soter took Jerusalem, and carried off one hundred thousand of them into Egypt. Here, of course, they were in daily contact with the Egyptians and Greeks, and gradually began to adopt their philosophical and religious opinions, or to modify their own in harmony with them.”
We must either reject these imported ideas, as heathen inventions, or we must admit that the heathen, centuries before Christ, discovered that of which Moses had no idea. In other words either uninspired men announced the future fate of sinners centuries before inspired men knew anything of it, or the heathen and “evangelical” descriptions of Hell are wholly false.
Jewish And Pagan Opinions.
At the time of Christ’s advent Jew and Pagan held Hades to be a place of torment after death, to endure forever.
“The prevalent and distinguishing opinion was, that the soul survived the body, that vicious souls would suffer everlasting imprisonment in Hades, and that the souls of the virtuous would both be happy there, and, in process of time, obtain the privilege of transmigrating into other bodies.” * * * (Campbell’s Four Gospels, Diss. 6, Pt. 2§19.) Of the Pharisees, Josephus says: “They also believe that souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that, under the earth, there will be rewards and punishments, according as they lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again.” (Antiquities, B. 18, Ch. 1, §3. Whiston’s Tr.)
[Editor’s note (2026): Let the reader be aware that in our day, the KJV is really the only Bible translation that uses “hell” for Sheol in the Old Testament. Virtually all modern editions simply transliterate the world from Hebrew and therefore keep it as Sheol.]
Hell In The New Testament.—Hadees.
The word Hades occurs but eleven times in the New Testament, and is translated Hell ten times, and grave once. The word is from a not, and eido, to see, and means concealed, invisible. It has exactly the same meaning as Sheol, literally the grave, or death, and figuratively destruction, downfall, calamity, or punishment in this world, with no intimation whatever of torment or punishment beyond the grave. Such is the meaning in every passage of the Old Testament containing the word Sheol or Hades, whether translated Hell, grave or pit. Such is the invariable meaning of Hadees in the New Testament.
Says the “Emphatic Diaglott”: “To translate Hades by the word Hell as it is done ten times out of eleven in the New Testament, is very improper, unless it has the Saxon meaning of helan, to cover, attached to it. The primitive signification of Hell, only denoting what was secret or concealed, perfectly corresponds with the Greek term Hades and its equivalent Sheol, but the theological definition given to it at the present day by no means expresses it.“
Meaning of Hadees.
The Greek Septuagint, which our Lord used when he read or quoted from the Old Testament, gives Hades as the exact equivalent of the Hebrew Sheol, and when the Savior, or his apostles, used the word, they must have meant the same as is meant in the Old Testament. When Hades is used in the New Testament we must understand it just as we do (Sheol or Hades) in the Old Testament.
Opinion of Scholars.
Dr. Campbell well says: * * “In my judgment, it ought never in Scripture to be rendered Hell, at least, in the sense wherein that word is now universally understood by Christians. In the Old Testament, the corresponding word is Sheol, which signifies the state of the dead in general without regard to the goodness or badness of the persons, their happiness or misery. In translating that word, the seventy have almost invariably used Hades. * * It is very plain, that neither in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, nor in the New, does the word Hades convey the meaning which the present English word Hell, in the Christian usage, always conveys to our minds.—Diss. vi., pp. 180-1.
Heathen Corruptions.
It must not be forgotten that contact with the heathen had corrupted the opinions of the Jews, at the time of our Savior, from the simplicity of Moses, and that by receiving the traditions and fables of paganism, they had made void the word of God. They had accepted Hadees as the best Greek word to convey the idea of Sheol, but without investing it at first with the heathen notions of the classic Hadees, as they afterwards did. What these ideas were, the classic authors inform us.
