Hades, a Greek word, which occurs frequently in the New Testament, where it is usually rendered ’hell’ in the English version. The word hades means literally that which is in darkness. In the classical writers it is used to denote Orcus, or the infernal regions. According to the notions of the Jews, sheol or hades was a vast receptacle where the souls of the dead existed in a separate state until the resurrection of their bodies. The region of the blessed during this interval, or the inferior paradise, they supposed to be in the upper part of this receptacle; while beneath was the abyss or gehenna(Tartarus), in which the souls of the wicked were subjected to punishment.
The question whether this is or is not the doctrine of the Scriptures is one of much importance, and has, first and last, excited no small amount of discussion. It is a doctrine received by a large portion of the nominal Christian church; and it forms the foundation of the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, for which there would be no ground but for this interpretation of the word hades.
The question therefore rests entirely upon the interpretation of this word, and as the Septuagint gives this as the meaning of the Hebrew word sheol, the real question is, what is the meaning which sheol bears in the Old Testament, and hades in the New? A careful examination of the passages in which these words occur will probably lead to the conclusion, that they afford no real sanction to the notion of an intermediate place of the kind indicated, but are used by the inspired writers to denote the grave—the resting-place of the bodies both of the righteous and the wicked; and that they are also used to signify hell, the abode of miserable spirits. But it would be difficult to produce any instance in which they can be shown to signify the abode of the spirits of just men made perfect, either before or after the resurrection.
In the great majority of instances sheolis in the Old Testament used to signify the grave, and in most of these cases is so translated in the Authorized Version. It can have no other meaning in such texts as Gen 37:35; Gen 42:38; 1Sa 2:6; 1Ki 2:6; Job 14:13; Job 17:13; Job 17:16; and in numerous other passages in the writings of David, Solomon, and the prophets. But as the grave is regarded by most persons, and was more especially so by the ancients, with awe and dread, as being the region of gloom and darkness, so the word denoting it soon came to be applied to that more dark and gloomy world which was to be the abiding place of the miserable. Where our translators supposed the word to have this sense, they rendered it by ’hell.’ Some of the passages in which this has been done may be doubtful; but there are others of which a question can scarcely be entertained. Such are those (as Job 11:8; Psa 139:8; Amo 9:2) in which the word denotes the opposite of heaven, which cannot be the grave, nor the general state or region of the dead, but hell. Still more decisive are such passages as Psa 9:17; Pro 23:14; in which sheol cannot mean any place, in this world or the next, to which the righteous as well as the wicked are sent, but the penal abode of the wicked as distinguished from and opposed to the righteous. The only case in which such passages could by any possibility be supposed to mean the grave, would be if the grave—that is, extinction—were the final doom of the unrighteous.
In the New Testament the word hadesis used in much the same sense as sheol in the Old, except that in a less proportion of cases can it be construed to signify ’the grave.’ There are still, however, instances in which it is used in this sense, as in Act 2:31; 1Co 15:55; but in general the hades of the New Testament appears to be no other than the world of future punishments (e.g. Mat 11:23; Mat 16:18; Luk 16:23).
The principal arguments for the intermediate hades, as deduced from Scripture, are founded on those passages in which things ’under the earth’ are described as rendering homage to God and the Savior (Php 2:10; Rev 5:13, etc.). If such passages, however, be compared with others (as with Rom 14:10-11, etc.), it will appear that they must refer to the day of judgment, in which every creature will render some sort of homage to the Savior; but then the bodies of the saints will have been already raised, and the intermediate region, if there be any, will have been deserted.
One of the seemingly strongest arguments for the opinion under consideration is founded on 1Pe 3:19, in which Christ is said to have gone and ’preached to the spirits in prison.’ These spirits in prison are supposed to be the holy dead—perhaps the virtuous heathen—imprisoned in the intermediate place, into which the soul of the Savior went at death, that He might preach to them the Gospel. This passage must be allowed to present great difficulties. The most intelligible meaning suggested by the context is, however, that Christ by His spirit preached to those who in the time of Noah, while the ark was preparing, were disobedient, and whose spirits are now in prison, abiding the general judgment. The prison is doubtless hades, but what hades is must be determined by other passages of Scripture; and, whether it is the grave or hell, it is still a prison for those who yet await the judgment-day. This interpretation is in unison with other passages of Scripture, whereas the other is conjecturally deduced from this single text.
