With a single exception, all instances of “hell” stem from only one of three original language words. Find the meaning of those words, and you’ve found the meaning of hell. Two of those words are Hebrew-Greek equivalents: sheol and hades. They refer to “the place of the dead.” Bad people are said to go there, but so are good people. When the patriarch Jacob was told his son Joseph had died, for example, he “kept refusing to take comfort and [was] saying: “For I shall go down mourning to my son into Sheol!” Did he really expect to burn in hell someday, or did he figure on dying and going to the grave? (Gen 37:35) Or Job, who, amidst great suffering, prayed “O that in Sheol you would conceal me, that you would keep me secret until your anger turns back” (Job 14:13) A sensible request if sheol is the grave. Not so bright, though, if it is a burning place of torture.
The third word translated ‘hell’ is gehenna. Every instance of hellfire is ‘gehenna.’ The term refers to the valley of Hinnom outside the walls of Jerusalem. It served as the municipal garbage dump and fires were kept burning continually to consume the refuse. Carcasses of criminals and those not thought worthy of decent burial might be tossed over the wall into gehenna below. It even became symbolic. Giving one a proper burial presupposed they were worthy of future resurrection. Heaving someone into gehenna presupposed their death would be permanent. Thus, when Jesus denounced religious hypocrites: “Serpents, offspring of vipers, how are you to flee from the judgment of Gehenna?” he was suggesting they merited no future resurrection, not that they deserved everlasting torture.
The New World Translation declines to translate the three words into English. Instead, it transliterates sheol, hades, and gehenna directly from the original language into the English. This is an invaluable aid for students in uncovering what these words actually mean.
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