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”; fuller form גֵּי בֶן־הִנֹּם, Gei Ben-Hinnom, “the Valley of the Son of Hinnom”), a specific physical valley south and south-west of Jerusalem. BDAG s.v. Geenna documents the etymology explicitly. The valley is a real geographical location: it runs beneath the walls of what is now the Old City, joins the Kidron Valley near the south-east corner of the city below the Temple Mount, and can be walked today. In Joshua 15:8 and 18:16 it is named as part of the boundary between the tribal territories of Judah and Benjamin.

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 (c. 622 BC) included desecrating the high place at Topheth in the valley to prevent its further cultic use. From that point on, the valley became associated in Jewish memory with apostasy and judgment, and by the Second Temple period — in texts including 1 Enoch and 2 Esdras — Hinnom Valley imagery was being used for the place of eschatological judgment.

Gehenna occurs 12 times in the New Testament: Matthew 5:22, 5:29, 5:30, 10:28, 18:9, 23:15, 23:33; Mark 9:43, 9:45, 9:47; Luke 12:5; and James 3:6 — every occurrence in the Synoptic Gospels except the one in James. 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. When Jesus’s first-century Jewish audience heard Gehenna, the valley was on the south side of their own city; the image was concrete — a real place associated with abomination and judgment, used as a metaphor for divine judgment more broadly.

Matthew 5:22 across translations

• KJV: “shall be in danger of hell fire” — the KJV renders Gehenna as “hell” in all twelve NT occurrences.
• BSB: “will be subject to the fire of hell” — the conventional rendering; some editions footnote the underlying Greek.
• NET Bible: retains “hell” but adds a detailed translator’s note citing the Hinnom Valley specifically.
• Tree of Life Version: “shall be subject to fiery Gei-Hinnom” — preserving the Hebrew geographical name directly.
• Disciples’ Literal New Testament: transliterates as “Gehenna” throughout.

The rendering “hell” trades geographic specificity for theological familiarity. A modern reader of “the fire of hell” tends to hear the abstracted category that has accumulated across centuries of usage — Dante’s circles, medieval imagery, Jonathan Edwards’s sermons — rather than “the Valley of Hinnom, the place Josiah desecrated, the place where Jeremiah announced judgment.” Translating preserves clarity for readers unfamiliar with Jerusalem’s geography; transliterating preserves the word’s specific historical anchor. Both approaches have costs, and this site does not adjudicate between them.

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.

The count: 54 in the KJV, about 13 in modern translations

The divergence in translation policy is measurable. The word “hell” appears:

• KJV (1611): 54 times — 31 in the Old Testament, 23 in the New Testament
• ESV: 13 times
• NIV: 14 times
• NASB: 13 times

The KJV’s 54 breaks down by underlying word: Sheol accounts for the 31 Old Testament occurrences, and the New Testament’s 23 comprise Hades (10), Gehenna (12), and the single Tartarus verb of 2 Peter 2:4. Most modern translations reserve “hell” for Gehenna (and sometimes Tartarus), transliterating Sheol and Hades — which is why their counts drop to 13 or 14.

The decline is sometimes read as modern translators softening the content. The numbers do not show that: the passages are all still present and translated. What changed is that modern translations distinguish the four underlying words where the KJV used one English word for all of them, so a reader can see, for example, that the Gospels’ Gehenna sayings use different vocabulary than the Old Testament’s references to Sheol.

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.