Another argument is deduced from Rev 20:14, which describes ’death and hades’ as ’cast into the lake of fire’ at the close of the general judgment—meaning, according to the advocates of the doctrine in question, that hades should then cease as an intermediate place. But this is also true if understood of the grave, or of the general intermediate condition of the dead, or even of hell, as once more and forever reclaiming what it had temporarily yielded up for judgment—just as we every day see criminals brought from prison to judgment, and after judgment returned to the prison from which they came.
It is further urged, in proof of Hades being an intermediate place other than the grave, that the Scriptures represent the happiness of the righteous as incomplete till after the resurrection. This must be admitted; but it does not thence follow that their souls are previously imprisoned in the earth, or in any other place or region corresponding to the Tartarus of the heathen. Although at the moment of death the disembodied spirits of the redeemed ascend to heaven, and continue there till the resurrection, it is very possible that their happiness shall be incomplete until they have received their glorified bodies from the tomb, and entered upon the full rewards of eternity.
A view supported by so little force of Scripture, seems unequal to resist the contrary evidence which may be produced from the same source, and which it remains briefly to indicate. The effect of this is to show that the souls of the redeemed are described as proceeding, after death, at once to heaven—the place of final happiness, and those of the unredeemed to the place of final wretchedness.
In Heb 6:12, the righteous dead are described as being in actual inheritance of the promises made to the fathers. Our Savior represents the deceased saints as already, before the resurrection (for so the context requires), ’like unto the angels,’ and ’equal to the angels’ (Mat 22:30; Luk 20:36); which is not very compatible with their imprisonment even in the happier region of the supposed Hades. Our Lord’s declaration to the dying thief—’This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise’ (Luk 23:43), has been urged on both sides of the argument; but the word is here not Hades, but Paradise, and no instance can be produced in which the paradise beyond the grave means anything else than that ’third heaven,’ that ’paradise’ into which the Apostle was caught up, and where he heard ’unutterable things’ (2Co 12:2; 2Co 12:4). In the midst of that paradise grows the mystic ’tree of life’ (Rev 2:7), which the same writer represents as growing near the throne of God and the Lamb (Rev 22:2). In Eph 3:15, the Apostle describes the whole church of God as being at present in heaven or on earth. But, according to the view under consideration, the great body of the church would be neither in heaven nor on earth, but in Hades—the intermediate place. In Heb 12:21-24, we are told that in the city of the living God dwell not only God himself, the judge of all, and Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and the innumerable company of angels, but also ’the spirits of just men made perfect’—all dwelling together in the same holy and happy place. To the same effect, but, if possible, still more conclusive, are the various passages in which the souls of the saints are described as being, when absent from the body, present with Christ in heaven (comp. 2Co 5:1-8; Php 1:23; 1Th 5:10). To this it is scarcely necessary to add the various passages in the Apocalyptic vision, in which St. John beheld, as inhabitants of the highest heaven, around the throne of God, myriads of redeemed souls, even before the resurrection (Rev 5:9; Rev 6:9; Rev 7:9; Rev 14:1; Rev 14:3). Now the ’heaven’ of these passages cannot be the place to which the term Hades is ever applied, for that word is never associated with any circumstances or images of enjoyment or happiness [HEAVEN].
As these arguments seem calculated to disprove the existence of the more favored region of the alleged intermediate place, a similar course of evidence militates with equal force against the existence of the more penal region of the same place. It is admitted by the staunchest advocates for the doctrine of an intermediate place, that the souls of the wicked, when they leave the body, go immediately into punishment. Now the Scripture knows no place of punishment after death but that which was prepared for the devil and his angels. This place they now inhabit; and this is the place to which, after judgment, the souls of the condemned will be consigned (comp. 2Pe 2:4; Mat 25:41). This verse of Peter is the only one in Scripture in which any reference to the word Tartarus occurs: here then, if anywhere, we should find that intermediate place corresponding to the Tartarus of the heathen, from whom the word is borrowed. But from the other text we can be quite certain that the Tartarus of Peter is no other than the hell which is to be the final, as it is, in degree, the present doom of the wicked. That this hell is Hades is readily admitted, for the course of the argument has been to show that Hades is hell, whenever it is not the grave. Dr. Enoch Pond, whose interesting article on the subject, in the American Biblical Repository, we have chiefly followed, well remarks: ’Whether the righteous and the wicked, after the judgment, will go literally to the same places in which they were before situated, it is not material to inquire. But, both before and after the judgment, the righteous will be in the same place with their glorified Savior and his holy angels; and this will be heaven: and before and after the judgment the wicked will be in the same place with the devil and his angels; and this will be hell.