Gibbon says, (Milman’s Gibbon, Ch. xxi): “The Jews had acquired at Babylon a great number of Oriental notions, and their theological opinions had undergone great changes by this intercourse. We find in Ecclesiasticus, and the Wisdom of Solomon, and the later prophets, notions unknown to the Jews before the Babylonian captivity, which are manifestly derived from the Orientals. Thus God, represented under the image of light, and the principle of evil under that of darkness; the history of good and bad angels; paradise and Hell, etc., are doctrines of which the origin, or at least the positive determination can only be referred to the Oriental philosophy.”
Let us consult all the texts in which the heathen word Hades is employed.
Thrust Down To Hadees.
Matt. 11:23, and Luke 10:15: “And thou, Capernaum, which are exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to Hell.” And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven shall be thrust down to Hell.” Of course a city never went to a place of torment after death. The word is used here just as in Isa. 14, where Babylon is said to be brought down to Sheol or Hadees, to denote debasement, overthrow, a prediction fulfilled to the letter. Dr. Clarke’s interpretation is correct: “The word here means a state of the utmost woe, and ruin, and desolation, to which these impenitent cities should be reduced: for, in the wars between the Romans and the Jews, these cities were totally destroyed; so that no traces are now found of Bethsaida, Chorazin or Capernaum.”
That Hades is the kingdom of death, and not a place of torment, after death, is evident from the language of Acts 2:27: “Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption.” Verse 31: “His soul was not left in Hell, neither his flesh did see corruption,” that is his spirit did not remain in the state of the dead, until his body decayed. No one supposes that Jesus went to a realm of torment when he died. Jacob wished to go down to Hades to his son mourning, so Jesus went to Hades, the underworld, the grave. The Apostle’s creed conveys the same idea, when it speaks of Jesus as descending into Hell. He died, but his soul was not left in the realms of death, is the meaning.
The Gates of Hadees.
Matt. 16:18: “And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my church; and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” The word is here used as an emblem of destruction. “The gates of Hades” means the powers of destruction. It is the Savior’s manner of saying that his church cannot be destroyed.
Hadees Is On Earth.
Rev. 6:8: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. and power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” All the details of this description demonstrate that this Hell is on this earth, and not in the future world.
The word also occurs in Rev. 1:18 “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of Hell and of death.” To understand this passage literally, with the popular view of Hell added, would be to represent Jesus as the devil’s gate-keeper. If Hell is a realm of torment, and the devil is its king, and Jesus keeps the keys, what is he but the devil’s janitor, or turnkey? The idea is that Jesus defies death and the grave, evil, destruction, and all that is denoted either literally or figuratively by Hades, the under-world. Its gates open to him.
Canon Farrar in Excursus II, “Eternal Hope,” observes: “Hell has entirely changed its old harmless sense of the dim under-world; and that meaning, as it now does, to myriads of readers, a place of torment by material fire, into which all impenitent souls pass forever after death,—it conveys meanings which are not to be found in any word of the New or Old testament for which it is presented as an equivalent. In our Lord’s language Capernaum was to be thrust down, not ‘to Hell’ but to the silence and desolation of the grave (Hadees); the promise that ‘the gates of Hades’ should not prevail against the church is perhaps a distinct implication of her triumph even beyond death in the souls of men for whom he died; Dives uplifts his eyes not ‘in Hell’, but in the intermediate Hades where he rests till the resurrection to a judgment, in which signs are not wanting that his soul may have been meanwhile ennobled and purified.”
Hadees Destroyed.
1 Cor. 15:55: “O death, where is thy sing? O grave, where is thy victory?” This is parallel to Hos. 14:14, where the destruction of Hades is prophesied. Whatever Hadees means, it is not to endure forever. It is destined to be destroyed. It cannot be endless torment. That its inhabitants are to be delivered from its dominion, is seen from Rev. 20:13, “And Death and Hell delivered up the dead that were in them.” This harmonizes with the declaration of David, that he had been delivered from it already. (Ps. 30:3. 2 Sam. 22:5,6) It does not retain its victims always, and therefore whatever it may mean, it does not denote endless imprisonment. Hence the next verse reads, “And death and Hell were cast into the lake of fire.” Can a more striking description of utter destruction be given than this? Of course the language is all figurative, and not literal. Hell here denotes evil and its consequences. It is in this world, it opposes truth and human happiness, but it is to meet with a destruction so complete that only a sea of fire can indicate the character of its destruction.
