Sheol

Sheol is the Hebrew word for the underworld, the realm of the dead beneath the earth, and "the Pit" is one of its poetic synonyms; the English word "hell" is used in many translations to render Sheol along with several distinct Greek terms, which is why these names are often grouped together. In the Hebrew Scriptures Sheol is the common destination of all the dead rather than a place reserved for the wicked: Ecclesiastes 9:10 says plainly that "there is no work, nor plan, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol, where you are going," and Job 33:28 pairs the parallel line "he has redeemed my soul from going into the pit" with seeing the light, treating the Pit as the place from which a person is rescued. Isaiah 38:17 speaks of being delivered "from the pit of corruption," again in parallel with death and the grave. The word's etymology is disputed among linguists, and the texts themselves describe Sheol mainly by image — silence, dust, descent — rather than by definition.

Scripture also presents Sheol as within God's reach rather than beyond it. Hosea 13:14 has God say, "I will ransom them from the power of Sheol. I will redeem them from death," addressing Sheol and death directly as powers to be defeated — though the same verse ends with the jarring line that compassion will be hidden from God's eyes, and interpreters have long debated how those clauses fit together.

The Greek terms in the New Testament are not simple equivalents of one another. Hades is the Greek word the Septuagint used for Sheol; it appears in Matthew 16:18 ("the gates of Hades will not prevail against it") and in Revelation 1:18, where the risen Christ holds "the keys of Death and of Hades," and Revelation 20:14, where "Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire." Gehenna derives from the Aramaic-Hebrew name for the Valley of Hinnom near Jerusalem and in the Gospels denotes the fire of final judgment (Matthew 5:22; Matthew 10:28; Luke 12:5), and James 3:6 uses it of the tongue set on fire. Tartarus appears as a verb only in 2 Peter 2:4, where angels who sinned are cast down and committed "to pits of darkness to be reserved for judgment." These are historically distinct terms with distinct backgrounds, and English "hell" flattens the difference.

Christian traditions therefore read the terminology differently. Many Catholic and Protestant readers treat Gehenna as the place of final punishment and read Revelation 20:14 as the abolition of death and the grave rather than their vindication; Eastern Orthodox teaching dwells instead on Hades as the realm Christ descends into and despoils, so that the gates of Hades not prevailing (Matthew 16:18) is a victory over the grave. Traditions holding conditional immortality, such as Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses, read the fire language of Gehenna and Matthew 10:28 as final destruction rather than unending torment, while traditions affirming eternal conscious punishment read the same texts as endless. Translation practice adds a further layer: where the King James Version prints "hell" for Sheol, many modern versions print "grave" or "pit," which changes what a reader takes the passage to be about.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.