Ha’des. In Revised Version. See Hell.
Hades. The unseen world, the spirit world. Occurs eleven times in the Greek Testament, Mat 11:23; Mat 16:18; Act 2:31; Rev 1:18, etc., and is retained in the R. V. to distinguish it from Gehenna ("hell"). The word is used in Homer as a proper noon for Pluto, the god of the unseen or lower world. In later writers it signifies the unseen spirit world, the abode of the dead. 1. The Greek view of Hades and the Roman view of Orcus is that of a place for all the dead in the depths of the earth. 2. The Hebrew Sheol is the equivalent for the Greek Hades, and is so translated in the Septuagint. It is likewise the subterranean abode of all the dead, but only their temporary abode until the advent of the Messiah or the final judgment, and is divided into two departments, called Paradise or Abraham’s bosom for the good, and Gehenna or hell for the bad. 3. The New Testament Hades does not differ essentially from the Hebrew Sheol, but Christ has broken the power of death, dispelled the darkness of Hades, and revealed to believers the idea of heaven as the state and abode of bliss in immediate prospect after a holy life. The A. V. translates Hades and Gehenna by the same word, "hell," except in 1Co 15:55, "grave," R. V. reads "death," and thus obliterates the important distinction between the realm of the dead or spirit world and the place of torment. Hades is a temporary abode—heaven and hell are permanent and final. Since Christ’s descent into Hades, or the unseen, the spirit world, believers need not fear to enter this realm through death. Christ declares, "I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of death and of Hades." Rev 1:18, R. V.
See HELL.
HADES.—See Dead, Eschatology, and Hell (Descent into).
See SHEOL
HADES.—The Lat. term for the Heb. Sheol, the abode of departed spirits. It was conceived of as a great cavern or pit under the earth, in which the shades lived. Just what degree of activity the shades possessed seems to have been somewhat doubtful. According to the Greeks, they were engaged in the occupations in which they had been employed on earth. The Hebrews, however, seem rather to have thought of their condition as one of inactivity. (See Sheol and Gehenna.) RV
Shailer Mathews.
1. In Old Testament: Sheol
In the Septuagint Hades is the standing equivalent for Sheol, but also translates other terms associated with death and the state after it. The Greek conception of Hades was that of a locality receiving into itself all the dead, but divided into two regions, one a place of torment, the other of blessedness. This conception should not be rashly transferred to the New Testament, for the latter stands not under the influence of Greek pagan belief, but gives a teaching and reflects a belief which model their idea of Hades upon the Old Testament through the Septuagint. The Old Testament Sheol, while formally resembling the Greek Hades in that it is the common receptacle of all the dead, differs from it, on the one hand, by the absence of a clearly defined division into two parts, and, on the other hand, by the emphasis placed on its association with death and the grave as abnormal facts following in the wake of sin. The Old Testament thus concentrates the partial light it throws on the state after death on the negative, undesirable side of the prospect apart from redemption. When in the progress of Old Testament revelation the state after death begins to assume more definite features, and becomes more sharply differentiated in dependence on the religious and moral issue of the present life this is not accomplished in the canonical writings (otherwise in the apocalyptic literature) by dividing Sheol into two compartments, but by holding forth to the righteous the promise of deliverance from Sheol, so that the latter becomes more definitely outlined as a place of evil and punishment.
2. In the New Testament: Hades
The New Testament passages mark a distinct stage in this process, and there is, accordingly, a true basis in Scripture for the identification in a certain aspect of Sheol - Hades - with hell as reflected in the King James Version. The theory according to which Hades is still in the New Testament the undifferentiated provisional abode of all the dead until the day of judgment, with the possibility of ultimate salvation even for those of its inmates who have not been saved in this life, is neither in harmony with the above development nor borne out by the facts of New Testament usage. That dead believers abide in a local Hades cannot be proven from 1Th 4:16; 1Co 15:23, for these passages refer to the grave and the body, not to a gathering-place of the dead. On the other hand Luk 23:43; 2Co 5:6-8; Php 1:23; Rev 6:9; Rev 7:9; Rev 15:2 teach that the abode of believers immediately after death is with Christ and God.