The Rich Man And Lazarus.
The only remaining occurrence of the word Hades is in the parable of Dives and Lazarus:
“And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom; the rich man also died, and was buried; and in Hell (Hades) he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.” Luke 16:22,23.
If this is a literal history, as is sometimes claimed, of the after-death experiences of two persons, then the good are carried about in Abraham’s bosom; and the wicked are actually roasted in fire, and cry for water to cool their parched tongues. If these are figurative, then Abraham, Lazarus, Dives and the gulf, and every part of the account, are features of a picture, an allegory, as much as the fire and Abraham’s bosom. If it be history, then the good are obliged to hear the appeals of the damned for that help which they cannot bestow! They are so near together as to be able to converse across the gulf, not wide but deep. It was this opinion that caused Jonathan Edwards to teach that the sight of the agonies of the damned enhances the joys of the blest!
1. The story is not fact, but a parable. This is denied by some Christians, who ask, does not our Savior say: “There was a certain rich man?” etc. True, but all his parables begin in the same way, “A certain rich man had two sons,” and the like. In Judges 9, we read: “The trees went forth, on a time, to anoint a king over them, and they said to the olive tree, reign thou over us.” This language is positive, and yet it describes something that never could have occurred. All fables, parables, and other fictitious accounts which are related to illustrate important truths have this positive form, to give force, point, life-likeness to the lessons they inculcate.
Dr. Whitby says: “That this is only a parable and not a real history of what was actually done, is evident from the circumstances of it, namely, the rich man lifting up his eyes in Hell, and seeing Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, his discourse with Abraham, his complaint of being tormented in flames, and his desire that Lazarus might be sent to cool his tongue, and if all this be confessedly parable, why should the rest be accounted history?” Lightfoot and Hammond make the same general comments, and Wakefield remarks, “To them who regard the narrative a reality it must stand as an unanswerable argument for the purgatory of the papists.”
We give an indubitable proof that this is a parable. The Jews have a book, written during the Babylonish Captivity, entitled Gemara Babylonicum, containing doctrines entertained by Pagans concerning the future state, not recognized by the followers of Moses. This story is founded on heathen views. They were not obtained from the Bible, for the Old Testament contains nothing resembling them. They were among those traditions which our Savior condemned when he told the Scribes and Pharisees, “Ye make the word of God of none effect through your traditions,” and when he said to his disciples, “Beware of the leaven, or doctrine, of the Pharisees.”
Our Savior seized the imagery of this story, not to indorse its truth, but just as we now relate any other fable. He related it as found in the Gemara, not for the story’s sake, but to convey a moral to his hearers; and the Scribes and Pharisees to whom he addressed this and the five preceding stories, felt—as we shall see—the force of its application to them.
Says Dr. Geo. Campbell: “The Jews did not, indeed, adopt the pagan fables on this subject, nor did they express themselves entirely, in the same manner; but the general grain of thinking, in both, came pretty much to coincide. The Greek Hades they found well adapted to express the Hebrew Sheol. This they came to conceive as including different sorts of habitations, for ghosts of different characters.”
Now as nothing resembling these ideas is found in the Old Testament, where did the Jews obtain it, if not from Greek mythology?
The commentator, Macknight (Scotch Presbyterian) says truly: “It must be acknowledged that our Lord’s descriptions are not drawn from the writings of the Old Testament, but have a remarkable affinity to the descriptions which the Grecian poets have given. They represent the abodes of the blest as lying contiguous to the region of the damned, and separated only by a great impassable gulf in such sort that the ghosts could talk to one another from the opposite banks. If from these resemblances it is thought the parable is formed on the Grecian mythology, it will not at all follow that our Lord approved of what the common people thought or spoke concerning these matters, agreeably to the notions of Greeks. In parables, provided the doctrines inculcated are strictly true, the terms in which they are inculcated may be such as are most familiar to the people, and the images made use of are such as they are best acquainted with.”
