Fra Angelico, The Last Judgement, 1435 to 1440. Public domain.
Genesis 37:35 · Doctrine · Featured Study
Afterlife Vocabulary
Genesis 37:35 names Sheol first, and the New Testament adds Hades, Gehenna, Tartarus, the Abyss and Paradise.
Jacob's Sheol, the Gehenna of Jesus and the Tartarus of Peter are three different words, and the King James Version prints hell for each of them.
All his sons and daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said. “I will go down to Sheol mourning for my son.” So his father wept for him.
- First taught
- Genesis 37:35 “All his sons and daughters tried to comfort…”
- Fullest statement
- Luke 16:19 to 31 “Now there was a rich man dressed in…”
Jacob's Sheol, the Gehenna of Jesus and the Tartarus of Peter are three different words, and the King James Version prints hell for each of them.
Summary
The six words fall into four groups: the waiting of all the dead, the judgment after it, the confinement of spirits and the comfort of the righteous.
- Sheol and Hades hold the righteous and the wicked alike until the judgment.
- Gehenna takes its name from the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, and Jesus uses it for the punishment after the judgment.
- Tartarus stands once, for angels held in chains for judgment, and the Abyss is a prison of demons and of Satan.
- Paradise is where the righteous dead are with Christ, and the resurrection of the body ends all waiting.
Sheol and the Gathering in Genesis
Genesis names Sheol four times, each time of Jacob going down to it in grief.
All his sons and daughters tried to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said. “I will go down to Sheol mourning for my son.” So his father wept for him.Jacob refuses comfort for Joseph, and this is the first verse of the Bible that names Sheol.
Genesis also says that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were gathered to their people when they died (Genesis 25:8, 35:29 and 49:33). Jacob says “I am about to be gathered to my people” and then asks to be buried with his fathers (Genesis 49:29), so the gathering and the burial are told apart.
When Jacob had finished instructing his sons, he pulled his feet into the bed and breathed his last, and he was gathered to his people.Genesis closes Jacob's life with the words it used of Abraham at Genesis 25:8.
Genesis also says that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were gathered to their people when they died (Genesis 25:8, 35:29 and 49:33). Jacob says “I am about to be gathered to my people” and then asks to be buried with his fathers (Genesis 49:29), so the gathering and the burial are told apart.
When Jacob had finished instructing his sons, he pulled his feet into the bed and breathed his last, and he was gathered to his people.Genesis closes Jacob's life with the words it used of Abraham at Genesis 25:8.
Clarke and Henry on the gathering1 paragraph
Adam Clarke, on Genesis 15:15, reads the promise that Abram would go to his fathers in peace as his soul brought into the place where separate spirits are kept for the general resurrection. Matthew Henry, on Genesis 49:29, says that death separates us from our children and our people in this world and gathers us to our fathers and our people in the other.
Enoch, whom God took away1 paragraph
Enoch is the one man of Genesis 5 of whom the text does not say that he died, because God had taken him away (Genesis 5:24). Hebrews 11:5 says he was taken up so that he did not see death.
The Six Words Side by Side
The counts run from one use of Tartarus to sixty-six of Sheol.
The uses are counted in the tagged Hebrew and Greek text of the Bible.
| Word | Language | Uses | What it names | Who is there | How long |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sheol | Hebrew sheʾol | 66 words in 64 verses | A world beneath the earth for those who have died | The righteous and the wicked alike | Until the judgment |
| Hades | Greek hadēs | 10, and 11 in the Received Text | The unseen place of the dead | All the dead before the judgment | Until Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire |
| Gehenna | Greek geenna | 12 | The Valley of Hinnom, a name for the fire of judgment | Judged human beings, soul and body | Final, after the judgment |
| The Abyss | Greek abyssos | 9 | The depthless pit | Demons, the beast and Satan, and no human dead | For a time, as Satan is bound there a thousand years |
| Tartarus | Greek tartaroō | 1 | The lowest place of confinement | The angels who sinned, in chains | Held for the judgment |
| Paradise | Greek paradeisos | 3 | A park or garden, the word for Eden | The righteous dead, with Christ | Until the resurrection of the body |
One Word for Three Places
Sheol and Hades name one place in two languages, and Gehenna names another.
The King James translators rendered the Hebrew Sheol as hell 31 times, as grave 31 times and as pit 3 times, and they used hell again for the Greek Hades and for Gehenna. One English word then carries the grave of the patriarchs, the place where the dead wait, and the fire of the final judgment.
Strong's lexicon defines Sheol as Hades, the world of the dead, and Alfred Edersheim calls the scene of Luke 16 Hades or Sheol, the place of the disembodied spirits before the final judgment.
For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay.David wrote this verse, and his tomb still stood in Jerusalem when Peter preached (Acts 2:29).
because You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay.Peter reads the verse of the resurrection of the Christ, whom God raised from the dead (Acts 2:31 to 32).
Gehenna is a different word with a different history.