It is, of course, a different matter, when Hades, as not infrequently already the Old Testament Sheol, designates not the place of the dead but the state of death or disembodied existence. In this sense even the soul of Jesus was in Hades according’ to Peter’s statement (Act 2:27, Act 2:31 - on the basis of Psa 16:10). Here the abstract sense is determined by the parallel expression, “to see corruption” None the less from a comparatively early date this passage has been quoted in support of the doctrine of a local descent of Christ into Hades.
4. Rev 20:13; Rev 6:8; Rev 1:18
The same abstract meaning is indicated for Rev 20:13. Death and Hades are here represented as delivering up the dead on the eve of the final judgment. If this is more than a poetic duplication of terms, Hades will stand for the personified state of death, Death for the personified cause of this state. The personification appears plainly from Rev 20:14: “Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire.” In the number of these “dead” delivered up by Hades, believers are included, because, even on the chiliastic interpretation of Rev 20:4-6, not all the saints share in the first resurrection, but only those “beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God,” i.e. the martyrs. A similar personifying combination of Death and Hades occurs in Rev 6:8 (“a pale horse: and he that sat upon him his name was Death; and Hades followed with him”). In Rev 1:18, on the other hand, Death and Hades are represented as prisons from which Christ, in virtue of His own resurrection, has the power to deliver, a representation which again implies that in some, not necessarily local, sense believers also are kept in Hades.
5. Luk 16:23
In distinction from these passages when the abstract meaning prevails and the local conception is in abeyance, the remaining references are more or less locally conceived. Of these Luk 16:23 is the only one which might seem to teach that recipients of salvation enter after death into Hades as a place of abode. It has been held that Hades is here the comprehensive designation of the locality where the dead reside, and is divided into two regions, “the bosom of Abraham” and the place of torment, a representation for which Jewish parallels can be quoted, aside from its resemblance to the Greek bisection of Hades. Against this view, however, it may be urged, that if “the bosom of Abraham” were conceived as one of the two divisions of Hades, the other division would have been named with equal concreteness in connection with Dives. In point of fact, the distinction is not between “the bosom of Abraham” and another place, as both included in Hades, but between “the bosom of Abraham” and Hades as antithetical and exclusive. The very form of the description of the experience of Dives: “In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments,” leads us to associate Hades as such with pain and punishment. The passage, therefore, does not prove that the saved are after death in Hades. In further estimating its bearing upon the problem of the local conditions of the disembodied life after death, the parabolic character of the representation must be taken into account. The parable is certainly not intended to give us topographical information about the realm of the dead, although it presupposes that there is a distinct place of abode for the righteous and wicked respectively.
6. Mat 11:23
The two other passages where Hades occurs in the teaching of our Lord (Mat 11:23 parallel Luk 10:15; and Mat 16:18) make a metaphorical use of the conception, which, however, is based on the local sense. In the former utterance it is predicted of Capernaum that it shall in punishment for its unbelief “go down unto Hades.” As in the Old Testament Sheol is a figure for the greatest depths known (Deu 32:22; Isa 7:11; Isa 57:9; Job 11:8; Job 26:6), this seems to be a figure for the extreme of humiliation to which that city was to be reduced in the course of history. It is true, Mat 11:24, with its mention of the day of judgment, might seem to favor an eschatological reference to the ultimate doom of the unbelieving inhabitants, but the usual restriction of Hades to the punishment of the intermediate state (see below) is against this.
7. Mat 16:18
In the other passage, Mat 16:18, Jesus declares that the gates of Hades shall not
The above survey of the passages tends to show that Hades, where it is locally conceived, is not a provisional receptacle for all the dead, but plainly associated with the punishment of the wicked. Where it comes under consideration for the righteous there is nothing to indicate a local sense. On 1Pe 3:19; 1Pe 4:6 (where, however, the word “Hades” does not occur), see articles ESCHATOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT; SPIRITS IN PRISON.
