Sheol and Hades: Translating the Hebrew Word for Hell
MANY have found fault with the revisers of the Bible, both of the Old and the New Testament, because they have retained the originals in the Hebrew and Greek for the oft-occurring word hell in the Old Version. We have no fault to find in this respect; they have evidently done a favor to the English reader by saving him from at least some of the misapprehension into which he was liable to be misled by the Authorized Version. In the Old Testament hell was translated from but one Hebrew word—sheol. This word is a monosyllable. The sound represented in it by our o is not a full vowel; the o is long. Its pronunciation is not easily represented; in transliterating it is written sh'ōl. If the reader will pronounce the word behold, giving the slightest possible sound to the first vowel, and somewhat prolonging the second, he will get a fair idea of the pronunciation of sheol. This word occurs in the Hebrew of the O. T. 65 times; it is translated in the A. V., grave, 31 times; pit, 3 times; hell, 31 times. In the revision it is given thus: grave, 14 times; pit, 5 times; hell, 15 times; sheol, 31 times. At its first occurrence, Gen. 37:35, the revisers placed in the margin the following note: “Sheol, the name of the abode of the dead, answering to the Greek hades, Acts 2:27.” It is claimed that the translators were arbitrary in their choice of words, as hell, pit, and the grave were each used where the other would have answered equally well. And yet we cannot see that the revisers did much better in rendering it hell in such texts as Isa. 14:9, 11, 15; 28:15, 18. And especially Eze. 31:17: “They also went down into hell with him, unto them that be slain with the sword.” Seeing that they translated it grave 14 times, we cannot see on what principle they departed from that rendering in this text. And again in Eze. 32:21, the grave is preferable to hell, when speaking of those who “are gone down, they lie still, even the uncircumcised, slain with the sword.” But they have given the reader this advantage in this over the Old Version: they have given a signification of sheol—“the name of the abode of the dead”—and they have placed the original in the margin in each of the thirty-four times of its occurrence where it is not given in the text. Some think that they have destroyed the evidence for future punishment by the change in the rendering of sheol. But we cannot see wherein. The A. V. rendered it grave, 31 times; pit, 5 times; and hell, 31 times. The R. V., grave, 14 times; pit, 5 times; hell, 15 times; and sheol, 31 times. We do not find the evidence of future punishment in the word, nor in its translations, but in its evident application. Thus, when we read in Rom. 6:23, “The wages of sin is death,” how do we know that it is the second death that the sinner must suffer for his sins? or that it is a punishment after the Judgment? It is not in the signification of the word thanatos, nor in the translation. Yet we have no difficulty in learning from the Scriptures that that is the case. And so in Ps. 9:17, it says, “The wicked shall return to sheol, even all the nations that forget God.” It is a truth that all men, both righteous and wicked, go into sheol at their death. And the Old Testament abundantly and positively proves a resurrection, a bringing the dead up from sheol, but the wicked shall return thereto. They are brought from the dead, from death, to judgment and punishment, and they return to death again, while the righteous live eternally. In returning to sheol, to the state of death, they perish forever, and thus will Obadiah 16 be fulfilled: “They shall be as though they had not been.” In the present state of our language, with the “theological definitions” which are given to many words, it would be better if sheol had not been translated hell at all. As may be seen by the texts we cited, there is nothing gained by such a translation; its use in the passages where it is used does not at all convey to the intelligent reader any idea of future punishment. Yet it is for the sake of this idea that some wish that it had been more frequently used. To conform a translation to the desires of such people, of people so destitute of a knowledge of language and of Scripture doctrine, would be to destroy its claims as a translation—as a faithful rendering of the ideas of the original. In the New Testament the case is quite different. While in the Old Testament, hell, in both versions, is always translated from the one word, sheol, in the New it is translated from three different words, having different meanings. Hades is used 11 times; rendered hell, 10 times; and grave, once. It is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew word sheol. It is used in Acts 2:27, in a quotation from Ps. 16:10, where sheol is used. Although it is translated hell in ten of the eleven times of its use, it never has the meaning of a place of future punishment. It is rendered grave in 1 Cor. 15:55: “O grave, where is thy victory?” In this text the revisers have done the reader an injustice; they rendered hades, death, the same as thanatos, and evidently without any sufficient reason. They make the text read thus: “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” Hades can mean death only by a figure, as representing the place of the dead. And why the revisers transferred the original, untranslated, into the text in every case but this, and in this gave it such an unusual rendering, is more than we can imagine. Gehenna is another word which is translated hell, and, unlike hades, it is always so translated. And still more unlike hades, it means a place of punishment or destruction, coming far nearer to the popular idea of the word hell. It is translated uniformly in both versions, and the revisers placed it in the margin wherever it occurs, except in Jas. 3:6. Why they omitted to do so here, we cannot conjecture. It occurs twelve times. Of this word Mr. Ellis says: “Gehenna is not a Greek word; it does not occur in any classical author; it is merely the Grecian mode of spelling the Hebrew words which are translated ‘The Valley of Hinnom.’” Gesenius says of this valley: “It was noted for the human sacrifices here offered to Moloch.” Bagster’s Analytical Lexicon says: “Ps. the Valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, once celebrated for the horrid worship of Moloch, and afterwards polluted with every species of filth, as well as the carcasses of animals, and dead bodies of malefactors: to consume which, in order to avert the pestilence which such a mass of corruption would occasion, constant fires were kept burning.” It is this to which the Saviour referred in Mark 9:43, 45, 47, cast into gehenna, “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” It was a place of utter destruction, of consuming by fire. In Jer. 7: 32, the Lord says: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be called Topheth; nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter.” Tophet was a name also given to it. The other word is tartaroō, which occurs only in 2Peter 2:4. The revision gives this text as follows: “For if God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell [mar., cast them into dungeons], and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto Judgment,” etc. This word is from the Greek mythology, where it was used to represent that part of hades to which the shades of the wicked were assigned. Peter uses it as a dungeon or prison-house of darkness, where the angels who sinned are reserved unto the Judgment. This covers the entire use of the word hell, in its various meanings, in both Testaments. In all the testimony of the Scriptures we find no account of the creation of a hell of fire for the punishment of the wicked. Nor do we find any intimation that such a place now exists. But Peter says that the heavens and earth which are now, are reserved unto fire against the day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men. In that day the very elements shall melt with fervent heat. And in the Revelation it is shown that fire comes down from God out of Heaven to devour the wicked, and they are literally cast into a lake of fire and brimstone. When the earth is melted, it will be a lake of fire, and here the wicked will be consumed. But from this emerges the new earth—the earth renewed—purified “in which dwelleth righteousness.” Then shall the meek inherit the earth, and ever more delight themselves in the abundance of peace.