Most people imagine hell in the Bible to be a place full of fire, but the truth is, it’s a lot more than that, sometimes a lot colder, in fact.
A door left behind
Most people aren’t going to bring up Jude 6 when they’re talking about hell, mostly because it talks about angels. Yes, angels; the verse says that some of them didn’t keep their ‘first estate’ and left their proper place, they’re facing punishment now.
The verse talks about them being kept in everlasting chains under darkness, right until the great day of judgment. Is it short? Sure, but the picture it paints is pretty clear, no flames or anything, just a lot of darkness. Even angels get judged, apparently.
Hands doing the sorting
That’s not all for angels, Matthew 13:41–42 talks about them being the ones who do the gathering. They’re the ones the Son of Man sends out, they’re the ones who collect people who do evil, they’re the ones who throw evil people into a furnace of fire.
You read that right, it’s not demons who take people to be punished, it’s angels. The section also talks about the wailing and gnashing of teeth, really setting the scene for how awful all of hell is.
One piece or all of it
Reading Matthew 5:29 is hard enough, and that’s before you even get to the part about hell. It’s the section where Jesus says someone’s right eye can make them stumble, but that somehow, it’d be better to lose a single part of your body than have all of it thrown into hell.
Your eye or your body, you’ve got to make the decision, apparently. The whole section comes during Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount when he’s talking about the idea of desire and what people do with what they see, so you know he’s being serious.
A name finally lands
Revelation 20:10, it’s a heavy verse, featuring things like the beast and the false prophet. They’re both in the lake of fire, but what makes this verse particularly interesting is the fact that the devil gets thrown in there too. He’s the one who deceived the nations, after all.
Instead of hell being a place for him to control, it turns out that hell is punishment for the devil. The fire, the brimstone, he’s getting tortured by it day and night forever. Most people don’t know that fact.
Everyone gets a place
It’s a roll call. At least, that’s what Ezekiel 32 feels like; a roll call of the dead because it mentions Egypt along with other nations in the pit, such as Asshur, Elam, Meshech, Tubal, Edom, the northern princes, and the Zidonians, a lot of people, really.
Verse 21 says the strong among the mighty speak from the midst of hell and makes it clear that, actually, hell involves people of different nations lying together. They’re defeated, they’re buried, they’re all in the lower parts of the earth. It is a lot more crowded than you might think.
Still room for more
Proverbs 27:20 takes that idea one step further by saying that hell is a place that’s never full. It pairs hell with destruction and compares it to human eyes that are never satisfied; they keep wanting more and more.
In other words, hell is always hungry, and hell is endlessly open. There’s never a limit to how many people are sent there, so take it as a sign that you should avoid it at all costs.
Small spark, big language
Who knew a tongue could be so deadly? James 3:6 talks about how a tongue is a fire and a ‘world of iniquity,’ going on to say how it can make your whole body unclean. It can also set the course of nature on fire, apparently.
The whole section is meant to be more metaphorical than literal because, no, it’s not saying you can start a fire by using your tongue. It’s actually saying that hell’s directly connected to our ordinary lives, it’s connected to the damage that our speech causes.
The line with the worms
Here’s an especially odd one for you: the line ‘Their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched’ from Mark 9:48. It’s a reference back to Isaiah 66:24, you know, the verse that talks about worms and a never-ending fire.
The point here is that hell is so much more than a place of fire. No, it’s a place of decay and burning together, it’s a place that is, by all meanings of the word, unpleasant. That’s how it’s meant to be.
Smoke before the swarm
A verse that talks about a key to the bottomless pit is definitely going to be trouble, and that’s exactly what Revelation 9:1–3 talks about. It mentions a pit being opened with smoke pouring out, making the sun and air go dark. Then comes the really creepy part.
Locusts, those dreaded insects, come out of the smoke, really driving home how terrible it all is. It also makes something clear. Hell is more than a lake of fire, it’s something deadly and truly awful breaking open.Â
Take the higher road
Proverbs 15:24 isn’t exactly as intense as Revelation, but that doesn’t make it any less important. It talks about how the way of life goes upward for the wise, giving them the chance to turn away from hell underneath.Â
No mention of flames, no description of angels, a simple up and down, nothing more. Wisdom goes up. Hell goes down. The fact that it’s so plain is probably one of the reasons why a lot of people skip over it. It doesn’t really fit with the hellfire image we usually have.
Snow doesn’t last here
You’d hardly expect the Bible to compare hell to snow, yet that’s what happens in Job 24:19. The line talks about how drought and heat consume snow waters; makes sense, because it then says hell does something similar.
Hell consumes sinners like heat consumes snow, until it’s all gone. But hell is nowhere near as beautiful as snow, hell is shown to consume sinners in a pretty gruesome way.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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