שְׁאוֹל · ᾅδης · γέεννα · ταρταρόω sheol · hadēs · gehenna · tartaroō — four distinct words rendered 'hell' in some translations

The four words

Four distinct biblical words have at various points been rendered “hell” in English. They have different histories and different referents in their original contexts.

Sheol (שְׁאוֹל)

The Hebrew word for the realm of the dead. It occurs about 65 times in the Hebrew Bible. HALOT s.v. Sheol glosses it as “underworld, realm of the dead.” In the Hebrew Bible, Sheol is where the dead go — both righteous and wicked. It is not a place of judgment in most Hebrew Bible passages; it is the shadowy general destination of human beings after death. Job 14:13, Psalm 88:3, and Ecclesiastes 9:10 are typical: Sheol is described as a place of darkness, silence, and forgetting.

The KJV translates Sheol as “hell” in 31 places, “grave” in 31 places, and “pit” in three places. Modern translations more often transliterate Sheol directly, especially where the Hebrew context is clearly about the realm of the dead generally rather than a place of punishment.

Hades (ᾅδης)

The Greek word that the Septuagint uses to translate Sheol, and that the New Testament uses ten times. BDAG s.v. Hadēs glosses it as “the place of the dead.” In classical Greek, Hades was both the god and the underworld realm; in Jewish-Greek usage (the Septuagint) it functions essentially as the Greek equivalent of Sheol.

In the New Testament, Hades appears in Matthew 11:23 and 16:18, Luke 10:15 and 16:23, Acts 2:27 and 2:31, Revelation 1:18, 6:8, 20:13, and 20:14. The KJV renders Hadēs as “hell” throughout; most modern translations transliterate it as “Hades” or render it “the realm of the dead” / “the grave.”

Gehenna (γέεννα)

The Greek transliteration of the Hebrew גֵּיא הִנֹּם (Gei-Hinnom, “the Valley of Hinnom”), a specific physical valley south-west of Jerusalem. BDAG s.v. Geenna documents the etymology explicitly. The valley had a specific historical association: in the late monarchy period, it was the site of child sacrifice associated with the worship of Molech (2 Kings 23:10, Jeremiah 7:31, Jeremiah 19:2–6). King Josiah’s reforms desecrated the valley to prevent its use for that purpose.

By the time of the New Testament, the valley had become a charged image — the kind of place one invokes to evoke burning, destruction, and judgment. Gehenna occurs 12 times in the New Testament, all but one in the Synoptic Gospels (the exception is James 3:6). In English Bibles it is most often translated “hell,” obscuring the geographical specificity. A reader of Matthew 5:22 (“anyone who says ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell”) is hearing about a specific valley outside Jerusalem in the Greek that the English does not preserve.

For a fuller treatment of this single passage, see our Translation Watch entry on Gehenna in Matthew 5:22.

Tartarus (ταρταρόω)

A hapax legomenon — a word that appears only once in the entire New Testament. The verb form tartaroō (ταρταρόω, “to confine to Tartarus”) occurs at 2 Peter 2:4: “God did not spare angels when they sinned but cast them into hell” (BSB). The Greek says he tartarōsas — “having Tartarus-ed them.”

Tartarus comes from Greek mythology, where it was the deepest part of the underworld, below Hades, used as the prison of the Titans. The Jewish Greek of the Second Temple period borrowed the word for the place of confinement of fallen angelic beings. BDAG s.v. tartaroō notes the mythological background.

Why this matters

When a single English word — “hell” — is used for all four, four distinct conceptual categories collapse into one. A reader of the KJV moving through the Old Testament, the Gospels, the apostolic letters, and Revelation encounters “hell” repeatedly without any indication that the underlying words are different.

Modern translations have moved in different directions:

• The NIV transliterates Hades and Gehenna in many places; renders Sheol contextually
• The ESV transliterates Sheol and Hades; uses “hell” for Gehenna
• The NASB transliterates Sheol and Hades; uses “hell” for Gehenna with footnotes
• The NLT uses “the grave,” “the realm of the dead,” and “hell” depending on context
• The KJV uses “hell” for all four

We are not adjudicating which approach is correct. The point is that the choice has been made — by every translator — and that choice shapes how readers receive the text.