--2 Thessalonians 1:9.
[83]But do not the wicked go to hell?
[84]It is true that all who have died from Adam until now have gone to
hell. But hell does not mean a place of conscious torture. Wherever the
word hell occurs in the Bible it means the condition of death. Hell is
not a place, but a condition. Those who go into the grave are not
conscious there; but they have gone into the death condition. Their
bodies decay and return to the dust. The word hell is translated from
the Hebrew word _sheol_, as used in the Old Testament. This same word
is a number of times translated grave and sometimes pit. In the New
Testament the same word hell is translated from the Greek word _hades_
and likewise means grave, the condition of death, the tomb.
[85]Some Scriptural illustrations of this prove that hell means a
condition of death. Job was a good and godly man, who tried to obey
Jehovah. He had suffered the loss of all his earthly possessions and
then his neighbors taunted him because of his suffering; and while he
was thus suffering, he prayed that God would permit him to go to hell,
saying: "O that thou wouldest hide me in hell [_sheol_, the grave] until
thy wrath be past". (Job 14:13) He desired to be hid in the grave until
the time of the resurrection, hoping in God's promise that some day the
dead would come again. Then Job says: "If I wait the grave is mine
house: I have made my bed in the darkness".
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