But if it were a literal history, nothing could be gained for the terrible doctrine of endless torment. It would oblige us to believe in literal fire after death, but there is not a word to show that such fire would never go out. We have heard it claimed that the punishment of the rich man must be endless, because there was a gulf fixed so that those who desired to, could not cross it. But were this a literal account, it would not follow that the gulf would last always. For are we not assured that the time is coming when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low?” Isa. 40:4. When every valley is exalted, what becomes of the great gulf? And then there is not a word said of the duration of the sufferings of the rich man. If the account be a history is must not militate against the promise of “The restitution of all things spoken by the mouth of all God’s holy prophets since the world began.” There is not a word intimating that the rich man’s torment was never to cease. So the doctrine of endless misery is, after all, not in the least taught here. The most that can be claimed is that the consequences of sin extend into the future life, and this is a doctrine that we believe just as strongly as can any one, though we do not believe they will be endless, nor do we believe that the doctrine is taught in this parable, nor in the Bible use of the word Hell.
Charles Kingsley, the celebrated English author, says in his “Letters”:
“You may quote the parable of Dives and Lazarus (which was the emancipation from the Tartarus theory) as the one instance in which our Lord professedly opens the secrets of the next world, that he there represents Dives as still Abraham’s child, under no despair, not cut off from Abraham’s sympathy, and under a direct moral training of which you see the fruit. He is gradually weaned from the selfish desire of indulgence for himself, to love and care for his brethren, a divine step forward in his life, which of itself proves him not to be lost. The impossibility of Lazarus getting to him, or vice versa, expresses plainly the great truth that each being is where he ought to be at that time, interchange of place, (i.e., of spiritual state) is impossible. But it says nothing against Dives rising out of his torment, when he has learnt the lesson of it, and going where he ought to go.” So that on the theory that this is a literal account, it affords no evidence of endless torment.
But allowing for a moment that this is intended to represent a scene in the spirit world, what a representation we have! Dives is dwelling in a world of fire in the company of lost spirits, hardened by the depravity that must possess the residents of that world, and yet, yearning with compassion for those on earth. Not totally depraved, not harboring evil thoughts, but benevolent, humane. Instead of being loyal to the wicked world in which he dwells, as any one bad enough to go there should be, he actually tries to prevent migration thither from earth, while Lazarus is entirely indifferent to everybody but himself. Dives seems to have more mercy and compassion than does Lazarus.
But what does the parable teach? That the Jewish nation, and especially the Scribes and Pharisees were about to die as a power, as a church, as a controlling influence in the world; while the common people among them, and the Gentiles outside of them, were to be exalted in the new order of things. The details of the parable show this: “There was a certain rich man clothed in purple and fine linen.” In these first words, by describing their very costume, the Savior fixed the attention of his hearers on the Jewish priesthood. They were, emphatically, the rich men of that nation. His description of the beggar was equally graphic. He lay at the gate of the rich, only asking to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the table. Thus dependent were the common people, and the Gentiles, on the scribes and Pharisees. We remember how Christ once rebuked them for shutting up the kingdom of heaven against these. They lay at the gates of the Jewish hierarchy, for the Gentiles were literally restricted to the outer court of the temple. Hence in Rev. 11:12, we read; “But the court, which is without the temple, leave out, and measure it not, for it is given unto the Gentiles.” They could only walk the outer court, or lie at the gate. The brief, graphic descriptions given by our Savior, at once showed his hearers that he was describing those two classes, the Jewish priesthood and nation, on the one hand, and the common people, Jews and Gentiles, on the other.
