The word “hellfire” is an English distortion of “Gehenna,” the name of the ancient refuse dump outside the city of Jerusalem, which term was used by Jesus as a symbol of everlasting destruction. (Matthew 10:28) What, then, of hell itself (rendered from the Hebrew “she’ohl′” and the Greek “hai′des”)? If it is a place of torment, would anybody want to go there? Hardly. Yet, the patriarch Job asked God to conceal him there. (Job 14:13) Jonah as good as went to the Bible hell when he was in the belly of the big fish, and there he prayed to God for deliverance. (Jonah 2:1, 2) The hell of the Bible is the common grave of mankind, where those who have died rest in God’s loving memory, awaiting a resurrection.—John 5:28, 29.
