What is hell?
The Bible speaks about hell in warnings rather than in descriptions, and much of the confusion comes from a single English word being used to translate two very different Greek words. Commentators in this collection ask three questions of the text: what the words actually mean, whether the punishment is truly endless, and who hell was made for.
Two words, one translation
Writers here insist that "hell" in older English Bibles covers more than one idea, and they separate them carefully.
A. J. PollockThe bottomless pit should be translated "abyss," and is distinct from hell. Hades is the condition of souls without a body. Death is the condition of bodies without souls. Gehenna is hell itself, spoken of in Revelation as "the lake of fire." The abyss is a place where God can confine the devil and evil spirits at His pleasure.
The two are also separated in time — one comes before the final judgment, the other after it.
W. W. FeredayHades is not Gehenna. The latter is the lake of fire, to which the lost are sent after the judgment of the Great White Throne (most of them preceded by the Beast, the False Prophet and Satan). Hades is the term God uses for the intermediate state, when the soul is without its body.
Where the name came from
The word the Lord used, Gehenna, was borrowed from a real place that His hearers knew by sight and smell.
F. B. HoleThe Valley of Hinnom, the rubbish dump outside Jerusalem, where fires always burned and maggots did their work without stopping, was known as Gehenna. On the Lord's lips this word became a terribly fitting picture of where the lost go. Hell will indeed be the great rubbish heap of eternity, where everything beyond correction is separated from the good and lies for ever under the judgment of God. This terrible fact reaches us from the lips of Him who loved sinful men and wept over them.
The picture, though, was never about the valley itself. Souls were not thrown into the rubbish pits outside Jerusalem.
J. N. Darby"Fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell" (chapter 10:28). This is not the valley of Hinnom. They do not put souls there. It is used as a picture of the place of final judgment and punishment… It is a judgment, a judicial punishment, for which there is no relief and of which there is no end.
The state before the final judgment
Luke 16 is treated as the clearest window into what happens to the lost immediately after death.
W. W. FeredayFirst, there is consciousness there. Memory was lively with the rich man, and he was able to describe what he was feeling. Second, there is suffering there… Third, conditions are fixed there. Notice Abraham's words: "Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us." Neither Abraham nor the rich man dropped any hint that the sufferer would finally be released, or that he would one day escape his misery by ceasing to exist.
The lake of fire and the second death
The final state is called the second death — and commentators argue that "death" here cannot mean the end of existence.
Walter Scott"This is the second death," that is, the lake of fire. The bodies of the wicked will be made to last through eternal ages; they will never die, but will exist for ever in the second death. It is not the end of existence, not annihilation, but torment lasting as long as the Almighty and Eternal God lives. Nor will the same amount, measure and degree of punishment be given to each. The place is common to all, but "many stripes" and "few stripes" (Luke 12:47-48) point to different degrees of punishment.
Its length is measured by the same word the Lord uses for the life of the saved.
W. W. FeredayThe awful future of the ungodly could hardly be stated more clearly than in the Scripture before us: "These will go away into eternal punishment." The same word is used for both "punishment" and "life"; the one lasts as long as the other.
Not built for people
One detail in Matthew 25 is pressed hard: the kingdom is said to be prepared for you, but the fire is not.
William Kelly"Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels." In the other case the kingdom was said to be "prepared for you" — not so when He speaks of the curse. Hell was not prepared for poor guilty man. He deserves it; but it was prepared for the devil and his angels… There was no hope of deliverance for these fallen angels, no redemption for them. They departed from God deliberately, with no one tempting them. Man was tempted by an enemy, and God feels for guilty man, drawn away by a rebel mightier than himself.
Nobody, on this reading, is assigned there by God's arbitrary decision.
C. H. MackintoshEverlasting fire is prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25). Men rush into it. "Vessels of wrath" are fitted for destruction, not by God, but by themselves (Romans 9). Everyone who reaches heaven will have to thank God for it. Everyone who finds himself in hell will have to thank himself for it.
The way out
Every writer who describes hell in this collection ends at the same place — a door God opened at His own expense.
W. T. P. WolstonChrist is God's way of escape from the lake of fire, and if you want to escape what your deeds deserve, my friend, you must trust Him.
Summary
- Two words. English "hell" hides two Greek words: hades, the conscious state of the soul between death and judgment, and gehenna — the lake of fire — the final and eternal state.
- One picture. Gehenna took its name from Jerusalem's burning rubbish valley, but the Lord used it as a picture of a judgment beyond this earth, "for which there is no relief."
- One duration. The second death is not the end of existence, and the word measuring the punishment is the same word measuring the life of the saved.
- One origin. The fire was prepared for the devil and his angels, not for man; those who go there, commentators say, fit themselves for it.
- One escape. God provided a way out at infinite cost to Himself, through the death of Christ — the one exit named in these pages.