Afterlife Vocabulary
Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, Tartarus, the Abyss, and Paradise — six words English hid inside one, disambiguated and sourced.
Framework
One word, three places
English readers meet a single word — "hell" — where the original languages give at least three distinct realities. The King James translators rendered the Hebrew Sheol (H7585) as "hell" 31 times, "grave" 31 times, and "pit" 3 times across its 65 occurrences. They then used "hell" again for the Greek Hades (G86) and again for Gehenna (G1067). Three concepts, one English word.
The first correction is the simplest: Sheol and Hades are the same place under two languages. Hades is the word the Septuagint used to translate Sheol, and the New Testament inherits it (compare Ps 16:10 with Acts 2:27, where Peter quotes the psalm and Sheol becomes Hades). Both name the realm of all the dead before judgment — Jacob expects to go down to Sheol mourning (Gen 37:35), and even David's Lord is not left there (Ps 16:10).
Gehenna is the outlier. It is not where the dead wait; it is where the judged are sent. The name comes from the Valley of Hinnom (Hebrew gê-hinnōm) south of Jerusalem, where Ahaz and Manasseh burned children to Molech (2 Kgs 23:10; Jer 7:31; 2 Chr 28:3). Eleven of its twelve New Testament appearances are on the lips of Jesus (Matt 5:22, 29–30; 10:28; 23:33; Mark 9:43–47; Luke 12:5), with one in James 3:6. To read "hell" flatly is to lose the difference between the grave and the fire.
The map of the dead
Only one passage draws the geography of the intermediate state, and Jesus tells it: the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31). Lazarus dies and is "carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom" — a phrase that occurs exactly once in Scripture, a Second Temple idiom for the blessed dead gathered to the patriarch (Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, bk. IV). The rich man dies and is "in Hades... in torments" (Luke 16:23). Between them a "great gulf" is fixed, uncrossable in either direction.
So the realm of the dead has two compartments: comfort and torment. Jesus names the comforted side again from the cross — "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). Paradeisos (G3857) is a Persian loanword meaning a walled garden; the Septuagint used it for Eden, and Paul was "caught up into paradise" (2 Cor 12:4), which Revelation locates in the presence of God with the tree of life (Rev 2:7).
This is still the intermediate state, not the final one. After the resurrection and judgment, "death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire" (Rev 20:13–14) — the waiting realm is itself emptied and abolished, called the "second death." The vocabulary is precise: Hades holds the dead now; the lake of fire holds the verdict.
Gehenna, Tartarus, and the Abyss
Three fiery or imprisoning words are easy to blur, and each is distinct.
Gehenna (G1067) is the destiny of judged humans — "fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna" (Matt 10:28). It stands nearest to what Revelation calls the lake of fire.
The Abyss (abyssos, G12), "bottomless," is a prison for spirits, not people. Demons beg not to be sent there (Luke 8:31); the Abyss releases its locust-army under the fifth trumpet (Rev 9:1–2, 11); and Satan is bound there a thousand years (Rev 20:1–3). The King James renders it "bottomless pit" seven times and "the deep" twice across nine occurrences.
Tartarus appears once — the verb tartaroō (G5020), a hapax legomenon, in 2 Pet 2:4: God "cast down to Tartarus" the angels that sinned, delivering them into chains of darkness reserved unto judgment. Jude 6 gives the parallel: angels who left their proper habitation, kept in everlasting bonds. Read against Genesis 6 and the Watchers tradition the site holds, Tartarus is the holding cell of the rebel angels, not a place for human dead at all.
The payoff of keeping the words apart: the grave (Sheol/Hades) is temporary and universal; Paradise and Abraham's bosom are the righteous dead's comfort; Gehenna is the human verdict; the Abyss and Tartarus are angelic prisons. One English word erased all of that — the original vocabulary restores it.
The vocabulary of the dead6
Six words, one flattened into “hell”
English gives us one word where Scripture gives six. Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, the Abyss, Tartarus, and Paradise name different places, times, and inhabitants. The ledger below keeps them apart.
The confusion corrected
The word that hid three
The King James translators rendered Sheol, Hades, andGehenna alike as “hell.” So one English word carries the grave of the patriarchs, the intermediate realm of the dead, and the final fire of judgment. Sheol and Hades are the same place under two languages — Hades is simply the Septuagint’s Greek for Sheol. Gehenna is something else entirely: not where the dead wait, but where the judged are sent (per Matt 10:28; Rev 20:14). The Valley of Hinnom lent its name.
This Valley of Hinnom... became the general emblem of the place of future punishment. Thus Gehenna and Sheol were kept distinct.
Alfred Edersheim· The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, bk. IV, 1883Public domain
Strong's Concordance· KJV rendering tallies (public domain)
The map of the dead
Two compartments, a gulf between
Luke 16:19–31 is the one passage that draws the geography. The righteous dead are comforted; the wicked are in torment; a “great gulf” is fixed between, uncrossable either way.
The comforted
Abraham's bosom · Paradise
Lazarus is “carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22) — the one time the phrase occurs. Jesus names the same rest “paradise” to the thief (Luke 23:43), the word the Septuagint used for Eden.
The tormented
Hades · in torment
The rich man “in Hades... being in torments” (Luke 16:23) sees Abraham afar off. This is still the intermediate state — Hades itself is later cast into the lake of fire (Rev 20:14), the “second death.”
And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.The single text that shows the dead conscious, sorted, and separated.
The last sorting
Where the vocabulary ends
Sheol and Hades are waiting rooms; Gehenna and the lake of fire are the verdict. After the resurrection, “death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire” (Rev 20:14) — the intermediate realm itself is emptied and abolished.
Contested ground
What the dead experience
◈Conscious presence or soul sleep?contested · Steelmanned
Soul sleep.The dead “know not any thing” (Eccl 9:5, 10); “in death there is no remembrance of thee” (Ps 6:5). On this reading Sheol is unconscious rest until resurrection.
Conscious state (the site’s posture).The rich man and Lazarus are awake and aware (Luke 16); Jesus promises the thief presence “today” (Luke 23:43); Paul counts death “far better,” to “be with Christ” (Phil 1:23; 2 Cor 5:8). The Ecclesiastes texts describe the body’s silence under the sun, not the soul’s extinction.
Where Christ went.“He descended into the lower parts” (Eph 4:9) and “preached unto the spirits in prison” (1 Pet 3:19) — read by many as His visit to the realm of the dead between cross and resurrection.
Follow the words
Where to go next
Word
Sheol — the word studyEvery one of the 65 occurrences, and why the KJV split it three ways.Word
Gehenna — the word studyFrom a Jerusalem trash-fire valley to the vocabulary of final judgment.Lens
Rare words lensTartarus and “Abraham's bosom” each appear exactly once in the NT.Verse
The rich man and LazarusThe one passage that maps the two compartments of the dead.