Gehenna and the Valley of Hinnom1 quotation, 3 paragraphs
Gehenna is the Greek form of the Hebrew name of the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem. There Ahaz and Manasseh sacrificed their sons in the fire (2 Chronicles 28:3 and 33:6), and Judah built the high places of Topheth to burn their sons and daughters (Jeremiah 7:31). Josiah desecrated Topheth so that no one could sacrifice a child there to Molech (2 Kings 23:10).
Gehenna stands twelve times in the New Testament. Eleven are in the words of Jesus, in Matthew 5:22, 29 and 30, 10:28, 18:9, 23:15 and 33, in Mark 9:43, 45 and 47, and in Luke 12:5. The twelfth is in James 3:6.
“This word is not found in the Old Scriptures, but it is first used by the Saviour. Let us enquire then into its origin. We read in more than one place that the idol Baal was near Jerusalem, at the foot of Mount Moriah, by which the brook Siloc flows. This valley and a small level plain was watered and woody, a delightful spot, and a grove in it was consecrated to the idol.”
Jerome · Catena Aurea by Aquinas · on Matthew 10:28Patristic
Edersheim, in book III, chapter 19, reports the Jewish teaching that the entrance of Gehinnom lay in the valley of Hinnom, marked by smoke that rose without end.
The King James renderings of the six words1 table or figure
The numbers are Strong's, and the renderings are counted in the King James text of the tagged verses.
| Word | Strong's number | The King James Version prints |
|---|---|---|
| Sheol | H7585 | hell, grave, pit |
| Hades | G86 | hell, and grave at 1 Corinthians 15:55 |
| Gehenna | G1067 | hell |
| The Abyss | G12 | bottomless pit 7 times, deep 2 times |
| Tartarus | G5020 | cast down to hell |
| Paradise | G3857 | paradise |
Gehenna, Tartarus and the Abyss
Jesus names Gehenna, the demons fear the Abyss, and Peter alone names Tartarus.
Gehenna is the place of judged human beings, and of the six words it stands nearest to what Revelation calls the lake of fire.
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.The Berean text prints hell here, and the Greek word behind it is Gehenna.
The Abyss, abyssos, the bottomless deep, is a prison for spirits. The demons beg Jesus not to send them into it (Luke 8:31), and the fifth trumpet opens it (Revelation 9:1 to 2). Its angel is king over the locusts that come out of it (Revelation 9:11).
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key to the Abyss, holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he threw him into the Abyss, shut it, and sealed it over him, so that he could not deceive the nations until the thousand years were complete. After that, he must be released for a brief period of time.This is the clearest text on who is held in the Abyss, and it names no human dead there.
For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell, placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment;Peter's word for cast deep into hell is the verb tartaroō, and this is its one use in the Bible.
Jude 1:6 gives the parallel, angels who abandoned their proper dwelling and are kept in eternal chains under darkness, bound for judgment on that great day.
The study The Watchers and the Nephilim sets out the reading of Michael S. Heiser, in The Unseen Realm (2015), that these angels are the sons of God of Genesis 6. No human dead are said to be sent to Tartarus.
The Rich Man and Lazarus
Jesus tells of a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus in Luke 16:19 to 31.
One day the beggar died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. And the rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham from afar, with Lazarus by his side.This is the one text that shows the dead in two conditions after death, within sight of each other.
Abraham's side stands only in Luke 16:22, and the King James Version calls it Abraham's bosom.
“Our answer to this is, that the Scripture itself which dazzles his sight expressly distinguishes between Abraham's bosom, where the poor man dwells, and the infernal place of torment. ‘Hell’ (I take it) means one thing, and ‘Abraham's bosom’ another. ‘A great gulf’ is said to separate those regions, and to hinder a passage from one to the other. Besides, the rich man could not have ‘lifted up his eyes,’ and from a distance too, except to a superior height, and from the said distance all up through the vast immensity of height and depth.”
Tertullian · Against Marcion Book IV · on Luke 16:23Patristic
And Jesus said to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”Jesus names the comforted side Paradise from the cross, and he promises it to the thief that same day.
Abraham's bosom in the Jewish writings2 paragraphs
Edersheim, in book IV, chapter 18, shows that the phrase occurs, though rarely, in Jewish writings, which name Abraham as the one who receives the penitent into Paradise. He describes the place as two divisions, one of consolation with the faithful gathered to Abraham and one of fiery torment.
John Wesley, on Luke 16:22, says that the Jews called Paradise by this name, the place where the souls of good men remain from death to the resurrection.
Paradise, the garden1 paragraph
Strong's lexicon defines paradeisos as a park, and specially an Eden. Paul was caught up to Paradise (2 Corinthians 12:4), and Revelation sets the tree of life in the Paradise of God (Revelation 2:7).
What the Text Leaves Unsaid
The Bible raises three questions about the dead and leaves them open.
Genesis does not say where the patriarchs went when they were gathered to their people, and it gives no picture of Sheol.
Luke 16 does not say whether its account of the rich man and Lazarus is a parable or a report, and either reading keeps the two places and the chasm between them (Luke 16:26).
The Bible does not describe the Abyss or Tartarus.
The End of the Wait
The New Testament places the believer's hope in the resurrection of the body, after the waiting of the dead ends.