The rich man died and was buried. This class died officially, nationally, and its power departed. The kingdom of God was taken from them, and conferred on others. The beggar died. The Gentiles, publicans and sinners, were translated into the kingdom of God’s dear son, where is neither Jew nor Greek, but where all are one in Christ Jesus. This is the meaning of “Abraham’s bosom.” They accepted the true faith and so became one with faithful Abraham. Abraham is called the father of the faithful, and the beggar is represented to have gone to Abraham’s bosom, to denote the fact, which is now history, that the common people and Gentiles accepted Christianity and have since continued Christian nations, enjoying the blessings of the Christian faith.
What is meant by the torment of the rich man? The misery of those proud men, when, soon after, their land was captured, and their city and temple possessed by barbarians, and they scattered like chaff before the wind—a condition in which they have continued from that day to this. All efforts to bless them with Christianity have proved unavailing. At this very moment there is a great gulf fixed so that there is no passing to and fro. And observe, the Jews do not desire the gospel. Nor did the rich man ask to enter Abraham’s bosom with Lazarus. He only wished Lazarus to alleviate his sufferings by dipping his finger in water and cooling his tongue. It is so with the Jews today. They do not desire the gospel; they only ask those among whom they sojourn to tolerate them and soften the hardships that accompany their wanderings. The Jewish church and nation are now dead. Once they were exalted to heaven, but now they are thrust down to Hadees, the kingdom of death, and the gulf that yawns between them and the Gentiles shall not be abolished till the fullness of the Gentiles shall come in, and “then Israel shall be saved.”
Lightfoot says: “The main scope and design of it seems this: to hint the destruction of the unbelieving Jews, who, though they had Moses and the prophets, did not believe them, nay would not believe though one (even Jesus) arose from the dead.”
Our quotations are not from Universalists, but from those who accepted the doctrine of eternal punishment, but who were forced to confess that this parable has no reference to that subject. The rich man, or the Jews, were and are in the same Hell in which David was when he said: “The pains of Hell (Hadees) got hold on me, I found trouble and sorrow,” and “thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest Hell.” Not in endless woe in the future world, but in misery and suffering in this.
But this is not a final condition. Wherever we locate it, it must end. Paul asks the Romans, “Have they (the Jews) stumbled that they should fall? God forbid! but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles.” “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own conceits, that blindness is in part happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved. As it is written, There shall come out of Zion the deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob, for this is my covenant with them when I shall take away their sins. 11:11, 25, 27.
In brief terms then, we may say that this is a fictitious story or parable describing the fate in this world of the Jewish and Gentile people of our Savior’s times, and has not the slightest reference to the world after death, nor to the fate of mankind in that world.
Let the reader observe that the rich man, being in Hades, was in a place of temporary detention only. Whether this be a literal story or a parable, his confinement is not to be an endless one. This is demonstrated in a two-fold manner:
1. Death and Hades will deliver up their occupants. Rev. 20:13.
2. Hades is to be destroyed. 1 Cor. 15:55; Rev. 20:14.
Therefore Hades is of temporary duration. The Rich Man was not in a place of endless torment. As Prof. Stuart remarks: “Whatever the state of either the righteous or the wicked may be, whilst in Hades, that state will certainly cease, and be exchanged for another at the general resurrection.”
Thus the New Testament usage agrees exactly with the Old Testament. Primarily, literally, Hades is death, the grave, and figuratively, it is destruction. It is in this world, and is to end. The last time it is referred to (Rev.20:14) as well as in other instances (Hosea 13:14; 1 Cor. 15:55) its destruction is positively announced. So that the instances (sixty-four) in the Old Testament, and (eleven) in the New; in all seventy-five in the Bible, all perfectly agree in representing the word Hell, derived from the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades, as being in this world, and of temporary duration.
So that the instances (sixty-four) in the Old Testament, and (eleven) in the New; in all seventy-five in the Bible, all perfectly agree in representing the word Hell, derived from the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hadees, as being in this world, and of temporary duration.