8. Not a Final State
The element of truth in theory of the provisional character of Hades lies in this, that the New Testament never employs it in connection with the final state of punishment, as subsequent to the last judgment. For this GEHENNA (which see) and other terms are used. Dives is represented as being in Hades immediately after his death and while his brethren are still in this present life. Whether the implied differentiation between stages of punishment, depending obviously on the difference between the disembodied and reëmbodied state of the lost, also carries with itself a distinction between two places of punishment, in other words whether Hades and Gehenna are locally distinct, the evidence is scarcely sufficient to determine. The New Testament places the emphasis on the eschatological developments at the end, and leaves many things connected with the intermediate state in darkness.
Hades is a Lat. word adopted from the Gr. Ἅéäçò (ᾅäçò), which is used in the Septuagint to translate the Heb. Sheol and in NT Gr. to denote the same idea as was expressed by Sheol is the OT, viz. ‘the abode of the dead.’ The word has been consistently used in the Revised Version of the NT to render ᾅäçò on each of the 10 occasions of its occurrence (Mat_11:23; Mat_16:18, Luk_10:15; Luk_16:23, Act_2:27; Act_2:31 [in 1Co_15:55 critical texts give èÜíáôå for ᾅäç of TR [Note: Textus Receptus, Received Text.] ], Rev_1:18; Rev_6:8; Rev_20:13-14), in place of the misleading ‘hell’ of the Authorized Version .
In Mat_11:23 (Luk_10:15) the word is employed in a purely figurative sense. Capernaum, ‘exalted unto heaven,’ is to ‘go down unto Hades,’ i.e. is to be utterly overthrown. Figurative also is the statement in Mat_16:18 that ‘the gates of Hades shall not prevail against’ the Church of Christ. As the strength of a walled city depended on the strength of its gates, ‘the gates of Hades’ is metaphor for the power of death, and promise amounts to an assurance of the indestructibility of the Church. In Luk_16:23 the rich man lifts up his eyes in Hades, being in torment, and sees Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom. Hades is used here in its traditional sense of the under world of the dead, whether righteous or unrighteous. Not only Dives but Lazarus is there. But it is no longer conceived of in the negative fashion of the OT as a realm of undifferentiated existence in which there are neither rewards nor penalties. In keeping with the pre-Christian development of Jewish thought (cf. 2Ma_12:45, Eth. Enoch, 22), it is represented now as a scene of moral issues and contrasted experiences-the selfish rich man is ‘tormented in this flame’; the humble beggar is ‘comforted’ in Abraham’s bosom. The moral lesson that the recompense of character is sure and that it begins immediately after death is very clear; but it is going beyond our Lord’s didactic intention in a parable to find here a detailed doctrine as to the circumstances and conditions of the intermediate state.
Act_2:27 is a quotation from Psa_16:10 which in v. 31 is applied to Christ, of whom, as risen from the tomb, it is said that He was not ‘left in Hades,’ i.e. in the regions of the dead. In the same general and ordinary sense the word is used in Rev_1:18 : ‘I have the keys of death and of Hades’; cf. the close association in the OT of death with Sheol (Psa_116:3, Pro_5:5).
In Rev_6:8 Hades is personified as a follower of Death upon his pale horse. In the author’s vision of the Judgment (Rev_20:11 ff.) the sea and Death and Hades give up the dead which are in them (Rev_20:13), and finally Death and Hades are themselves cast into the lake of fire (Rev_20:14).
Literature.-H. Cremer, Bib.-Theol. Lexicon of NT Gr., Eng. translation 4, Edinburgh, 1895, s.v. ᾅäçò; G. Dalman, article ‘Hades’ in Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche 3; S. D. F. Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality4, Edinburgh, 1901, p. 277ff., also article ‘Hades’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) .
J. C. Lambert.
The Greek word hades was used in Bible times as the equivalent of the Hebrew word sheol, the name used in the Old Testament for the world of the dead. This world of the dead was the shadowy destiny that awaited all people, whether good or bad (Act 2:27; cf. Psa 16:10; for details see SHEOL).
With Christ’s conquest of death, there was no need to fear the world of the dead any longer. Hades was a fearful place only to those who would not trust in Christ. Hades spoke therefore of more than death in general; it spoke of the separation from God that followed death in the afterlife (Mat 11:23; Mat 16:18; Rev 20:13-14).
In general, however, the word that the New Testament usually used for the place of eternal punishment was not hades but gehenna. This was a place of fiery torment (Mat 18:9; see HELL).
The Greek word for “Sheol,” the
home of the dead. It is often used as a
metaphor for death.