None of the six words names the believer's final hope. Paradise, Abraham's side and being with Christ all describe the waiting of the soul, and the hope Paul names is a body sown natural and raised spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:44).
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.Paul's mystery answers what becomes of the bodies of believers, the living and the dead alike.
But I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will stand upon the earth. Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.Job's hope, centuries before Paul, is already the hope of a body raised.
Do not be amazed at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out—those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.Jesus sets the end of the waiting for the righteous and the wicked in a single hour.
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown on Revelation 20:141 paragraph
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the end of Death and Hades in Revelation 20:14 as the truth that Christ and his people will never again die or be disembodied spirits.
The order of the last things1 table or figure
Revelation 20:14 names the lake of fire the second death, which follows the first death of the body.
- DeathThe body is laid in the grave, and Scripture calls this sleep.Acts 7:60
- The waitIn Luke 16 Lazarus is comforted at Abraham's side, and the rich man is in torment in Hades.Luke 16:23
- The resurrectionThose who sleep in the dust of the earth awake.Daniel 12:2
- The judgmentDeath and Hades give up their dead, and each one is judged according to his deeds.Revelation 20:13
- The endDeath and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire.Revelation 20:14
What the Dead Experience
Christians read the state of the dead in two ways, and Christ's descent in two ways.
Conscious presence with Christ1 quotation, 1 verse, 3 paragraphs
Tertullian, in Against Marcion book IV, and Gregory the Great, in his Forty Gospel Homilies, read the dead of Luke 16 as awake and aware. John Calvin, in Psychopannychia (1534), argues for the unbroken and conscious communion of believers with Christ between death and the resurrection.
I am torn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better indeed.The holders of this reading take far better to mean that the one who departs is present with Christ.
Paul would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). The souls under the altar cry out in a loud voice and ask how long (Revelation 6:9 to 10). On this reading sleep names the body at rest in the grave and the certainty of its waking.
“In this matter it should be noted how much is heaped upon the burning rich man for his punishment. For both knowledge and memory are preserved for him unto his punishment. For he recognizes Lazarus whom he despised, and he also remembers his brothers whom he left behind. For his vengeance from the poor man would not be complete if he did not recognize him in retribution. And the punishment in fire would not be complete if he did not fear for his own what he himself suffers.”
Gregory the Dialogist · Forty Gospel Homilies, Homily 40 · on Luke 16:28Patristic
John Burke, in Imagine Heaven (2015), weighs accounts of near death as agreeing with Luke 23:43 and Philippians 1:23, and he does not rest the case on them. Albert Barnes, in his Notes, reads Ecclesiastes 9:5 as what Solomon sees under the sun, and Adam Clarke, in his Commentary, reads the next verse of this life only.
The sleep of the soul1 verse, 2 paragraphs
Some Anabaptists of the 1530s held that the soul sleeps until the resurrection, and Calvin answered them in Psychopannychia (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, volume 8, section 77). Ellen G. White teaches the same for the Adventists in The Great Controversy (1888), chapter 33.
For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, because the memory of them is forgotten.This is the verse the holders of soul sleep cite first.
Psalm 6:5 asks who can praise God from Sheol, and Scripture often calls death sleep (Daniel 12:2; Acts 7:60). On this reading a sleeper perceives no passing of time, so to depart and be with Christ is true at the moment of waking.
Christ's descent to the dead1 verse, 1 paragraph
Irenaeus, in Against Heresies book 4, reads 1 Peter 3:19 of the Lord going down to the regions beneath the earth to preach his coming to the righteous dead. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read Ephesians 4:9 the same way, and say that his soul at death descended to Hades.
What does “He ascended” mean, except that He also descended to the lower parts of the earth?Paul's words are read either of the place of the dead or of the earth Christ came down to at the incarnation.
The incarnation and the preaching through Noah1 paragraph
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible, allows that Paul's phrase may refer to the incarnation. John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, reads 1 Peter 3:19 of Christ preaching through Noah to the unholy men before the Flood.
Books to Read Next
Calvin, Edersheim and White wrote on the dead between 1534 and 1888, and two of their books are free to read.
Psychopannychia
John Calvin · 1534
It is Calvin's first theological book, written at Orleans, and its English translation stands in Calvin's Tracts, volume 3.
The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
Alfred Edersheim · 1883
Edersheim sets the Gospels in the Jewish life and teaching of their day.
Read it at the Christian Classics Ethereal LibraryThe Great Controversy
Ellen G. White · 1888
White sets out the Adventist reading of the last things.
Read it at Project GutenbergThe Keys of Death and Hades
The risen Christ speaks to John on Patmos at the opening of Revelation.
Jacob expected to go down to Sheol mourning for a son he believed was dead, and Joseph was alive. The text asks the reader to come to the Christ who went down into death and came back from it.
the Living One. I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of Death and of Hades.These keys put Sheol, Hades and every place of the dead under the authority of the One who rose.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The King James Version.
- James Strong, Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (1890), its Hebrew and Greek dictionaries.
- Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883)
- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, volume 8.
- Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy (1888, 1911)
- The Watchers and the Nephilim, a featured study naming Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm (2015)
- John Burke, Imagine Heaven (2015)
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