Are Hades, Sheol, and Hell the Same Place?

I think we’ve all got junk drawers. It’s filled with batteries that may or may not work, a key that might go to the shed or might open a portal to the underworld, three rubber bands, and always a Taco Sauce packet. We put things there because we don’t really know where else to put them.

I think we have words that are like junk drawers too.

Think of the word “bug.” We use it for ants, beetles, spiders, centipedes, and just about anything else small enough to crawl under your fridge or into your Cheerios. But a biologist would be shaking her head in disgust: “Those creatures don’t all belong in the same category!!” But in ordinary conversation, we know that bug gets the job done.

I think we use the word hell in much the same way.

Some translations will retain the different words like Sheol, Hades, or Gehenna. But sometimes these words simply get tossed into the same drawer and labeled hell. For most conversations, that might get the job done. If someone talks about Jesus saving them from hell, I’m not going to nerd out and ask which Greek or Hebrew word they mean.

But if we’re trying to understand Scripture better and what the Bible says about death, judgement, and the afterlife, it’s a good idea to open the drawer and sort through a few things. Because Sheol, Hades, and what we typically mean by hell are related. But they aren’t exactly the same thing.

What Is Sheol?

Let’s start with Sheol. It’s a Hebrew word that is used all throughout the Old Testament in connection with death. It’s meaning is probably closer to “the grave” or “the realm of the dead.” Depending on the passage you’re reading it might be rendered any of those ways. And that tells us that Sheol isn’t just the OT word for “hell.”

If you think it’s a one-to-one meaning, you’re going to be pretty confused when you find that word popping up in weird places. When Jacob believes Joseph has died, he says, “I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave” (Genesis 37:35). The Hebrew word there is Sheol. Jacob isn’t saying that Joseph went to hell and he anticipates joining him.

Job also seemed to consider Sheol to be a place of refuge until God’s anger passed (Job 14:13). David says God will not abandon him to Sheol (Psalm 16:10). And Psalm 88 describes a man whose life is drawing near to Sheol and then piles up images of the pit, darkness, death, and the grave.

Sheol belongs to the world of death. It’s often pictured as down because it’s connected with death and dying. I’m not trying to make light of death or dying here but to help you picture it. If you’re writing a horror film, you’ll likely have people descend into a dank basement at some point. Cobwebs. Creaky stairs. One light bulb. It’s usually ominous real estate.

The biblical writers are working with that same basic geography. I think that’s why we think of it as “hell,” because sometimes our stock images are similar. But it’s not entirely the same. Again, think of it more like the realm of the dead. It’s not a place you want to go, certainly. But it’s also not necessarily this place of eternal conscious torment.

Now let’s look at Hades.

What Is Hades?

If you’re familiar with Greek mythology, or maybe you just watched Disney’s Hercules, the word Hades may already give you a picture. In Greek mythology, Hades was the god who ruled the underworld, and eventually his name became associated with the realm of the dead itself. You’ve got the River Styx (not the band), Charon ferrying the dead, Cerberus guarding the entrance, and all those other images of the underworld.

When the New Testament writers use the word Hades, they really aren’t importing all of that Greek mythology into the Bible. But that’s the word they’d grab to talk about the realm of the dead. In fact, when Jewish translators translated the Old Testament into Greek, Hades was the commonly used word for Sheol.

Psalm 16 gives us a great example. David says, “you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead” (Psalm 16:10). The Hebrew word there is Sheol. But when Peter quotes that same Psalm in Acts 2 while preaching about the resurrection of Jesus, the Greek word is Hades. That helps us see that Hades is just the closest counterpart to Sheol and carries with it that same basic idea of the realm of the dead.

Just as with Sheol in the OT, when we see Hades in the NT we probably shouldn’t immediately make it out to be “hell.” One important piece to that comes in Revelation 20. We read that “death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them” and then in the next verse both Death and Hades are thrown into the lake of fire. That seems to tell us that “lake of fire” is closer to the Bible’s picture of final judgment.

What Does the Bible Mean by Hell?

If Sheol and Hades aren’t quite what we mean by hell, where does that idea come from? There is another word that needs to enter our conversation: Gehenna.

Gehenna gets its name from the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem. That valley had an awful history. It was associated with idolatry and even child sacrifice. Jeremiah mentions it a few times (Jeremiah 7:31-32; 19:2-6), and connects it with coming judgment. So by the time Jesus uses the word Gehenna, He’s using a word that is filled with imagery. It’s a place loaded with meaning, and points to rebellion, death, and divine judgment.

And that’s how Jesus uses the word. In Matthew 5 he warns about being thrown into Gehenna. In Matthew 10:28 he tells His disciples to fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Mark 9 connects it with “unquenchable fire.” This is much closer to what we have in mind when we use the English word hell. 

But if we aren’t careful, we’ll start shoving everything back into one drawer. The Bible gives us other images of final judgement that don’t necessarily use the word Gehenna. Jesus talks about “outer darkness,” he mentions “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” and “eternal fire” as well. (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 25:30, 41). And Revelation talks about a “lake of fire” and a “second death.” These are all other biblical images that help us talk about hell and final judgment.

And because this isn’t already muddy enough, we need to throw in one more word. In 2 Peter 2:4, Peter speaks of angels who sinned and that God “sent them to hell.” The Greek word there is Tartarus. But Peter isn’t describing the final destination of people — these are angels held in confinement awaiting judgment. So it’s not just another name for hell, it seems.

How do we summarize this, then? I think we have to admit that there isn’t just one biblical word that corresponds with our English word hell. Put all of it together and you get a picture that looks a bit like what we typically think of with hell, but we really should be careful not to flatten these words.

Why Does This Matter?

You might be wondering why any of this should matter to you. For one, these discussion are important if we want to have a deeper theological discussion about hell. That’s not the point of this particular article, it’s just a helpful primer.

The goal here is to make sure we are reading the Bible on its own terms. If Jacob says he expects to go down to Sheol, we don’t want to read it like he’s planning on going to hell for a bit. And if Revelation throws Hades in the lake of fire, we probably shouldn’t make the two equivalent. And when Jesus warns about Gehenna, we shouldn’t cross over that meaning to what others thought of the realm of the dead.

At the end of the day, we should know that death itself is the enemy. And that’s whether we’re talking about some realm of the dead, or a place of eternal fire. The Bible’s hope isn’t that good people go somewhere nice and bad people go to somewhere awful. That can easily become our entire way of thinking about the afterlife. But the Bible keeps pushing us toward resurrection.

That is our hope. That is where we should focus. Death and Hades ultimately lose. They don’t get the final say. They give up the dead. Christian hope is that death itself is finally and fully destroyed. Now when it comes to questions about what does final judgment then look like—you’ll have to wait for another article on that one.

These places (Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna) matter. But they aren’t decisive. The name that matters the most is the name of Jesus. He is the one who holds the keys!

Photo credit: ©Getty Images/Rastan